Assembly candidate Cheryl Roberts has finally conceded the 107th State Assembly race to Steve McLaughin, according to the Troy Record. Roberts’ grudging concession comes a week after McLaughlin declared victory on election night.
In the Record article, a McLaughlin campaign spokesman barely conceals his annoyance with Roberts’ lack of grace in defeat:
“It was very clear on election night that Assemblyman McLaughlin won re-election and was given the honor to serve another term in the state assembly... There was certainly no need to drag this out an additional six days when the obvious had already been stated when Steve had won by a margin far exceeding any need for a recount.”
Roberts had previously insisted that all absentee ballots be counted before she acknowledge the result, though numbers gathered from various Boards of Elections by this site a week ago made it obvious that the challenger had virtually no chance to catch up. The challenger would have had to garner almost 4 out of every 5 absentee ballot filed, even though 3 out of 4 of those ballots came from Rensselaer County, where McLaughlin won handily on the machine.
Roberts was cited for circulating dishonest literature against McLaughlin by the League of Women voters’ non-partisan Fair Campaign Practices organization. She campaigned as an environmental champion, despite having advocated one-sidedly for the interests of Swiss industrial polluter Holcim and notorious Connecticut construction firm O&G Industries over thousands of citizen concerns about the future of Hudson’s South Bay.
Nevertheless, Columbia County Democratic officials cynically promoted Roberts’ green bona fides using the (now-disproven) rationale that “she can win”—the same reason given for the party’s switch of its allegiance from progressive Congressional candidate Joel Tyner to CIA lawyer Julian Schreibman. Roberts reportedly wasted more than $100,000 in campaign funding from the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, while Schreibman ran through $1 million on his race, not counting expenditures by outside groups.
