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119 entries categorized "Politics | Columbia County"

June 28, 2012

Primary turnout in Columbia County

As first reported here, voter turnout for Tuesday’s Democratic Congressional primary contest between Julian Schreibman and Joel Tyner was dismal. Fewer than 1 in 10 registered Democrats bothered to participate in the new 11-county 19th District.

That sub-10% figure also applied to Democrats here in Columbia County. Below is a town-by-town chart of how each municipality in the County did, turnout-wise, correlating Board of Elections tallies and voter registration data obtained last March:

Remarkably, County Democratic Chair Cyndy Hall characterized these numbers as a “tremendous victory” for her party committee... If 9 out of 10 voters staying home is a tremendous victory, one wonders what a tremendous failure would look like.

UPDATE: Primaries 0f course tend to attract fewer voters than general elections. However, as a point of reference showing how poor Tuesday’s turnout was: More than 550 Democrats voted in the 2011 primary between Nick Haddad and Linda Mussmann; but this week, fewer than 150 voters cast ballots in Hudson.

June 27, 2012

Congressional election analysis: Republican wins Democratic primary

The candidate who can take the most encouragement from the results of Tuesday’s Democratic primary was not even on the ballot.

Rep. Chris Gibson (R-Kinderhook) is looking like the only real winner of the 19th Congressional District contest, to the extent that more than 9 out of 10 Democrats showed no interest in participating in the widely-publicized vote.

In a district of nearly 150,000 registered Democrats, barely 10,000 voted. That’s a turnout of only 7%.

93% stayed home. But this did not stop Democrats such as Columbia County Chair Cyndy Hall* from spinning the dismal day as a “tremendous” ratification of the party commitee. She can at least feel marginally better than the Democratic commitees in Dutchess and Otsego counties, where party endorsements were repudiated by some 60% of Dem voters.

Across 11 counties, Schreibman’s average margin of victory against a grievously underfunded opponent was about 160 per county, with a sizeable part of his cushion coming from his home county of Ulster. In November, he will face Republican opponent who currently has roughly four times the funds in hand (see below).

Despite blanketing the district with paper and vastly outspending his opponent, nominal winner Julian Schreibman garnered only about 6,000 votes to Tyner’s 4,000. In the fall against Gibson, he now will need to find some better way to energize the other 140,000 Democrats who did not care enough to vote in the primary, and plainly were not motivated by arms-length appeals such as mass-mailers and emails.

Schreibman also faces the daunting task of winning back the progressive base of his own party. What ought to have been a friendly “let the best man win” primary that left the nominee stronger has greatly dampened enthusiasm among Democrats, as evidenced both by Tyner’s surprisingly strong showing and the low overall turnout.

In garnering 41.2% of the vote, Tyner might also take solace from the fact that he spent only about $4 per vote earned. Schreibman (not counting a flurry of late expenditures yet to be reported) spent more like $16 per vote.

Tyner earned the support of more than 2 out of 5 Democrats despite that 4-to-1 spending deficit, despite hostility from his own party’s commitees, despite being mocked by much of the press right up to primary day, despite his opponent being endorsed by the popular Maurice Hinchey, and despite enduring what increasingly sounds like a spurious last-minute campaign finance charge from within his own campaign.

At that rate of spending, Schreibman would need to spend about $1,600,000 in November to have a chance of beating Gibson. Schreibman, according to FEC disclosure reports, had about $250,000 on hand ten days before the primary. Gibson had over $1,000,000.

* It’s a good thing, meawhile, that my old pal Cyndy taught arts rather than math in the local schools, as she seems to think a 2.2-to-1 ratio is “almost 3-1.” Even most high school students learn that you round down under .5, not up.

June 21, 2012

T-U on Schreibman’s outside cash

Hudson Democratic operative Victor Mendolia threw a tantrum yesterday, when ordinary investigative journalism was applied here to one of his nominees. (Just because he may choose to be blindly partisan doesn't mean that thoughtful Democrats have to fall in line, too.)

And as it happens, The Albany Times-Union today is publishing its own report today on Julian Schreibman's campaign finances. Lo and behold, the paper reaches the same conclusion as I did yesterday in my own post on the topic: namely, that the Ulster County Democrat is relying heavily on New York City and out-of-State donors. This fact will surely be exploited by his GOP opponent, Chris Gibson, if Schreibman wins the primary but doesn't start raising some grassroots cash, and if the party establishment thought this would be overlooked by either Republicans or the press, they'd have to be even less politically astute than many already thought.

Meanwhile, friends in Brooklyn and Connecticut with no connections to the area, but who like me overlapped with Schreibman at Yale in the same residential college, report getting fundraising calls from his campaign at home. (Neither of us have any recollection of Schreibman from our dorm; but for all I know, I served Julian keg beer when he was a freshman and I was a senior.)

As also noted yesterday, but overlooked by Mendolia in his haste to object, I'll be doing a similar report on Gibson's finances in the near future... Gibson appears to have many more local donors, while also raking in a lot more PAC funding. He has roughly four times the cash on hand that Schreibman does.

June 19, 2012

Tyner has earned his place in Valley politics

Pete Seeger endorsing Joel Tyner for Congress

Links:
Joel Tyner campaign
Julian Schreibman campaign

It can be big mistake to underestimate Joel Tyner. Just ask my old friend Ed.

Back in 2003, Edward J. Haas was the incumbent Dutchess County Legislator for Rhinebeck and Clinton. Ed was challenged that year by some left-leaning activist known for his Woody Allen glasses and fistfuls of flyers. An attorney and Republican with strong land use planning credentials, Ed shrugged off his 40-year-old opponent as a non-starter: the type of electoral cannon fodder which Democrats in this area often put up as candidates when they think they can’t win and can’t find any other patsy to run.

This same opponent had run unsuccessfully five times before for various offices, including the State Senate and Assembly. So Ed didn’t think it worth even dignifying his challenger’s seemingly quixotic campaign with his attention—refusing, for instance, to debate Tyner.

But when the results were tallied up, the incumbent was stunned. Ed lost, 1,405 votes to Joel Tyner’s 1,450.

Tyner had won the old-fashioned way. He went door-to-door, organized volunteers to phonebank, spoke on public access TV and low-power radio stations, peppered the papers with letters and stood on street corners, always leafletting. He had accomplished the seemingly impossible through sheer energy and tenacity. He also won by speaking out forcefully on issues which some Dems had shied away from in this GOP stronghold, such as the War in Iraq and public health insurance.

Old-guard Democrats and Republicans alike in Dutchess continued to scoff: Tyner would be a one-term flash-in-the-pan in the Legislature. Yet since then, Joel has gotten himself re-elected four more times.

With his dogged and unorthodox style, Joel Tyner has carved out a place for himself in the Hudson Valley political landscape: the rare politician who gets elected by staying true to his values, by motivating supporters and often literally wearing out his own shoe leather. On issues from agriculture to education (Joel’s also a substitute teacher) to fracking to homelessness to universal health care, Tyner has won over doubters and fired up his fans by never giving up his principles or not being afraid to voice his beliefs.

He has earned the people’s respect, though interestingly not that of some do-nothings on the area’s Democratic committees. The Democratic Party in these parts spends a lot of its time fretting about what we shouldn’t say and how to avoid looking bad and how to avoid having to do too much work. That’s just not Joel’s style, and his positive counterexample makes a lot of committeemen and chairs angry. After all, his determination reminds them too much of their own lack of follow-through and gumption.

It thus is not surprising now to see scorn heaped upon Joel Tyner by some institutional Democrats in the region, despite endorsements of Joel’s current Congressional run by respected voices such as Pete Seeger. A Democratic primary is just one week away on June 26th against first-time candidate Julian Schreibman—like Haas, a lawyer. Initially, Schreibman and his surrogates took the Haas approach, simply ignoring Tyner’s efforts to differentiate their positions on issues such as hydrofracking an universal health care. But as Tyner started to show some traction, they have turned instead to third-party attacks.

Now, I probably never would have said a peep about this election. Schreibman and I overlapped at Yale, and I signed his nominating petition when it was thrust in front of me by some panting party operative. (I tend to support anyone’s right to get on the ballot, in this State which makes that process so unnecessarily hard.) I planned to vote in November for whichever Democratic won the June 25th primary. But the offensive, illogical, silly and most of all demeaning attacks on Joel Tyner require a response. And they reflect poorly on both the Schreibman campaign and the deeply-compromised Democratic establishment of our region.

At home with Julian Schreibman

Improbably touting Schreibman’s resumé as a lawyer for the C.I.A. (the one in Langley, not Poughkeepsie) and celebrating campaign cash as a principal reason to support him, the liberal blog Blue In Greene assailed Tyner on May 15th as “bumptious” for having the temerity to run. Normally, party functionaries expect the guy who’s never run for public office before to defer to the guy who has been elected five times locally. But here, that rule has been reversed.

Meanwhile, Chatham Democratic Chair Ernie Reis took to the pages of the Register-Star to explain why he had decided not to back Tyner... reasons mostly concerning Tyner’s looks and demeanor. Reis objected to what he called Tyner’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” image and was incensed that Joel—gasp!—wrote notes on his folder. (I guess Joel should have brought a legal pad instead.)

Like BIG and certain Chatham Dems, other Schreibman partisans have begun mouthing the words to the oldest and lamest whispering campaign in local politics: Tyner can’t win. They never really explain why they think Schreibman has a better chance against Gibson, except that he brings a lot of outside money to the table, has the backing of the national Democratic fundraising machine, has an Ivy League degree, and he’s a lawyer. (Money and status—that’s what we Democrats stand for, right?) Still, it’s always interesting how Committee folks who have routinely failed to win elections are the first to tar others as unelectable.

Looking down their noses at Tyner’s fundraising efforts is not something that groups like the Columbia County Democratic Committee should do, lest someone point out that at the start of this year the CCDC had all of about $2,000 to its name. That works out to about $100 per town. Paradoxically, that tends to make committeemen more hostile to Tyner: if they nominate a candidate who can self-fund or bring in outside donors, that candidate will use robocalls and mass-mailings in place of actual grassroots organizing and volunteerism by real, live people who live in the district. It relieves the Committee of the obligation to work hard.

Anyway, the case for Schreibman is essentially the same issue-free rationale which led Democrats to eagerly endorse Scott Murphy for Congress several years ago: He had a lot of money and a Harvard degree. He bought ties at Brooks Brothers, and he was a businessman. The Republicans, some Dems calculated, won’t be able to tar us as anti-business anymore! Just nominate a businessman, and insto-presto, decades of assumptions will vanish!

Well, Murphy just barely squeaked by a singularly atrocious opponent (Jim Tedisco) in a special election, with help from a lot of us at the grassroots who held our noses for him despite our many misgivings. After his narrow victory, Murphy promptly joined the conservative Blue Dog bloc in D.C., and pandered to the right on issues like health care reform. Despite his “centrist” stances and despite spending nearly $1.5 million on his re-election, Murphy was knocked out of office after less than one term when he had to face a tough adversary, Chris Gibson.

And as far as electability, the Schreibman camp would appear to be standing on quicksand when it assails Tyner on these grounds. As The Kingston Daily Freeman reported about yesterday’s lone debate (held in private, apparently at Schreibman’s insistence) “Schreibman was chairman of the Ulster County Democratic Party when county Democrats lost their majority in the Legislature in 2009; meanwhile, Tyner said he ‘survived the Tea Party onslaught in 2009.’”

Now, all of this is just background to what ought to matter most to us as voters: the issues.

Primaries are the lone opportunity for rank-and-file voters to express their true values at the ballot box, rather than engaging in our national ritual of voting for the lesser of the two major party nominees. Primaries are when one’s vote can help put a nominee on the ballot who actually reflects one’s politics. On the issues, one has no doubts about where Joel Tyner stands; with Schreibman, there is too much parsing and triangulating and calculating going on.

The issue which has made the most noise in this primary campaign is fracking. Tyner has repeatedly called for a complete ban on fracking, arguing cogently that there is no safe way to do it and no regulatory regime that would fully protect our water from rapacious gas industry greedos. Tyner’s endorsements include the celebrated director of Gasland, and respected environmental educator and activist Manna Jo Green.

Supporters of Schreibman have responded that in private conversations, their man is just as anti-fracking as Tyner. But his public statements don’t lend much trust to that claim.

In an interview with Alan Chartock on WAMC Public Radio, Schreibman hemmed and hedged on the topic, speaking in a roundabout way about having “concerns” and wanting to ensure that it’s “done safely.” Schreibman also stated that there was not that much “space” between his position and President Obama’s. (Obama has taken a sort of “trust, but verify” approach to the industry, one which dovetails with Governor Cuomo and DEC Commissioner Martens’ dangerous belief that fracking just needs to be better-regulated.) Tyner’s underdog campaign pounced on that statement, as ought to be expected, but Schreibman’s surrogates have been quick to scream that it’s unfair or that he’s been taken out of context.

Having heard that interview in full, and also followed the candidates’ public pronouncements on the topic, this listener thinks the critique of Schreibman on fracking is warranted. When interviewed by The Albany Times-Union, the paper pointedly noted that Schreibman “did not bring up the issue” himself. When pressed, he described the issue as if it were being decided in some far-off vacuum, and made the assumption that some way could be found to eliminate risks: “It's a decision that will be made one way or another, and my role in this is to ensure if this is done, it's done safely.”

That’s what my pal Jim (James Howard) Kunstler calls Jiminy Cricket thinking—the idea that if we just wish upon an star and trust in good ol’ American know-how, we’ll find some technocratic solution to intractable problems. I don’t buy it from Schreibman. (I will buy Jim’s new book.)

One gets a firm sense of a candidate who wants to have it both ways. Schreibman is privately reassuring rank-and-file Democrats that he’s in step with their concerns, while avoiding public statements that might be turned into campaign commercials against him. He’s making tepid statements about fracking “concerns” while ducking the wrath of industry interests. Most of all, he’s allowing himself wiggle room later if he wants to join some ill-advised “compromise” on the topic. On fracking, few well-informed environmentalists if any think this is an issue with a middle ground. And this Democratic voter takes a very dim view of politicians who use weasel words to talk around issues.

Many of us progressive Democrats also have questions about Schreibman’s C.I.A. pedigree, because we have a major issue with the continued drift of the Executive Branch under Obama away from, rather than back toward, protection of civil liberties.

Obama has maintained and even extended many of former President Bush’s most egregious policies. Unilateral killings by drones have risen fivefold or more under Obama, with “civilian casualties” artificially undercounted by treating any post-pubescent male who happens to get caught in the crossfire as an assumed terrorist. Whistleblowers who attempt to reign in government malfeasance and other corruption have fared even worse under Obama than Bush. Media outlets like Wikileaks and other information privacy advocates have been targeted for searches, seizures, and prosecution. (All of this is especially dismaying from a President who we counted on, as a Constitutional scholar, to right the wrongs of the Bush era.)

People accused of “national security” crimes have fewer opportunities than ever to face their accusers and the purported evidence against them before a neutral judge. This ever-expanding and ever-more-secretive security state is all too reminiscent of Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, only it’s not fiction. And of course, agencies like the C.I.A. and N.S.A. are right at the heart of that darkness.

So a natural question is: Where does Schreibman stand on these civil liberty issues? How does he feel about the Patriot Act, or data-mining initiatives like Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness (which was nominally discontinued by Congress, but lives on in other forms)? Would he stand up to telecoms and his former employer if they are spying on Americans? Some critics have focused on what Schreibman did at the C.I.A. when he was there. But this voter is far more interested in what Schreibman would do if elected—whether he would be a Russ Feingold, or just another Murphy/Gillibrand/Schumer clone who follows the industry money and caves into fear tactics about terrorism on issues like telecom immunity. One finds no answers at his website, just some boasts that he helped prosecute some terrorists.

Joel Tyner can be counted on to say what he means, and to keep his promises when he votes. Superficial politicos can diss his style, but Joel’s real style is integrity. Win or lose in the primary, he deserves more respect as a five-time elected official and grassroots politician than he’s getting from some Democratic mouthpieces, who mainly have hurt their man Schreibman by attacking a true mensch like Joel.

June 15, 2012

Behind the scenes with Dave & Don

For home owners, there a few things more stressful than dealing with an incorrect property tax assessment. The process can feel intimidating—trying to understand the law, gathering data and “comparables,” meeting with a local assessor, “grieving” before the Board of Assessment Review—because those in power hold so much sway over one’s financial future.

In our region, BARs are known often to give grievers token reductions (so they don’t feel they went away empty-handed) while protecting the Assessor’s underlying position overall. Meanwhile, citizens often suspect that their elected officials may have some kind of special “in” when it comes to the whole assessment process.

Recently, I spent several weeks quizzing City of Hudson officials and their attorney Cheryl Roberts over a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for documents related to a citywide assessment performed by GAR Associates, as part of a $170,000 contract. That contract was awarded by the Hudson Common Council and monitored by its President, Donald Moore. The documents eventually coughed up by the City show that Moore had extensive interactions with GAR, some in person and some via email.

In emails from the Fall of 2011, Moore can be seen going back and forth with GAR’s David Barnett about their ongoing work for the City—peppering him with questions about parcel counts, notifications, taxpayers conferences with GAR. All of these questions were seemingly relevant to the public task at hand.

Moore then addresses an email blast sent by local resident and politician Ellen Thurston, in which she urged constituents to double-check GAR’s new measurements and stats for their houses, since they had bungled hers badly. On September 16th, Moore addressed a host of other assessment topics in an email message before coming around to Thurston’s email:

I wish Alderman and soon to be County Supervisor Ellen Thurston hadn’t gone broadcast yesterday but she did. But I wish even more that your appraiser had not have [sic] missed her house completely.

More remarkably, the Council President then veers off into discussing his own property with the City’s assessment consultant:

Further, I need to measure my house. I am not sure you got my dimensions correctly. But I will get back to you today on that.

Barnett replies with some boilerplate instructions on how his firm calculates “dimensions and square footage” using each house’s external dimensions. If Moore indeed “got back to” Barnett about the topic as he promises above, it must have been by phone or in person, because that does not appear in the emails.

Now, Moore here does not ask explicitly in writing for any property tax reduction. And like every taxpayer, he has every right to check that GAR had his particulars correct.

But the process for doing so should be the same one that all “ordinary” taxpayers have to go through—not via direct messages within the context of managing a $170,000 contract. An implied reminder from the Common Council President to the City’s consultant about his own status as private property owner, overtly raising a potential concern about the stats which undergird his own home’s assessment, has no place in official communications.

This at minimum raises an appearance of impropriety, whether legal or not. In governmental ethics, appearances count because they can undermine public trust in the entire process.

Moore could point out that in the end his own tentative assessment for 2012 went up modestly, from $212,300 to $238,000, a 12% increase. But a look at all the 14 properties listed on the same block as Moore which are in the same class (210 Residential, meaning a single family) shows that the overall increase there was higher (18%) as was the average (20%). Moore’s house is tied for the 3rd lowest out of those 14 houses.

Two similar homes on the block were raised 49% each, and another was bumped up a whopping 80%, making 12% look very reasonable by comparison.

More nuggets sifted from the FOIL request will be forthcoming here over the next week or so.

May 20, 2012

Politics make lame bedfellows

A few political tidbits from around the area:

• A persistent whisper has been circulating in Hudson that a Democratic Alderman with a large weighted vote on the Common Council may be moving to Greenport, and if so would have to relinquish his seat. Given the current composition of the Council, however, it seems unlikely that a more truly democratically-minded replacement would be chosen to fill out the remainder of that term.

• City Attorney Cheryl Roberts circulated an email last week to County Democrats indicating her interest in running for State Assembly in the reconfigured 107th District, and claiming backing by the Columbia County Democratic Committee’s two top officials. Roberts is known locally for her instrumental role in making sure mining and trucking remained dominant at the Hudson Waterfront, and thwarting calls for a more progressive outcome.

To “accomplish” this, Roberts needed to find ways to ignore literally thousands of public comments calling for a more forward-looking plan. She also refused to turn over public documents sought via Freedom of Information Law requests, on privacy grounds that were proved spurious when New York State furnished the same documents without hesitation.

(Assisting with Roberts’ nearly six-year campaign of shunning the public and erasing contrary information was Council President Don Moore, a political ally of Columbia County Democratic Committee 1st vice chair Victor Mendolia. Moore would not allow any comments from a standing-room-only crowd at the culminating vote that pushed the Roberts plan ahead, and at one point even tried to prevent the public from seeing the draft plan at all.)

Roberts’s email not only claims to have secured a large number of pledges (how many of them are from partners in the Republican-dominated lawfirm she joined in the past year, Rapport Meyers?), but also implies backing fom CCDC chair Cyndy Hall and Mendolia. Roberts gushes that “Cyndy, Victor and I met with the state Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee yesterday and they were very impressed” with her fundraising prowess.

An email to Cyndy Hall on Friday inquiring about her position on the matter has not been returned at this time. On Sunday, Victor Mendolia waved sheepishly to me on the street; but when asked forthrightly to explain why he would support Cheryl Roberts for Assembly, Mendolia abruptly turned tail without answering, and hurried off to have lunch with 4th Ward Supervisor Bill Hughes, Jr.

• On the 20th Congressional front, the CCDC has also recently passed over long-serving Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner in favor of an attorney whose resumé includes a stint at the Central Intelligence Agency and prosecuting drug traffickers, Julian Schreibman.

Schreibman apparently was a couple of years behind me at Yale, so I ought to be predisposed to his candidacy... But Tyner has earned his stripes as a truly progressive Democrat of genuine integrity. In doing so, he apparently has earned the enmity of the region’s Democratic establishment, who seem to resent Tyner’s ability to get elected and re-elected in his district—despite party committeemen constantly saying he’s unelectable.

He’s done that by relentlessly pushing liberal issues, in spite of overcautious establishment warnings to “go slow,” “save your powder,” “don’t appear too radical,” etc. Tyner also communicates constantly with his constituents, and has worn out his own shoe leather attending meetings and going door to door. He deserves better than the “he can’t win” derision of party officials with much weaker electoral track records than Joel Tyner.

January 18, 2012

Kirsten vs. The Internet

The Albany Times-Union reports that appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (formerly of Greenport) is siding with Hollywood and music industry lobby groups over, well, pretty much everyone else when it comes to internet censorship. The PIPA and SOPA bills in Congress have inspired numerous sites (from Wikipedia to Boing Boing to Reddit) to go "dark" for the day. More than a passive supporter, Gillibrand actually co-sponsored PIPA in the Senate.

As if to illustrate what such censorship might be like, a reader reports that comments about these bills were being erased from Gillibrand's Facebook page, though now it appears they are coming too fast and furious for monitors to keep up with.

Public outcry has already caused some initial supporters, such as hosting provider Go Daddy, to withdraw support from these measures (which would help rich entertainment businesses eke out a modest improvement in profit, at the expense of free speech). A former attorney for Big Tobacco, Gillibrand has a history of changing her noxious positions if there is enough pressure: she formerly opposed gay marriage, and held anti-immigrant positions such as making English the "official" U.S. language.

But such pressure has rarely come from Hudson Valley Democrats, who have tended to value their personal access to a "local" politician over their own political principles. Will Columbia County Dems hold Kirsten's feet to the fire on this huge issue?

At this link Google has an action page for speaking out to Congress.

January 6, 2012

Weekend roundup: Gossips, Lawyers, Food

Carole Osterink is back on the scent of Hudson news at The Gossips of Rivertown after a month-long medical hiatus.

Will Pflaum has published a potentially explosive report at Sunshine on the Hudson, in which he alleges fraudulent billing by a County and municipal attorney, as well as a pattern of sketchy billing by a host of other County legal advisors... (For more on the role of small-town attorneys in local politics, see my piece from last summer on Legislation By Lawyer.)

Following on last year’s opening of Grazin’ in Hudson, another farm-to-table restaurant is set to open in Columbia County in 2012—the Crossroads Food Shop in Hillsdale. (Check out this 1998 New York Times review of what chef David Wurth managed with the lowly pumpkin at Savoy, a 1990s Soho favorite.) You can sign up to get an announcement of the top-secret opening date here.

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December 29, 2011

Hudson election post-mortem (Part I)

With Sherlock Holmes back in movie theaters and 2011 winding down, it seems appropriate to apply some ratiocination (as opposed to rationalization) to the November election results in Hudson. What really happened?

In the wake of any election, people naturally will float theories to answer the questions: Why did Candidate Dick win? Why did Candidate Jane lose? And, what “message” were the voters sending? But it’s rare for such theories to get tethered to any verifiable facts. Instead, these tend only to reflect the victors’ desire to project a mastery of politics (that everything happened according to their master plan) and the losers’ need to deflect blame.

This two-part article will aim to avoid both of those predictable postures by first reviewing the limited—but telling—data available, discussing a few of the theories which have been floated, and then drawing only those conclusions which can be reasonably derived from the facts.

First, then, below are 10 key data points worth pondering:

Less than half of those eligible—46.8%, to be precise—cast votes for Mayor. 1,700 did show up and assert their preference. But nearly 2,000 others did not.

As the chart above shows, that turnout was unusually, even historically, low. I cannot find evidence of a lighter turnout for any contested Mayoral race in Hudson any time in the past generation, and certainly not in the past decade.

This turnout crash can’t be attributed to a loss in registered voters, as the number eligible to vote has remained pretty constant during the period considered. (For example, the number registered to vote in Hudson in 2002 was 3,697; today it’s 3,687.)

50 people showed up at the polls, yet did not vote for either Mayoral candidate.

Hallenbeck’s margin of victory was 50 votes.

Turnout was especially low in the 2nd Ward, dropping from a high of 483 in 2007 to just 290 in 2011. That’s almost 200 “missing” voters, four times the margin of victory.

Turnout hovered around 50% in most of the City, except for the 2nd and 4th Wards, which were way down at 39% and 42%, respectively. (And without the high level of participation via absentee ballots by residents of the Firemen’s home, the 4th Ward’s showing might have been even worse.)

There was only a small percentage difference (52% vs. 49.5%) in turnout among Republicans vs. Democrats. But since there are over three times as many Dems as GOP members in Hudson, that small percentage difference got magnified in terms of actual votes cast, with the former in effect losing 50 more potential supporters.

Turnout likewise wasunusually light among members of the Bangaladeshi community. Historically, these recently-minted registrants have participated at impressive rates well over 90%, enjoying their newfound citizenship. But this time around, their turnout was more like 50%.

Hallenbeck won a single suburban district—5-2, which is the northernmost part of town, nestled among the “boulevards” of Greenport—by 112 votes, more than double his margin of victory. In other words, the result would have been reversed if not for that district, which in recent years has felt increasingly alienated and distant from Hudson’s downtown.

In Part II tomorrow, I’ll move from these hard data to a few ratiocinated conclusions.

November 30, 2011

Crime family

This may look like a group photo of extras from the set of The Untouchables. But it’s actually the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, 1926-1927.

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November 12, 2011

Update on absentees

According to data obtained via Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from the Columbia County Board of Elections, as of Thursday afternoon:

183 voters had returned absentee ballots;
65 others had not (yet) returned their ballots;
1 voter cast an “affidavit” ballot on Election Day.

None of these have been opened yet. Of those voters who have returned their absentee ballot:

102 are Democrats;
32 are Republicans;
32 are “independents” not affiliated with any party.
12 are Independence Party members;
3 are Conservatives;
1 is a Working Families Party member; and
1 is a Green.

That said, party affiliation sometimes isn’t a very reliable predictor of how voters may lean in local elections. In addition:

20 of these ballots were picked up and delivered to voters by Linda Mussmann, who was circulating a sample ballot for Hallenbeck on Election Day; and
4 ballots were “carried” by former Democratic alderman Lyle Shook, also believed to be a Hallenbeck supporter.

Considering that ballots had to be postmarked by Monday, and the U.S. mails generally arrive within 1-3 days even across the continental U.S., it doesn’t seem likely that very many more (if any) ballots will be received. The BOE does, however, have to wait 10 days, especially to allow any overseas military ballots to come in.

Since the Board was closed today for Veterans Day, no Friday update was available. This site has also been unable (due to a fight instigated by Republicans over where to store the ballots) to verify the Board’s hand-written machine tallies which indicate a slim 27-vote lead for Bill Hallenbeck over Nick Haddad for Mayor. Presumably on Monday, the actual printouts from the electronic vote scanners will be available for inspection. And the Columbia County Board, mainly thanks to Virginia Martin, has a practice of also hand-counting all machine-counted votes, a laborious process but one essential to protecting the integrity of all of our votes.

The Board is expected to begin processing absentee ballots on Friday the 18th, but it is not certain whether they’ll handle towns alphabetically, or do the non-controversial ones first, or address the candidates who are still in suspense first (as in Hudson and Taghkanic). If they don’t get to those towns on the 18th, the wait could extend into the following week.

Plus there is a potential for court challenges, conceivably meaning that some places might not know the identity of their new Mayor or Town Board members until WinterWalk, or later.

November 4, 2011

’Tis the season...

... for really trashy letters to the editor. (Just four more days to Election Day, then the signs and the posturing can die down.) For a more thoughtful take than anything you’ll find in the papers, try attorney David Seth Michaels’ non-partisan explanation of what’s at stake in Countywide races.