About that endorsement

The Gossips of Rivertown reports that faux-Democrat Rick Scalera—who has previously been a member of virtually every other major party—has endorsed Republican mayoral candidate Bill Hallenbeck in the 2011 cycle. This news should come as a surprise only to Hudson political neophytes, and to those with a deep-seated Panglossian need to believe in the redeemability of scoundrels.

Scalera has endorsed mayoral candidates before, with weak results. In both 1999 and 2005, Scalera attempted to anoint a successor. The recipient of his 1999endorsement, Cappy Pierro, lost. His 2005 choice, Dan Grandinetti, also lost. (In both years, I was “accused” of being their opponents’ “campaign manager.”)

Scalera had decided not to run for Mayor in each of those two cycles. Controversy dogged him, and he probably calculated he would lose a Citywide race. So in ’99 Scalera tried instead for 5th Ward Supervisor, losing badly to Kathy Nabozny, by a whopping 507-310 on the machine.

Then in 2005, Scalera again lost a non-Citywide race, this time in a primary for 5th Ward committeemen to none other than Peter Jung.

Yet now Scalera is being allowed by all parties to run unopposed for Supervisor in the 5th Ward. People with little historical memory have wrongly assumed he was unbeatable there. Per above, both times he ran for office in his home ward, the 5th, Scalera lost.

(The 5th Ward has changed more dramatically than any of Hudson’s wards. The total number of voters has dipped about 3% since 1999, but the big change there is in party affiliation. Democratic registration has jumped +60%, from 321 voters to 515 voters, while Republicans enrollment has dipped -24%, down to 263 from 344.)

Some City and County Democratic insiders have been twisting themselves into political pretzels to convince themselves that Rick Scalera, once he sails into a Supervisor seat unopposed, should become the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors. Their thinking is that any Democrat is better than a Republican—even if that Democrat is a former Conservative who's well to the right of Mitt Romney. In these mental gymnastic exercises paper-thin party affiliation trumps actual ideology or policy.

But now that Scalera has endorsed a Republican for mayor, over the Dem nominee, how long can the Yellow Dog Dems maintain that illusion? Meanwhile, Hallenbeck’s opponent, Nick Haddad, has been endorsed by prominent City Democrats such as City Treasurer Eileen Halloran and 4th Ward Supervisor William Hughes. Whether such endorsements cancel each other out, or if voters pay much attention to those endorsements, will of course be seen in November.