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119 entries categorized "Politics | Columbia County"

September 21, 2011

Box 343

The Gossips of Rivertown has posted absentee ballot tallies for the contentious Hudson mayoral primary. As expected, these did not change the lopsided primary day outcome, since Nick Haddad prevailed among the absentee voters, adding to his already statistically-insurmountable lead. But there’s another story buried underneath the raw numbers of the absentee ballot count.

Public documents (see this PDF obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request to the Columbia County Board of Elections) show that Haddad’s primary opponent, Time & Space Limited co-director Linda Mussmann, arranged to have several other people’s ballots mailed to her via a Hudson post office box: P.O. Box 343.

That’s where it gets interesting, because P.O. Box 343 is also an address used by Time & Space. TSL is a non-profit organization—tax exempt because it seeks to advance the arts and culture, along with other educational purposes.

These and other readily-available public records indicate that voters’ absentee ballots, TSL contributions, nonprofit IRS filings, as well as political donations all lead back to the same metal box at the Hudson Post Office.

Below is a detail of records obtained from the Board of Elections, which shows one of at least three voters whose absentee ballots were mailed c/o Linda Mussmann at P.O. Box 343:

Again, that request was for someone else’s ballot, not her own... Next up is a page from the TSL website, instructing donors to mail checks to P.O. Box 343:

NOTE: The street address listed above on TSL’s own website is actually incorrect; the correct street number is 434. Meanwhile, P.O. Box 343 appears on other pages at the TSL site as well.

Similarly, here is TSL’s 2008 filing with the I.R.S., again showing P.O. Box 343 as the organization’s mailing address:

Lastly, here is a recent political contribution made to a Republican candidate for the State Supreme Court by Mussmann’s spouse and TSL co-director, Claudia Bruce, on August 19th of this year, again citing the same P.O. Box:

(That last one is especially ironic, considering that Mussmann had been posturing as the only true Democrat in the race—even as her partner was donating to a GOP judicial candidate. Personally, I happen to like and respect that particular judge; and unlike so-called “yellow dog” Democrats, I don’t expect people to be party-line donors. But Mussmann can’t insist that others bake ideologically-pure cakes if she’s going to eat them, too.)

Nonprofits are supposed to be very careful about keeping this stuff separate, and are required to limit and report any possible lobbying or other political activity. Free speech allows a nonprofit to show a movie with a political viewpoint. Likewise in his or her separate private life, the director of a nonprofit is free to be as political as s/he likes. It’s the mingling direct politicking for one’s own candidacy with nonprofit resources that likely would be raise eyebrows at of the I.R.S.

Mussmann and/or Bruce could in theory pay for that Post Office box out of their own funds, rather than charitable contributions, and declare its use a donation to TSL. Even so, such overlapping use won’t pass most people’s smell test. It’s needlessly sloppy, when the problem could be cured easily and afforably by just opening a separate box for political stuff.

In the past, TSL’s co-directors were somewhat more careful to at least avoid the impression of overlapping political and charitable activity, even if it was going on behind the scenes. For example, a $300 contribution Mussmann made in 2009 to her own Bottom Line Party was properly attributed to her home address on State Street, not P.O. Box 343.

In any case, Mussmann made a major strategic miscalculation in her fourth quixotic mayoral run with her intense focus on absentees. The results suggest that far too much campaign time was devoted to an effort which only delivered at best a 20-vote bump up. Visiting voters at home, talking them into having her “carry” their ballot, picking it up at the BOE, taking it back to the voter, standing around waiting for them to fill it out, and then delivering it back to the Board is an arduous means of winning votes if you have limited time and space to work in. (In a number of instances, Mussmann even went to voters who had already designated someone to carry their ballot and actually been issued one, and got them to sign a second request for a second ballot. This tactic’s main effect was to anger those whose ballots she had “scooped” to work against her, a net loss to her final tally.) In a close election, it might have looked like a clever, if Macchiavellian, move. As it turned out, the effort just caused her to neglect more wholesale forms of campaigning.

The election law certainly allows voters to designate someone to “carry” someone else’s ballot, with permission. Normally the practice is benign: for example, an elderly voter in an assisted living facility might want her nephew to pick up and bring the ballot to her. But historically in places like Hudson, a handful of political operatives (most notably here, 5th Ward Alderman Bob “Doc” Donahue) have had long lists of non-relatives for whom they carried ballots.

In past election cycles, Linda Mussmann protested this practice as a shady and even potentially corrupt one, as it can place undue pressure on the voter to fill out their ballot a certain way. The person “helpfully” delivering the ballot can gain an advantage by delivering endorsements along with the ballot, and potentially intimidate the voter as they fill it out. Yet there Mussmann was, straining to turn a tactic once used against her to her own advantage.

Mussmann probably lost as many votes as she gained in that process—while Haddad was busy successfully wooing over 350 Democrats with calls, mailers, TV ads, events, appearances, and face-to-face talks. With hope this fourth failed mayoral run (and sixth electoral bust) will mean the end of Mussmann’s by-now futile campaigns... or at least cause her to be more careful about which addresses she uses on official forms.

September 19, 2011

Signifying nothing

’Tis the season when the leaves float down, and the campaign signs sprout up. It’s also the season when the partisans of various political candidates agonize waaaay too much over who has more lawn signs. In fact some campaigns think of little else but their signs—at the expense of the actual work of winning over voters.

The annual sign routine is predictable:

Candidate Joe gets his signs up first, causing the supporters of Candidate Jane to freak out.

Jane overcompensates by trying to put up twice as many signs as Joe, escalating the sign wars.

Now it’s Joe’s supporters’ turn to freak out, so Joe orders another 100 signs to catch up, making Joe and Jane roughly even.

Both teams suddenly realize that if they put TWO signs on each property, it looks like they have double the support! Then they realize that three is better than two. And four is better than three. (Five, however, makes the property owner look crazy.)

Jane’s cousin gets caught with a trunkload of stolen Joe signs, creating a bunch of bad publicity for Jane.

Meanwhile, the local zoning enforcement officer (a member of Jane’s campaign committee) decides to enforce a little-known local law, requiring Joe to take down his signs because they are 3.25 inches too tall.

The ACLU steps in, with a letter (correctly) denouncing the local sign ordinance as un-Constitutional; the ZEO backs off; Joe gets most of his signs back up.

After the first week of this annual ritual, voters stop even seeing the signs, as they become just another feature of the roadscape.

All of this distracts from the mechanics of wooing voters, turning them out to the polls, and getting elected.

Finally, after months of sign wars, your local election occurs. The votes are tallied. Turns out that having more signs had nothing to do with who actually won. The outcome could be predicted as reliably with a coin flip. Because no one—well, almost no one—decides which candidate to support because of a sign.

People understandably love to count election signs, since they’re often the only visible portion of a local campaign. (Debates, if any, are usually poorly-attended, with mainly the inner circles of each candidate attending.)

But signs tell you virtually nothing about a campaign, except maybe which side assigned a more obsessive-compulsive operative to putting wax-coated cardboard placards all over town. I’ve seen plenty of elections around here—for example, in Claverack, Hudson and Taghkanic—where the candidate with more signs lost, sometimes by a lot.

A few people put up signs because they actually feel strongly about a candidate. But rarely does more than a tiny sliver of the voting public actually display signs for either side. Some are apathetic. A few don’t want to have an argument with their neighbor. Others simply want their allegiances to remain a private matter, especially in the event that the other team wins, and appoints a new tax assessor.

Still it is almost impossible for a candidate’s friends and core supporters to turn off the sign hysteria. In the minds eye, if you see three signs for Joe in a given neighborhood, it is natural to conclude that “everyone” in that neighborhood supports Joe, though only 3 out of 30 houses are sporting his colors.

Signs also go up for a host of reasons that have little to do with popularity. They go up first on the lawns or houses of relatives of candidates, and their allied commiteemen. Then they go up because someone didn’t want to say “no” to an operative with a supervisory role over that person’s job. They go up on certain attorneys’ and insurance agents’ houses who depend on municipal or County work, even if they plan to vote for the other side. And so on.

So long as both sides have a reasonable presence on the street, the exact tally of who’s ahead in the Sign Wars tells you nothing. The only time to freak out about signs is if the only sign up for your candidate is on his own house. Then you might worry, as that absence probably reflects a much larger problem of organization that goes far beyond getting signs printed and distributed. On the other hand, your candidate may be lullling the other side into complacency, as s/he diligently and quietly knocks on the door of every single local household, building a giant electoral advantage which only becomes visible on Election Day.

Sure, once in a while someone comes up with a truly clever or winning sign design which truly captures voters’ imaginations and gives them some slight advantage. That happens maybe once in a lifetime, and usually is a symptom of the candidate’s prowess, not its cause. As one consultant put it:

Lawn signs are another case where more is less as candidates try to outdo each other to see who can plaster a neighborhood with the most signs. It’s a stalemate of mutually assured destruction: Competing campaigns drain their budgets as they litter the landscape with a blurry sea of colorful cardboard largely ignored by commuters and other passersby.

And what about our neighbors who actually choose to post political lawn signs in their front yard? I say this: Free speech is awesome, but we already know who you vote for, and you’re not changing anyone’s mind. Let it go.

So wherever you may live, please don’t get too worked up about who appears to have more signs. If you care about a candidate, badgering them about the other guy’s signs does not help. Instead, organize an event at your home, or make calls on their behalf to voters, or write a personal letter to your five best friends, urging them to join you in voting for your candidate.

In a local election, the only reliable sign that your team may win is that John or Jane isn’t investing too much of their limited money, time and thoughts on campaign signs.

September 14, 2011

Haddad by a mile

Nick Haddad breezed past Linda Mussmann in Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary in Hudson. Each of his running mates, including David Marston, Sarah Sterling, Ellen Thurston, Larissa Thomas, were likewise nominated by very large margins. Below is a table of preliminary results reported ward-by-ward by observers at the Board of Election’s initial count:

* Small numbers of votes for Bill Hallenbeck and other write-ins cast in several wards were not immediately available.

Haddad overcame an unfortunate petitioning SNAFU which had forced the unusual primary, requiring Democratic voters to write-in the name of a candidate for Mayor despite a party nominee having been designated by the Hudson City Democratic Committee.

Candidate Mussmann, who had imagined she might take advantage of the so-called “opportunity to ballot,” reportedly left the count before it concluded, as it became clear that her margin of defeat was too lopsided to be overcome with outstanding ballots, including absentees. This marks Mussmann’s sixth losing campaign, including three previous Mayoral runs, and one run each for School Board and Alderman.

August 16, 2011

Politics as Theater (Take 4)

At The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink has broken the widespread Hudson rumor that Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Limited plans to stage (pun intended) a write-in primary vote among Democrats against Nick Haddad.*

Osterink speculates that Mussmann might also run on a third-party line, though the website for her moribund Bottom Line Party seems to have disappeared. According to the State Board of Elections, as of July the BLP had a balance of $136.94 in its account, and no donors at all in 2010-2011. (Out of the grand total of four donors in 2009, the only Hudson resident contributing to the Bottom Line was Mussmann herself; in 2008 there were a whopping three donors, the only Hudson contributor being Paula Forman.)

Mussmann has run three times previously for Mayor, each of those runs unsuccessful, and also lost a single bid for the School Board. Above is a graph of the votes that Mussmann has garnered Citywide in her previous mayoral runs in the general election. Only members of the Democratic Party can vote in the primary, meaning the tallies on September 13th likely will be considerably smaller.

In a blog interview in January of this year, Mussmann said (either coyly or disingenuously, depending on your take) that:

Running for Mayor is not something I am thinking about now but is always an option that is open to me.

In a separate interview two years ago, her partner Claudia Bruce (who serves as the Treasurer of the BLP) said of their political work:

Linda has run for mayor three times. We say the whole thing, is all theater. It is all theater. ... So many of the things that we’re doing in the community are a part of our theater experience.

And indeed, it is difficult to view this fourth quixotic attempt—if indeed the rumor is true—as much besides a theatrical show, one which accomplishes little except to keep TSL’s co-director in the spotlight. (And maybe the other co-director will get a chance to revive some songs from the 2001 campaign.)

Mussman’s third run not only was her worst showing. It also cost Mussmann a great deal of personal support, and moved a large portion of her board to quit en masse after she broke a promise to them not to continue her campaign after she lost the Democratic primary. In another interview, Mussmann admitted that third run was not easy, indulging in a certain sense of victimhood for her own decision:

My last campaign as mayor was highly controversial, because people felt I should not have run. I was the third party spoiler. And people directed a lot of hostility toward TSL because of me personally. Which is a hard thing to put up with. Or to withstand. And, financially and emotionally, is very hurtful.

While there are approximately 1,850 registered Dems in Hudson, past primaries have drawn only a small fraction of those registrants—with turnouts ranging from 250 to 750 voters—meaning that someone could win the top line of the ballot with just 130 or so votes. This being a write-in primary, which requires voters to spend more time and volunteer the name of a candidate, the actual valid votes cast could be quite small.

Forms for registering to vote, absentee ballots, military ballots, et al. can be downloaded via the Columbia County Board of Elections website.

Clearly, there's a time and place for politics in theater. (The play Danton’s Death about French revolutionaries is so beloved by Mussmann, she had her own chapbook version printed up.) Based on the Mussmann track record in prior elections, at least, it's less clear that there is much place for theater—or at least performance art—in Hudson politics. If it’s just a bit of avant garde the-a-ter that Mussmann is craving, the mere feint of a vanity campaign ought to be enough to satisfy that need for drama. Hudson is a real place, inhabited by real people, with real problems and potential. The residents of this small city deserve better than to be treated as props in someone else's play.

* Haddad was endorsed by the party but was forced into a write-in option after his signed acceptance form was not included with the rest of the Hudson Democrats’ voluminous petition paperwork; HCDC chair Victor Mendolia has stated that he “took full responsibility for the error.”

August 8, 2011

BREAKING: Haddad team prevails

Photo: Joseph A on Flickr

Observers keeping a watch on the Columbia County Courthouse report that the Republican effort to prevent a Democratic primary—in which it is expected that Nicholas C. Haddad will be written in as the party’s choice of nominee for Mayor—has failed in court.

According to sources, Judge Hummel agreed with attorneys Ken Dow, Ed Reisner and John Friedman that the GOP failed to serve notice on the affected parties in a timely manner, missing a key election law deadline which was inviolate. The merits of the petitions themselves could not be questioned, because the Republicans did not follow the correct process.

So ironically, the GOP attempt to trip up the Democrats with technicalities itself failed on a technicality. (One wonders whether the Hudson and County Republicans will be demanding a refund from their lawyers, including Bill Better, and process servers.)

This means that there will indeed be an open write-in primary among Democrats on September 13th, in which any name can be written in.

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August 4, 2011

Bad service

Legally, “service” of papers typically means to deliver notice to people that they are being sued and/or must appear in court.

The two photos above represent what the Hudson Republicans and the Hallenbeck campaign consider service. These depict two belated attempts around mid-day today to alert two Hudson residents that just a few hours later, the GOP would be in court trying to prevent the Democrats from having a Mayoral choice.

Kinderhook Attorney Bill Better was spotted tramping around Hudson with sheafs of paper in his arms, attempting to track his quarry—evidently with little success and even less care. (Note: The above method of service is known to lawyers as “nail-and-mail,” though it appears in this case in person delivery is required by New York State election law... and here might be, um, better described as “tape-and-escape.”)

The GOP ought to have served them notice well beforehand, but had neglected to do so. The Republican side somehow “forgot” to name the three Dems responsible for the contested petitions in their lawsuit filed earlier in the week, only specifying Board of Elections commissioners Virginia Martin and Jason Nastke... But one of them apparently rolled out of bed this morning, realized their blunder, and had to hustle over the Courthouse for leave to correct it. (In fact, the first version of their Board of Elections complaint wasn’t even signed, and also had to be re-submitted.)

Better evidently was acting out instructions from GOP chair George DeJesus and candidate Bill Hallenbeck, who reneged on DeJesus’s publicly-stated words published just last week in The Register-Star:

“I feel for Mr. Haddad. It was a mistake,” DeJesus said. “During petition time you have so much going on. I can understand the mistake.”

DeJesus said the situation will make it much harder for the Democrats, as they have now opened the door for anyone to be a write-in candidate for the endorsement. The Republican added that he will not campaign to get people to write in his mayoral candidate William Hallenbeck’s name on the Democratic primary ballot because residents deserve a choice between two strong candidates.

“I just hope, for the sake of the city, that they have a choice and an opportunity to pick a mayor they believe will do the best job,” DeJesus said.

But now, instead of keeping DeJesus’s word and honoring the above sentiments, the GOP filed suit on Monday to block Democrats who might want to write in a candidate for Mayor. But in challenging the Democrats on a narrow technicality, they themselves stumbled all over basic legal requirements in bringing their suit.

Which brings us to this afternoon in the Columbia County Courthouse, where DeJesus and Hallenbeck huddled with Linda Mussmann and Tony Kellar, while lawyers for both sides duked it out before Judge Hummel of Rensselaer County.

By 4 o’clock, Hummel had delivered a setback to Better & Co: The Republican legal eagles had screwed up the wording of their complaint. This caused Hummel to find that their complaint had already been satisfied once the County Board ruled today that the Democratic petitions were valid—and thus could not be pursued as currently constructed.

As a result of Hummel's decision, the threesome of Better, Hallenbeck and DeJesus indicated they'd scurry off to re-file their case by 5 pm in hopes of getting a second bite at the apple, including a second chance to try to “serve” the affected parties... which is doubly ironic, since they don't want any Democrats who made technical mistakes to get any second chances. Apparently, the Hudson Republicans think that only their tribe deserves a do-over, while Democrats had better dot every i and cross every t.

Assuming Hallenbeck’s crew get their paperwork in order this time, Hummel will reconvene the parties at 9 am on Monday. Meanwhile, Hudson Dems remain in suspense about whether they’ll get the chance to have a nominee.

July 9, 2011

Mussmann’s Folly

PHOTOILLUSTRATION CONTRIBUTED BY A DOWNTOWN READER

To fully unravel Linda Mussmann’s recent rants about trucks and the Waterfront unfortunately requires some frank talk and hard truths. Here’s some of the backstory:

The real reason that Linda’s posturing so aggressively lately about the issue? The TSL director (and newfound downtown real estate speculator) is hoping people in her neighborhood will forget her central role in allowing the trucks to get there in the first place.

This traffic began in earnest on Linda's watch, when she was Waterfront chair. Instead of moving to stop it, she met privately and unpreparedly with lawyers from Holcim (then still called SLC). Though having denounced the company as reckless and untrustworthy for years, she seemed flattered that they’d talk with her.

Shortly thereafter, Hudson was stunned by Linda’s announcement of a sweetheart Waterfront plan for the company—which at the time was actively debating whether to sell their Columbia County properties.

Instead, they were emboldened to stay, and even to push the envelope in the wake of their 2005 Greenport defeat.

In late 2006 before this all went south, I met with Linda, then-Council President Rob O’Brien, and city attorney Cheryl Roberts (now also Linda's real estate lawyer of record) in her office at TSL, where she preferred to do much of her politicking. I had advised Linda that previous summer not to meet with SLC/Holcim without understanding the terrain thoroughly, reasonable advice that she ignored. And as predicted, they ate her alive.

At the time of that meeting at her office, Linda and Cheryl fully recognized that the City had tools to deal with the growing truck issue on Columbia Street. A lawsuit might be threatened by Holcim, but that was probably a bluff, and such a case was winnable. Yet as was so typical of my extensive interactions with Linda whenever an obstacle was encountered, an attitude of defeatism and even victimhood kicked in: It's too hard; Claudia and I are tired; we're too old for this; Quintin [Cross] and Charlie [Butterworth] have the Mayor's ear; I’ll be asked to resign any day now; everyone's against us; and so on.

In another meeting several weeks later at Peter Jung’s house (again with O’Brien present, though not Roberts) Linda yelled and cried and stamped her feet. But by the end she promised to include in the Waterfront Plan two options—one with Holcim, another showing the possibilities without them. Then I had a quiet and amicable dinner with Linda and Claudia across the street at Baba Louie’s.

It was our last real conversion, because “Mussmann” (as Linda often refers to herself, theactrically, in the third person) broke that simple promise, to restore balance and good faith to the process. Rather than embracing a forward-looking vision that would "sunset" the decades of conflict at the Waterfront, she acted to ensure further strife—and to keep herself at center stage.

Her actions since then have been wholly protective of Holcim, the Swiss-owned company which is the sole the cause of this environmental justice problem. She is trying to use the people of downtown Hudson as human shields to cover up her own complicity. The cynicism of such grandstanding is stark indeed.

Get the trucks off Columbia and the Waterfront has been the unified message of thousands of commenters from Allen to State Street for five years now. The Mussmann Plan has stood in the way of that happening. To those who have followed this issue carefully, it looks an awful lot like “Mussmann” doesn't want such a resolution—one which would satisfy 98% of Hudson residents and businesspeople—unless Holcim first gets its pound of flesh.

One last small suggestion for Linda: The next time the Bread & Puppet folks are invited to perform at TSL, please be sure to inform them of your newly-adopted belief that the natural world must be sacrificed to human greed, with no other options either within or outside that constricted, pro-corporate box. The Vermonters will surely be interested in the false choices you have been presenting to the public locally, while keeping up the pretense of red-diaper radicalism at the old Columbia Street bakery.

May 26, 2011

Keeler, Koweek likely Dem nominees

The County Democrats are caucusing right now at Space 360 in Hudson. Advance word is that Mark Portin of Ghent withdrew his name from consideration for D.A. after failing to secure anticipated support from the Conservative Party, and citing a lack of time for an intense campaign. That leaves former D.A. Gene Keeler as the likely Democratic nominee, running against Paul Czajka. Meanwhile, the Dems are also expected to nominate Richard Koweek for the judge position vacated by Czajka, to run against outgoing D.A. Beth Cozzolino.

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May 6, 2011

Blasts from the past / Back to the future

Lately it seems like someone turned the clock back 20 years around here:

1) Sighted: Former Columbia-Hudson Partnership doyenne Bernadina Torrey having lunch at Baba Louie's in Hudson with her new beau, former Hudson River Bank prexy Carl Florio; Bernadina says they're in Saratoga County now.

2) Encountered: Former king of Arthur's Court—the rowdy bar which was in the building now owned by Marina Abramovic—Michael "Six Pack" Sandagato tying on on at the new Wunderbar, and blurting out that "I'll soon be the new chair of the Hudson Republican Committee." Sandagato plead guilty to a criminal mischief charge after Independent reporter Jill Hazelton's car was firebombed. Hazelton at the time was reporting on allegations of corruption in the Hudson Police Department.

3) Running: The D.A. who pursued then-HPD chief Jimmy Dolan? Paul Czajka, who just announced his resignation from the bench to run again for... D.A. Rumor is that current D.A. Beth Cozzolino is leaning toward a GOP primary against Czajka, rather than "settling" for a judgeship.

4) Hamstrung: Meanwhile, former D.A. Gene Keeler's intention to run as a Democrat against Cozzolino (against whom he's steadily kept up a drumbeat of scrutiny) or Czajka is being hampered by Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera's desire to have the Democrats instead nominate a conservative Republican, Mark Portin of Ghent. Portin was pushed forward by Scalera to fill out the remainder of Bill Cranna's term on the Hudson bench, and is said to be dating City Attorney (and Linda Mussmann amanuensis) Cheryl Roberts.

5) Mulling: Both respected City Court Judge Richard Koweek and sharpshooting defense attorney Richard Mott are contemplating runs for Czajka's vacated seat.

6) Resurfacing: Another former HPD chief who resigned under a cloud, Glenn Martin, apparently wants to run for 3rd Ward Supervisor against Ellen Thurston. (Martin’s wife Bev, a Scalera-Dolan loyalist in the 1990s, was an alderman in the ward for several terms.) The chief's departure was hastened by videotape evidence and payroll records gathered during an internal investigation that Martin had billed the Department for time spent at a "love nest" with a mistress just upstreet from the station.

7) Promising: An effort is afoot again, with USDA interest, to found a Hudson co-op food market, something which was tried but ultimately failed in the last decade. The time may finally now be ripe, pun intended.

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March 22, 2011

Breaking

This site is reliably told that the Hudson Democratic Committee has endorsed independent Nick Haddad for Mayor and Democrat Sarah Sterling for Council President. More to follow.

January 14, 2010

Compare & Contrast

Carole Osterink of ccScoop delivers a finely-detailed (yet eminently-readable) blow-by-blow account of yesterday's lively court proceedings at the Hudson Elks Club. The day culminated in a stunning Democratic victory over the Republican voter-disenfranchisement effort, which has implications far beyond the borders of tiny Taghkanic.

Meanwhile, the Register-Star publishes a much more subdued account which sands down some of the rougher edges, and tends to shield the County GOP from wider exposure of the day's more embarrassing twists and turns.

Reading both allows you not just to draw your own inferences about these events, but about the nature of local news coverage.

For example: One can deduce from ccScoop's coverage that the very first Election Law interpretation that newly-minted GOP Commissioner Jason Nastke was called on to make was overturned by Judge Nichols within an hour; whereas Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin made the correct call. (Note: Nichols is a Republican.) The Register discloses none of the drama over this aspect of the ballot dispute, while dwelling at some length on the GOP's rejected claims about individuals' residency.