“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — UPTON SINCLAIR
“It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest.” — WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
• DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO: This site’s four reports on the Czajka/Keeler race for D.A. (here, here, here and here) has elicited howls of indignation from three main groups, including those who
(A) have either been convicted of crimes or still have charges pending against them, or
(B) have had their law licenses taken away, or
(C) are members of the same hapless Columbia County Democratic Committee which nominated Keeler.
Caught up in ordinary self-interest and tribalism, further amplified by the extraordinary rage over Trump, these disappointed litigants and scandalized partisans thunder that it’s intolerable—really, a mortal sin—for any Democrat to ever support a Republican.
But New York State campaign finance disclosures show that these very same County Dems provided $5,000 in June (see image above) to support its Chatham committee—which is running a registered Republican, Maria Lull for Supervisor on its line.
Lull is running with the cross-endorsement of the Conservative Party, whose members seem to spend most of their time venting about Andrew Cuomo and the Safe Act.
Crossing party lines is apparently not allowed for ordinary citizens, but evidently it’s perfectly fine for Dem insiders.
• VOX POP: Meanwhile, this series has also brought in a wave of unexpected tips and appreciations from readers with no baked-in allegiances to either candidate.
A sample follows below:
- “Another great article,” wrote a Claverack resident after the publication of Part II. “I'm a Dem, but I will be voting for Czajka. He's clearly the most qualified...”
- A former top figure at The Register-Star from 30-40 years ago wrote to say that “Your coverage of the DA race has been superb.” The former newspaperman says he used to merely “consider Gene Keeler a dismissible, perhaps affable, odd ball.” But after reading the series here and also talking it over with old friends, he believes it would be “a terrible loss for Columbia County should Czajka be unseated” by a challenger who is so “obviously unqualified.”
- A longtime local attorney (who also has experience from within the New York judicial system) recalled a 1980s Times-Union profile of Czajka and Keeler from the 1980s which wound up cited in Part III.
• IT’S NOT AN ‘ATTACK’ IF IT’S TRUE: A key charge leveled by the GOP at Keeler has been that his work as public defender was ineffectual or even harmful to his clients’ interest.
Naturally, Keeler has been indignant over these attacks, though also expressing to this site a strange glee over them. The Dem candidate seems to view the robustness of the Republican campaign as a sign they are taking his chances more seriously.
But unlike many of the allegations which Keeler has aimed at Czajka (violating his own “positive campaign” pledges), there does appear to be real evidence for this particular Republican line of attack.
Two seperate readers provided this site with the 2007 letter at right (click to enlarge) from the judges of the New Lebanon Justice Court.
Town Justice Jack Nevers wrote to the County Public Defender’s office that the court was no longer willing to use Keeler’s services as a “conflict defender.”
Nevers states that Keeler “caused this court disruption and unnecessary delay with respect to his handling of a number of conflict cases scheduled.”
“In addition to offending other attorneys,” the court wrote, Keeler’s actions resulted in the delay of “the release of an incarcerated defendant.”
This and other evidence suggests that however much the Democratic candidate likes the ideas of “reform” and justice for the unfairly accused, he has had trouble actually putting those principles into practice.
Another example which the GOP has cited in its campaign literature is the matter of People v. Martin, in which a man to whom Keeler had been assigned as a public defender asked for—and got—a new trial, due to the way Keeler had neglected to represent him.
The GOP flyer citing this case only includes an excerpt. In political campaigns, that kind of thing bears looking into, to make sure the damning quote has not been taken out of context, or selectively edited. But here, a reading of the full case (available here) not only justifies the Republican “attack”; reading the entire text only makes things worse for Keeler.
As the decision by Justin Mikoll states clearly, Keeler had a history with his new client—namely, that he’d previously prosecuted him. But when assigned to be the public defender of his former target, not only did Keeler fail to recuse himself, but proceeded to act against his client’s wishes.
In siding with the accused man wronged by Keeler, the court wrote:
“This record attests amply to defendant's right to substitute counsel. The fact that Keeler had previously prosecuted defendant should have alone, absent the disquieting breakdown of the legal relationship between them, been sufficient to establish a conflict of interest and required a substitution of counsel.”
The court agreed that since “Keeler, who was handling defendant's matter, had prosecuted defendant on another occasion as District Attorney, there existed a conflict detrimental to defendant's interests.” If also found that he “failed to take proper time to prepare his defense,” and disregarded his client’s wishes and instructions. Per the ruling:
- “Keeler tried to induce defendant to plead guilty against his will. Defendant's request for a change of counsel went unanswered.”
- “[D]efendant wrote to County Court again complaining about his counsel's waiver of the preliminary hearing and the failure to seek his release on bail.”
- “[H]is demand for a preliminary hearing through another Public Defender, Arlene Levinson, was waived by Keeler, her superior, against defendant's wishes.”
- “The motion indicated that, although defendant had expressly demanded the right to testify before the Grand Jury, Keeler had not allowed him to do so.
- “Defendant also alleged inadequate representation by his counsel.”
- “Defendant [averred] that Keeler had failed to bring on a review of his bail status for four months despite the fact that County Court had indicated it would entertain a review.”
Keeler partisans protest that it is an “old” case from the late 1980s. But that, too, shows a lack of consistency—because in launching far less verifiable charges against Czajka, the Dems are more than willing to revive allegations from decades earlier.
• MONEY, FOLLOWED: The vast majority of the funds raised by the Keeler campaign have come from a single source—the CCDC, which gave him over $12,000. His disclosure reports show very few contributions from anyone who is not an insider within the County Democratic committee itself.
But where did the usually-impecunious County Dems’ get that 12 grand?
According to State records, the CCDC’s funds for the past year have, in turn, derived mostly from a single, whopping $33,000 donation last year from on-again-off-again Hillsdale resident Jim Chambers, an heir to a multibillion-dollar telecom fortune.
By contrast, a Democratic party picnic that month grossed a grand total of $650.
Apart from his 1%-of-the-1% wealth, the ever-irascible Chambers is best known for a 2017 story which went viral nationally. After Chambers posted a sign banning police officers and servicemen/women from using his Atlanta Crossfit gym, the story was picked up by numerous mainstream news outlets, such as The Washington Post and New York Daily News.
At the time, Chambers told a local TV station that “We’ve had an explicitly stated ‘No Cop’ policy since we opened, and we also don't open membership to active members of the military.”
• MONEY, FOLLOWED, PART DEUX: Another partisan operative who finds it scandalous that this site actually bothered to interview both candidates, then formed its own independent opinion, is CCDC officer and Greenport Democrat Carol Peckham.
Peckham ranted about these reports on a local shovelware site—defending Keeler, without disclosing either her role on party committees backing Keeler, or her own $1,000 donation to his campaign.
Months later, the Committee sent back over $1,800 to a business registered at Peckham’s home address, which State records show was incoporated by her partner Michael Grisham.
When asked why money was flowing in both directions from this household and the Keeler-campaign, the anonymously-moderated Keeler for DA Facebook page says the funds were a reimbursement for production of campaign finance signs.
(Campaign ad idea: “We’re not just Keeler supporters—we’re also Keeler vendors!”)
• FINAL NOTE: Who knows what will happen on Tuesday? Czajka should be a shoe-in, as he has been in past elections. However, a lot of the important history involving these candidates is not known to the general public—voters who either were not here, or were not paying attention to then-current events.
There also is now a large registration gap between Dems and Republicans, with many Democrats falling into the “Blue No Matter Who” category of party line voters. Old-timers refer to such doctrinaire voters as “Yellow Dog Democrats,” whose allegiance to their own party’s nominees is rivaled in stubbornness and irrationality by only the lunacy of right-to-lifers and chemtrail theorists.
It’s on that topic that this reporter would like to conclude with a personal story, and switch here to the first person... because I was once among those who believed with absolute certainly that Paul Czajka was the embodiment of pure evil—a tyrant who must be stopped, even if it required the use of scurrilous methods and completely unsubstantiated charges.
: : : : : :
The backstory here is that for many years, I worked extremely closely with Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Limited. I organized several of her quixotic, failed campaigns for mayor: building get-out-the-vote databases, writing platforms, designing flyers and websites, cajoling others to join and donate to the cause, and constantly writing complaints and FOIL requests to the Board of Elections—since as her campaigns invariably seemed to wind up in court.
I also helped raise substantial funds for TSL, and was one of the only people who could walk straight into her fortress of an office unannounced. I even knew her housecats by name. (Percy was a glutton, but a sweetheart).
I spent countless hours vigorously protecting and justifying Linda to the long lines of people with whom she developed various feuds, conflicts and other beefs. We worked together on volunteer projects, for example teaching children at the Boys & Girls Club to cut and sew their own winter hats. (One of the smaller kids, a hilarious young man who referred to himself in the third person as “The Boss,” referred to Linda as “Little Miss Helpful.”)
Now, as it happens Linda and I shared the same contractor, who as I recall had gone to high school in Germantown with then-judge Paul Czajka. He also had run into all kinds of legal problems, some of which wound up in Czajka’s court.
I believe it was via this contractor that Linda plunged into the weird, murky world of the Fathers’ Rights movement.
TSL started hosting events and panels featuring middle-aged men who were extremely bitter about the outcomes of their family court cases.
I remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable during such sessions. If one took on faith that these men had been wronged, their anger felt justified. (One of them, as it happened, was a recognizable actor who played cameo roles on TV shows like Law & Order.)
Their simmering rage was obvious, barely contained under the surface of their trembling faces and raised voices. Maybe they had been truly wronged. A more neutral observer could easily imagine how, right or wrong, such anger might play out poorly for them in court. But how could we know—when attendees never heard the other side of the story—the side of the women in these relationships, who had gained custody of their kids, and won settlements for child support... from the supposed Republican monster, Judge Czajka.
Though TSL likes to fundraise off its projected image of radical, revolutionary leftism, the tenor of these sessions was more like something you’d expect to hear on Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, or some other right-wing broadcast.
Still, my personal allegiance to Linda silenced those alarm bells, at least for a time.
And that is how I wound up one day, coincidentally having been called that same morning for jury duty, participating in a TSL-organized protest against Paul Czajka outside the County Courthouse.
I imagined that someone needed to do more than just chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Judge Paul Czajka’s got to go.” And I could be that guy! When I went in for jury selection, Czajka at some point asked the assembled room of potential jurors the standard question, of whether there was anyone who for any reason felt they could not serve. Here was my big chance... I stood up—bravely, I told myself—and said that I could not and would not serve, because I did not have confidence in the judge’s ability to be impartial.
Czajka was not perturbed. I recall him shrugging, and saying mildly: “That’s OK.” I was eventually excused.
Years later—and several rivers of water under the bridge—I came to understand that Linda Mussmann was not herself a reliable narrator. I recognized that my blind loyalty to an ally and friend had caused me to not do the usual due diligence and independent research which I tried to apply to all other public issues with which I’d been involved.
I had no actual basis for taking that “brave” stand against Czajka, besides the hearsay of a handful of resentful, irate men... and one woman, who latched onto their rage because it made for good “political theater.” Linda also proved, on other issues, to be more than willing to betray core ideals and undermine the same communities that TSL purports to serve, just to keep herself in the spotlight. Or to get a grant.
One night maybe five years ago, at a Hudson restaurant, I bumped into Czajka. I took the opportunity to apologize for my ridiculous stunt in his court, for which I had had no actual basis in fact. He was gracious in accepting that apology, though he had every right to say, “Screw you, buddy. Get out of my sight.”
And that might have been the end of things. Except that when both he and Gene Keeler asked for my support, I vowed not to allow my lefty inclinations to get in the way of reporting, and digging into the facts of allegations. Unlike those leveled for decades now at Czajka, I did find evidence for both Keeler’s minor blunders and egregious errors.
And when he was dishonest with me on more than one topic, though I gave him every chance to come clean, that sealed it. The more I spoke with Gene, the less credible he became. The opposite was true of the arc of my discussions with Paul, which is why I’ve made the endorsement I have—based on actual research and observation, not automatic fealty to the party in which I have been a member all my life.
Not that anyone has to care, but one of my guiding lights is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous yet little-read essay Self-Reliance, which I first came across in college. In it, he makes the case for independence of mind, even from close friends and family and others close to you who might sway your actions and opinions based on perceived duty or shared tribes, rather than on what is right.
Emerson concludes that essay:
“[D]o thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect... In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
