SamPratt.com

Election Roundup for 2021

Local Turnout Plummets

In the 2020 Presidential election, a whopping 35,000 people came out to vote in Columbia County, with Biden winning handily. Data circulated this evening by the Board of Elections indicates that only about 20,000 voted this time around—meaning that 43% of those 2020 voters didn’t show up this time.

Voting is generally lower in local cycles compared with Presidential contests, but the precipitous drop suggests that there are many voters who only care about national politics. That’s something for both parties to work on, since in many ways local races affect our day-to-day lives far more substantially.

The full 2021 Columbia County unofficial results spreadsheet can be found here. These await the counting of absentee ballots, followed by official certification, and thus will change somewhat over time.

No Headway for Dems on Board of Supervisors

Despite a lot of big talk in the past month of a sweep which would take over the Board of Supervisors from Republicans, the Columbia Dems failed to make any progress toward that longterm, elusive goal. Dems lost key races for Super in four large towns (Claverack, Germantown, Ghent and Kinderhook).

In Taghkanic, two Democratic candidates for Town Board both won by a very large margin over the lone Republican opponent, 56% vs. 44%. Yet the Taghkanic Democrats, who enjoy a 4-1 majority there, allowed incumbent Republican Supervisor Ryan Skoda to run unopposed. So that Taghkanic seat would appear to be quite winnable by the Dems; but Town Board member Joyce Thompson has been instrumental in convincing them to leave the Republican Supervisor unchallenged.

In Stuyvesant, Democratic Committee officer Lee Jamison may have set some sort of record by losing yet again, having run repeatedly there over the past 20 decades. Other Supervisor races were uncontested, leaving the balance of power on the Board still firmly in the Republicans’ hands.

Meanwhile, the apparent winner of the Ghent Supervisor position, Craig Simmons, recently appeared in a social media video of a Chatham School Board meeting stating that he does not support vaccine mandates, much as he also “fought against helmet and seatbelt laws here in New York.” Simmons was formerly Chatham’s School Board President, but his nomination to be reappointed apparently received no second from any of his colleagues earlier this year. His term on the School Board expires in 2022, so presumably he will relinquish that position once his Ghent victory is certified.

A Taste of Tammany Hall in Ghent

Also in Ghent... The County Board of Elections decided to add a polling place due to shifts in the population, and chose the Ghent VFW as its extra venue. This raised some eyebrows among Ghent Dems, since the Post is traditionally used by the Republicans as their clubhouse, and also a site for GOP fundraisers.

It seemed an even odder choice given that another polling place, the Town Hall, is just a stone’s throw away, meaning it did not help many voters get closer to the polls. Other rejected suggestions had included a site closer to Hawthorne Valley, or another of the Town’s firehouses not already used for voting.

Of particular concern was the fact that the VFW Post has an active bar downstairs from the main space where the election was being conducted, including both an interior staircase from that room and an exterior entrance as well. This raised the specter of old-school Tammany-style politicking, which in the 19th Century often involved promising voters drinks as an inducement for voting.

That has not been alleged so far, let alone proven. But one Democratic poll watcher noted that the bar’s parking lot was very full in the afternoon and early evening of Election Day, and complained that a Republican inspector was telling some voters they could go downstairs for a beer after they finished.

(Note: This author also served as a poll watcher at the VFW in the early morning hours of Election Day... Much too early for a Budweiser.)

Krapf Holds his Own Party

According to Democratic committee sources, after beating incumbent David Bartlett, the party’s nominee for Sheriff decided to hold his own victory party, separate from the party’s event.

After besting Bartlett, Don Krapf reportedly held his own private (less “transparent”?) event in Hudson at the Power Boat Association, after briefly stopping by the Dems’ event in Chatham.

Krapf is a former Republican, who according to multiple sources voted twice for Trump and said voting for Hillary Clinton would be like voting for “the devil.” Sources have further indicated that his commitment to the platform advanced for him by the Dems is tepid at best.

Dem Committee members may consider this a win, but now seem stuck with a Sheriff with deep conservative roots. The party tends to be reluctant to abandon its own nominees, even if they prove problematic in office. Barring some major scandal, Krapf will now be likely to serve until retirement, unless eventually there were a Democratic primary—which could be bruising and vicious. This site will have some thoughts on the futures of both major parties in a future post.

Statewide Setbacks for Dems

One local Dem Committee member described last night’s results as “a bloodbath across the whole state, really” for the Democrats. Particularly disappointing was New York’s failure to approve ballot access referenda backed by the Dems. These would have loosened requirements absentee voters, as well as allowing same-day registration of new voters.

In better news, a referendum supporting stronger protections for clean air and water in the State did pass. But overall, results across New York suggested that Republican voters still fuming over the 2020 Presidential election were in a mood to strike back. There are national concerns that this foreshadows more trouble in the 2022 mid-terms, which are typically challenging for the party controlling the White House.

Hudson Results are Too Berserk to Parse

Meanwhile in Hudson, where Democrats have had a virtual lock on most offices going back 16 years to the hotly-contested Grandinetti-Tracy mayoral race, the results are so hard to comprehend as to defy analysis by an outside observer—even one with a lot of experience in Hudson politics.

Hudson has a remarkable number of positions: Three citywide offices (Mayor, Council President and Treasurer); 10 Common Council members, a/k/a Aldermen; and five County Supervisors. Sometimes, there are also primaries for Republican and Democratic Committee seats. In the above-mentioned 2005 contest, there were something approaching 50 candidates for various positions.

This time around, some key offices were uncontested, but the subject of (mostly) futile write-in campaigns. Other races involved candidates who had asked too late to be removed from the ballot, at least one of whom appears to have won. For more close-to-the-ground details, try reading coverage at Carole Osterink’s The Gossips of Rivertown.

Hudson seems to be becoming a textbook example of the perils of one-party rule—resulting either in a herd mentality among members of the same team, or else vicious infighting among elected officials and Committee members of the same party.

Multiple factions now exist among the Dems, each jealously defending its piece of the party pie. Despite sharing a party affiliation, there seems to be less not more cohesion and cooperation over time. It almost makes one nostalgic for a time when there were a few moderate Hudson Republican aldermen like Ed Thompson and Kathy Harter, with whom one could have open and reasonable discussions.

Election Day update, 4:30 pm

CORRECTED TO INCLUDE EARLY VOTING NUMBERS

According to data from the Columbia County Board of Elections, turnout seems somewhat light as of 4:30 pm on Election Day. Total turnout is a little over 11,600. Normally, one would expect a flood of voters once people get out of work—and no doubt the total will still increase substantially, though probably less than back in the day before early voting.

In the table below, this site has aggregated voters in traditionally right-leaning parties, left-leaning parties, and unaffiliated or independent parties. The tallies do not include absentee voters and their affiliations, but those tend to skew leftward.

A month later, Election Board finally posts some real results

As of noon yesterday—a full month after Election Day—the Columbia County Board of Elections still was showing incomplete and outdated results of the November 5th election. A nudge from this site appears to have changed that.

Since the mess of Election Day and the ensuing weeks of confusion, the Board had recanvassed and counted many additional results, along with those gathered from early tallies. But strangely, the BOE had not added these to tallies to publicly-released numbers.

As of midday on December 3rd, its site had not been updated since November 21st. Those incomplete. results showed several candidates losing, who had since been known to have won. Considering the many mistakes, omissions, and errors which have plagued the Board this cycle, it seemed all the more odd that it would not have rushed to correct these numbers.

This site messaged the two Election Commissioners, Democrat Virginia Martin and Republican Jason Nastke, asking why results were still incomplete—and when totals for each candidate would be included, so that the public could easily see who had won or lost. (Other Boards present results in clear, and sometimes even graphical form; the CC BOE is still using very old spreadsheet technology, and seems to struggle to publish results to the web.)

The courtesy of a response was not received from either Commissioner. But lo and behold! by 3:30 pm, the Board had suddenly updated the numbers to what appear to be near-final results.

Town results appear at this link; Countywide results are at this one.

It had also, finally, provided totals for each candidate, so that visitors did not need to do the math from multiple party lines to understand them. In several cases, the winners of the election had reversed since November 21st.

CAVEAT: One candidate who has been watching the results closely says that some of the Board’s numbers are very slightly off by 2 or 3 votes—appearing to not include some emergency ballot results.

County Dems blew nearly 24K on hopeless races

• Meanwhile, competitive candidates were largely shunned

Almost all of the money spent by the Columbia County Democratic Committee in the 2019 election cycle went to races which the party’s favorite candidates lost by huge margins.

Meanwhile, Democrats who ran in close races either struggled to secure funding from the County committee, or were ignored; or ran their own campaigns—steering clear of the hapless CCDC. By this site’s count, based on Campaign Finance Disclosure reports, the County Dems blew some $23,500 on landslide losses, while donating as little as $500 to winning ones.

2018 records show that the Party’s largest direct expenditures on candidates and committees were:

• $12,500 to the District Attorney’s race, which Gene Keeler lost yet again, by 14%;
• $5,000 to the Chatham Democratic committee to back a Republican, Maria Lull, who lost for Supervisor by 19%; and
• $5,000 to the Committee to Elect Peter Bujanow, who lost for Supervisor in Kinderhook by 18%.
• $1,000 to the Stuyvesant Democratic Committee, whose candidates for Supervisor and Town Council lost by similarly wide margins.

In today’s electoral politics, where liberals and conservatives are roughly split, and voters more and more tend to vote party line, any race won or lost by 10% or more is effectively a landslide. Locally, the Dems have held a registration advantage over Republicans in Columbia County for nearly a decade, winning victories for most Federal candidates, while still trailing badly in Town and County representation.

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After donating $5K for Bujanow to run in Kinderhook, the County Dems then actually took $1,500 from that Town’s Democratic Committee, leaving the candidate more flush but the local organization more impoverished.

In addition, the Kinderhook Dems later reimbursed the County Dems for legal fees arising from incorrect caucus instructions given to them by Democratic Elections Commissioner Virginia Martin, who served at the pleasure of the County Committee. (The last few CCDC campaign finance filings show steady payments of between $700-$2,800 to Warner, Kopoovitz & Futerfas.) 

Meanwhile, in races actually won by Democrats, the County Dems either provided the eventual winners no funding at all, or trifling amounts compared to what they expended on candidates like Keeler, Lull and Bujanow. Campaign finance disclosure repots who no contributions to successful Democratic candidates in towns such as Taghkanic and Hudson.

In New Lebanon, where the Democratic slate swept to victory, candidates there received a mere $500 toward that effort from the County, 1/10th the amounts donate to either Lull or Bujanow.

Indeed, it appears the soothsayers on the party’s Executive Committee mistakenly believed the New Lebs Dems were headed for a loss, according to minutes obtained by this site. Less than a week before Election Day, the Committee fretted that “Tistrya Houghtling is having a hard time against the opposition in New Lebanon.” In fact, Hougtaling destroyed her Republican opponent by nearly a 2:1 margin, 554-233.

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In general, the party’s spending decisions appear to have been driven more by emotional than strategic reasoning. Records show the CCDC spent more at Wal-Mart ($31.77) than on some of the most organized and compelling Democratic candidates.

Candidates or committees perceived to be aligned with the Democratic Committee leadership were more likely to receive funding, even if they had little chance of winning, or even if they held conservative views (as in the case of Lull, a registered Republican). Bujanow, for example, was formerly the CCDC Chair.

One of the Stuyvesant candidates whose committee received the $1,000 contribution noted above was a co-chair the CCDC’s own Candidates and Campaigns committee, Lee Jamison—a perpetual also-ran in the Town, and a similarly-perpetual defender of the County Committee’s status quo.

Candidates perceived to be more independent-minded were largely shunned, even if they held more liberal positions on important issues.

In Ghent, for example, the two winning candidates Koethi Zan and Patti Matheney asked for assistance raising money for legal representation in that Town’s hotly-contested absentee and affidavit ballot challenges. That ballot count ultimately decided the election in the two Democrats’ favor, with Zan prevailing by just 10 votes.

But the County party’s Executive Committee declined to help the eventual winners in Ghent, who had to raise funds for attorneys themselves, even as the two Dems relentlessly watchdogged the Board of Elections process to ensure that votes were preserved.

While snubbing Matheney and Zan’s request, the Party did provide a lawyer post-election for Copake Democrats locked in a similarly-tight absentee fight, whose votes were counted on the same day. The CCDC’s lawyer was apparently present when the GOP’s Ghent challenges, and was therefore available, yet did not participate.

The only obvious difference? Matheney (an incumbent) and Zan (who led an important land use fight, and has served on the Ghent Zoning Board) are often the targets of personal attacks from County Democratic leadership for having their own views on issues and tactics. The same Executive Committee minutes included an incorrect statement about the pair, which the candidates objected to at the most recent meeting.

Chair Keith Kanaga and Secretary Carole Peckham reportedly took that opportunity to bash Matheney and Zan again—rather than celebrating the pair turning Ghent Democratic for the first time in memory, if ever.

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Meanwhile, the County Republican Committee has yet to submit its 27-day post-general finance report. This site will also report on that once they do.

GOP commissioner and staff M.I.A. to finish ballot count

After lodging over 110 challenges last Friday to absentee voters in Ghent and Copake—including many dual residence voters, and even a 90-year-old woman in a nursing home—the Republicans apparently missed their deadline yesterday to take those challenges to court. The Democrats filed a token number of challenges of their own, which they likewise dropped.

Nobody home

The Board of Elections Commissioners are supposed to have such ballots opened and counted as soon as the three calendar-day deadline expires, just like any other votes, according §9-209 2.(d) of the New York State Election law.

But per a report from the Ghent Democratic candidates on Facebook, no Republican staff is present at the County Board of Elections to finish the count. Republican Commissioner Jason Nastke is missing in action—believed to be handling real estate closings elsewhere instead. Matheney posted the photo at right showing empty GOP desks in the Board’s offices.

In a local election plagued by errors and failures to plan ahead, there appears to have been no schedule in place by either Nastke or his Democratic counterpart Virginia Martin for having inspectors finish the count. 

According to an attorney familiar with the conduct of elections, sections of State laws make it a potential misdemeanor or even a felony for any election official to “wilfully violate any provision of the election law relative to the registration of electors or to the taking, recording, counting, canvassing, tallying or certifying of votes, or who wilfully neglects or refuses to perform any duty imposed on him by law” (Election Law §17-106) or to “knowingly refrain from a duty which is imposed upon him by law or is clearly inherent in the nature of his office” (Penal Law § 195.00).

 

Testy and close, Ghent vote count finally kicks off

UPDATE #1: The review has finally begun a little before 10 am, though it is unlikely anyone’s ballot will get counted for many hours.

UPDATE #2: GOP attorney Ciampoli has already had his first ugly outburst, lecturing a Democratic attorney that “I am going to shove your argument down your throat!”

UPDATE #3: Ciampoli is objecting to numerous absentee ballots on vague, unspecified grounds about the voters’ “qualifications,” or else referencing “the Constitution”—and getting authoritative pushback from the Dem attorneys. Nevertheless, GOP Commissioner Nastke is upholding most of his objections, even while stating that he disagrees with some of them.

UPDATE #4: According to one observer, Nastke independently decided—without Ciampoli lodging a complaint—to question the ballot from a 90-year-old woman, indicating that he intended to call her and question her.

UPDATE #5: More than 40 ballots have been set aside as of about 1:30 pm, almost entirely from spurious challenges from Ciampoli. The Democrats have gained ground, with Matheney virtually certain to win, and Nelson almost certain to lose; the remaining contest between Zan and Simmons remains very close.

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In one of the last local races yet to be decided in Columbia County, lawyers for Town Board candidates in Ghent have been scheduled to descend on 401 State Street at 9 am Friday to wrangle over the remaining absentee and affidavit ballots.

Going into the day the two Democratic candidates, Koethi Zan and Patti Matheney, were trailing their Republican opponents, Pete Nelson and Craig Simmons by margins smaller than the number of ballots left to count—or not count.

According to the Ghent candidates, the unofficial numbers from the machines and the hand counts are Simmons 950, Matheney 947, Nelson 926, and Zan 923.

There are reportedly some 121 potential votes yet to count, broken down as follows by party: Republicans 33, Democrats 71, Indpendence Party members 3, Working Families voters 1, Conservatives 1, and 12 voters unafiliated with any party (“NOPs”).

Matheney & Zan

Both the Dems and Republicans are bringing in the heavy artillery, seasoned election lawyers expert in scrutinizing absentee ballot applications, postmarks, signatures, registrations, and other technical hurdles voters must surmount before their mailing envelopes can be opened.

Once the envelopes are open and combined into an anonymized , the wrangling will likely continue, as each ballot is scrutinized for stray marks, overvotes and other potential disqualifying flaws.

As of 9:10 am, the Board of Elections staff, inspectors charged with counting, and both Democratic candidates and their attorneys, were present. But the Republican candidates and their lawyers were nowhere to be seen.

The GOP is employing infamously-abrasive attorney John Ciampoli, the former Nassau county attorney who was dismissed by Nassau’s county executive in 2013. The Dems have hired attorneys Josh Oppenheimer and Bob Harding.

While it is possible that both sides could agree to open everything, and let the chips fall where they may, it is likely that they will grapple over every single ballot.

The first stage, if the parties are in a combative mood, is for either side to try to knock out some of the ballots before their enclosing envelope are opened, based on residency challenges, signature challenges, or other flaws in the application for or deliver of the ballot.

In some past counts, the Republicans have indiscriminately challenged almost every ballot envelope mailed by registered Democrats, not providing specific reasons or evidence to support the challenge.

Attorney John Ciampoli (Source: Newsday)

For a ballot to be set aside, both Election Commissioners must agree with the challenge. Typically, Republican Commissioner Jason Nastke votes with the Republicans to exclude it, and Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin votes with the Dems to uphold the person’s right to vote.

Democratic candidates have occasionally mounted challenges if they find specific and plausible reasons to object, such as evidence that the person has moved, or voted in the wrong place. But these have tended to be substantially fewer.

Wholesale challenges of Democratic ballots has, in the past, resulted in huge piles of ballots getting set aside. For the challenges to be upheld, the responsible party hasto go to court to determine which get opened. If they don’t they get opened by default after a short waiting period.

In 95% of cases, these either don’t get formally challenged, or judges order all but the very most fishy and fatally flawed ballot submissions to be opened.

Once opened, another round of blood sport begins—as the parties scrutinize the ballots themselves for mistakes or invalidating marks, then issue more challenges. And the same process begins all over again with Commissioners’ rulings, and potential court challenges.

Bottom line: Unless the parties and their attorneys are in a particularly good mood this morning, the likelihood is that Ghent residents will not know who is representing them for another two weeks or so.

Nastke runs down what happened at the Board of Elections

A list of questions was sent to both Columbia County Elections Commissioners on Wednesday, seeking answers for the underlying causes of the confusion and delays in reporting results starting at 9 pm, November 5th. 

Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin brushed those questions aside (despite years of touting herself as a champion of transparency and integrity in elections). But her Republican counterpart Jason Nastke unexpectedly agreed to a half-hour phone interview, and provided extensive new details about what’s been going on. Below is an account of what Nastke said.

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On Election Night, Nastke said, all voting machines were shut down at 9 pm, as usual: “We have a good process for that; it works. It was the same as we’ve done for my 10 years as a Commissioner.”

GOP BOE Commissioner Jason Naske

At that point, he explained, “I’m not looking at numbers. I’m making sure that everything is sealed, and everyone is doing their job. There’s a whole team taking in numbers. Some are being called in, while all of the machine results are transported down on chips. Those computer chip numbers were entered that night; when I left around 1 am, there were only two or three left to be loaded.”

Asked why some numbers appeared to be removed from the initial Election Day results between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Nastke said that the numbers posted should have included that day’s machine counts, and may have had some early voting numbers as well, but an issue arose about the numbers collected from  10 days of early balloting in Hudson, Copake and Valatie, the first year such voting took place. 

“Once we realized there was an early vote count issue, we only kept the Election Day numbers up,” he said.

The chips and tapes containing the early voting numbers were waiting at the Board to be tallied once polls closed. However, by law they could not be counted before that, to avoid any results leaking out and influencing other voters. 

“That night, we had to open the early voting machines” from the three sites, Nastke continued. “We’d never done that before. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get the tapes out of the machines. We took the chips upstairs to load that data up.”

Two major new problems then emerged, in addition to a third they already knew about.

“When we first posted the combined early machine votes, the numbers did not match the [printed] tapes. So we took those numbers down. The State was involved. We had to reload everything, because not all of the data had transmitted [from the chips]. I think it was Wednesday afternoon that we looked at that… The data we’d downloaded didn’t match the tapes.”

Nastke described the technical issue as incomplete downloads akin to “when you download a webpage and you don’t have great connectivity, so you get the text but not the pictures.” He said that the second time, the data from the chip matched the printed tapes.

Contrary to some reported rumors, Nastke said there was no “zero issue,” referring to the requirement for election inspectors to make sure machines at their polling places are starting at zero, and are not retaining any data from a previous cycle or tests.

Once this was resolved to their satisfaction, he said “that data was reported independently for each poll site.” But the Board soon realized that in reporting it in this way, it potentially could “reveal a few people’s vote.” 

Any County voter could cast an early ballot at any of the three early voting sites, regardless of which local town they live in. But if, hypothetically, only one person from Ancram cast an early vote in Valatie, then the Valatie results for Ancram would reflect only their vote. Someone who took an interest in public data about who voted could then correlate the results to that one person.

Nastke conceded that had the Board just merged the early voting results from all three sites, then the aggregate numbers would have prevented such accidental disclosure: “The problem was—and it was our fault—we did not set up the reporting initially to be merged as one… It’s great data if you’re a political junkie, but it’s not so good for protecting people’s vote.”

“So then we had to figure out how to merge that stuff,” the Republican Commissioner continued. “We had conference calls with the State” to figure it out. This, he said, explains why some early vote tallies were published and retracted several times, as they grappled with these issues.

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A third and even knottier problem had been known to the Board since the very start of early voting on Saturday, October 26th. Nastke gave this run-down of “why it occurred, and how it came about.”

“I was actually the first person to vote in Valatie,” he recalled. “I wanted to make sure it worked. The check-in process worked seamlessly.

“What didn’t work was the scanning machines we’d been using for 10 years. The inspectors restarted the machine—that didn’t resolve it. We tried someone else’s ballot—same issue. I then spoke with Ron Moore in Copake, and they were having the same issue, and we started to figure out it was happening at all three locations.

“I had the vendor on the phone. We reprogrammed the machine, which took two hours—same problem.”

Next up was a call to the State, and a call to the Fort Orange Press, which is a State-approed ballot printer.  “I sent an image [of our ballot] for them to look at. When you’re a sanctioned vendor, they’re used to using the software. They had no problem recreating our ballots and printing a new set to use the next morning,” which would have been Sunday.

“So why didn’t the ballots scan? We didn’t know why. I spent a good chunk of the day with a ruler and a tape measure trying to figure it all out. We looked at the PDFs, trying to figure out what was wrong. Was the paper the wrong size? We buy the paper a whole year ahead. It measured up, and it was paper we’d used before. I finally quit in exhaustion that [Saturday] night.”

On Sunday, Nastke remembered, “the Fort Orange Press confirmed again that  “our PDFs were perfect; our ballots were fine. Then they asked what type of printer we had, and had it been serviced or moved recently? Yes. It had been moved—due to the flea problem. We had a big debate about who could move it, County facilities or the company who sold it to us, Ricoh. This is a very expensive piece of equipment. So we decided to pay the company who sold it to move it.  

“The same way I would expect tire people at the auto shop to know what do with my tires, I expected the same with the printer. But Fort Orange asked if it had been recalibrated by Ricoh, and were all the belts tightened? I didn’t know, that’s why we hired them to do it. So Fort Orange walked us through it on the phone, which was very nice of them. They knew just what was going on.”

Uncalibrated and adjusted after it was moved, Nastke came to understand, “the printer might pull one ballot correctly, but then as it prints each one gets a little more off. So the [voting machine] scanners weren’t seeing the paper properly. We did not have a paper problem. The paper was fine; we had an printer problem.”

What does the Election Law say to do when ballots won’t scan? Nastke says “If the scanners don’t scan, you have to open the emergency ballot box in the scanner, put them in there and they get scanned once it does start to work. That would be great in a normal world… but it was never going to work because of how the ballots were printed on the paper.” The scanner couldn’t handle the misprints, so they would have to be hand counted.

“So the ballots were locked up,” Nastke continued. “The State said by law you can’t hand count those either before 9 pm on Election Day… So all those votes sat there, until Tuesday night, when we brought a team in to hand count them. I wanted a fresh set of eyes who hadn’t been working all day. It’s a tedious process, it takes forever. Each ballot has somewhere between 42 and 50 fields, with little circles that have to be looked at. We didn’t have many fresh eyes who also had been through these counts before, because they had all worked as poll workers all day. So I had an exhausted staff.

“Could more people have solved the problem quicker? Maybe, but I didn’t want to have inexperienced counters. The people we had counted until about 12:30, then went home. It was more work than we anticipated it would be, especially for a tired and understandably grouchy staff, working for weeks with no break.”

The counting then continued on Wednesday, though staff “understandably didn’t get going until 11 am, because they hadn’t gotten home until 2-2:30 in the morning” on Election Night. The count continued throughout the week, while the Board was dealing with the other issues which had bedeviled this year’s election.

“We had the early machine vote problem, add to that the hand count [of unscanned ballots, all of which had to be double-checked, and then the Election Day numbers. So that’s what took until Friday.”

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An unresolved issue: The County Board still has not reported the aggregate results for each candidate, for both countywide and local races, only totaling up precincts for each separate party line.

So if one candidate had the Democratic and Working Families lines on the ballot, and the other had the GOP/Conservative and Independence line, the public and press have to add together each line to figure out who got the most total votes.

Nastke said they are still working on this. “Yesterday, we went through it all. We got all the data inputted, so that is being checked. As far as the totals, we will have those totals up, and I’d certainly like to have that before the absentee ballot count starts. Ideally, if we can, well before that. Our priority right now is to get the hand count checked.”

Reflecting on all that happened, Nastke said “You know, we live in an Instagram world, but counting votes still gets done with paper… The other thing that this has taught me going forward, I’d like to reach out to NTS, which is a vendor for us, to figure out a better way to tabulate results, so we can get them up in a cleaner way. Right now we’re using Access and Excel, which were not specifically designed for reporting results t o the public. If we could have something specifically geared toward reporting, that would be really helpful.”

Asked whether it appeared that early voting had absorbed many of the votes which normally are cast by absentee ballot, which in the past has resulted in protracted counts and challenges, Nastke noted that there are “1,350 absentees countywide as of yesterday. We’ll have data on how much early voting took up absentees, but last time it was over 4,000 absentees. Vote turnout was down a bit, but still that’s a big difference.” He also noted that the party affiliation of absentee ballots received is breaking down overwhelmingly Democratic, with about 900 Dem registrations, 200 Republicans and Conservatives, and the rest Independence and unaffiliated voters (NOP) making up the remainder.

As far as whether he intends to re-up for GOP Elections Commissioner job, Nastke said “That’s a conversation I have with my party every time before the term is up, and we’ll see what happens.”

Asked the same question twice, Democratic Commissioner Martin did not respond as of press time.

Mystery still swirls around Board’s handling of 2019 vote

Many questions remain unanswered about the odd and confusing way this year’s Columbia County election results have been counted and reported. A lengthy article in the Register-Star featuring numerous quotes from Republican Election Commissioner Jason Nastke provided some context. But Nastke’s answers didn’t address the fundamental issues which plagued both the numbers and their reporting. 

Republican Commissioner Nastke has agreed to further discuss what happened, and this site will report on that conversation. Democratic Commissioner Martin only acknowledged that the Countywide results were published late on Monday, and ignored other questions.

It took the Board just a few hours shy of a full week to report the results of Countywide races and propositions.

With the District Attorney’s race being the most closely-watched  contest of this cycle, it’s perplexing that the Paul Czajka-Gene Keeler results were among the last to be disclosed. A week later, the Board’s results finally confirm that Czajka appears to have easily beaten Keeler by roughly 10,500 to 7,900 votes, or 58%-42%. Those numbers don’t include an unknown number of absentees yet to be counted beginning on November 18th.

But even this late reporting throws one more monkey wrench into the gears for voters who just want to know who won. The Board published its numbers as a table with no totals of each candidate’s various party lines.

In order to determine the winner, the public apparently has to do their own math (in the case of Czajka-Keeler) three ballot lines for the Republican and two for the Democrat to come up with a grand total. Other counties’ boards prefer to present both the detailed party line results and a combined total showing the victor.

The confusion began almost from the very start.

The Board threw a first batch of numbers up against the wall raound 10 pm on November 5th, showing only the Election Day machine results for countywide and local results. Meanwhile, numerous news outlets featured results from various precincts as they came in, which were updated up until about midnight.

However, though the Board had “tape” printouts in hand that night showing results from each of the three early voting locations in Hudson, Copake and Valatie, these were not included in those initial reports. Early voting results are supposed to be treated just like Election Day results, but they weren’t.

Making things more confusing, the Board then retracted these limited numbers the next morning, Wednesday the 6th. In an email response to this site, Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin described that first batch of results as “not correct,” but did not respond to questions about what way they were incorrect. The Wednesday morning numbers appeared to be generally lower than the Tuesday night ones, as if some results had been overstated.

Sources indicate that the Board may have discovered a problem with some machines not having been properly “zero’ed” out before the start of Election Day. Manuals for election inspectors around the State describe a required process before polls open for making sure each electronic machine is starting at zero for each line on the ballot, and not retaining votes from some previous cycle.

Similarly, after being barraged with inquiries from candidates and the press, the Board did begin to release Early Voting results, segmented and not totaled with the Election Day results. The Board then proceeded over a couple of days to publish and retract these numbers several times, before taking them down entirely. Finally, late on Friday night (the 8th), a fuller set of combined Early and regular votes was published, again without giving totals for each candidate.

Complicating things even more, on the first Saturday of Early Voting, which featured a huge crush of voters, it was discovered that hundreds of ballots were not able to be scanned by the machines, and were placed into a separate bin to be dealt with later. The rumored cause of this failure is faulty printing of the ballots on the wrong paper stock, causing the machines not to be able to see them.

Some of these ballots reportedly were “spoiled” and cannot be included in the final hand counts because of overvotes (for example, people choosing three Town Board candidates, when they are only allowed to vote for two) or other issues. Normally, when a ballot is scanned, if such problems occur the machine will reject it, and the voter gets a chance to fix the problem then try again. With the scanner not recognizing the faulty ballots, it appears the normal error-checking was bypassed, and these votes get lost.

The Board knew of the existence of some 700 such ballots, but only brought in a skeleton crew to begin counting them after polls closed. Reportedy two towns were counted that night, Ghent and Copake, but these results were not made known until some three days later. 

Election officials are said to have told candidates whose town counts had been finished that it “wouldn’t be fair to other towns” to release those numbers, even though such results don’t affect them. Later, the Board conferred with the State and was told they could, in fact, release the partial results, and did so; but then retracted them again.

That left some 550 unscanned early votes to be hand-counted, but for unknown reasons the counting process appears to have taken even longer than for the initial two towns, dragging on throughout the week. 

More updates will be posted as new information comes in.

 

Now, was that so hard? (Apparently, yes)

 

DOWNLOAD CORRELATED RESULTS: XLS | PAGES | CSV

 

Sometime on Friday night, while Columbia County residents were washing the dishes after supper or scrolling through Netflix in search of something to watch, the Board of Elections finally posted Election Day and early voting returns. 

It had been roughly 72 hours since polls had closed, with no explanation why such numbers were taking so long to be published.

The new numbers significantly alter the picture in several closely-watched towns—and show why many candidates and campaigns were tearing their hair out as the unexplained and highly-unusual delay dragged on all week.

A number of candidates who were previously losing surged into the lead, or into a near-tie. Some of these races have flipped, and others will have to wait for absentees to be counted. 

For some reason, the new data does not include countywide results for the District Attrorney’s race, for which Paul Czajka has declared victory over Eugene Keeler; and the numbers of absentee ballots which have been returned is not included. The Board will not begin counting absentees until November 18th.

And unlike other County agencies, the Board’s release of data did not bother to total the votes which candidates received on separate party lines. Ulster County published its results days ago, using color-coding and graphs to make results easily comprehensible.

So if a Democrat also had the Working Families endorsement, and her Republican opponent was also running as a Conservative and Independence Party candidate, it’s up to the public to tally up each candidate’s votes to come up with a total.

This makes it difficult for voters to ascertain who is leading and who is behind. Presumably the Board has this data in a spreadsheet, but no one over the course of the week bothered to correlate it in the usual way.

But at least now there are some data to work with, at last. This site has taken the CCBOE’s raw numbers and put them into a spreadsheet, with the combined results of contested races highlighted in yellow.

DOWNLOAD CORRELATED RESULTS: XLS | PAGES | CSV

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A look at specific results shows why it was so important to get these updates.

For Taghkanic’s Town Board, where Democrat Elizabeth Craig had been just two votes behind Republican Joshua Plass (with Kara Gilmore having locked up the first seat), Craig now leads Plass by 64 votes, with absentees still pending.

In Ghent, where Democrats Patti Matheney and Koethi Zan initially appeared to be far behind Republicans Pete Nelson and Craig Simmons, the race has become extremely close. Matheney is only 3 votes behind Craig in 1st place, and Zan trailing by just 27, with some 120 absentee ballots left to count. (There will be two winners, with Nelson now the least likely of the four to gain a seat.) Ghent Dems believe both Matheney and Zan now have a strong chance of winning.

In Copake, where Democrats Paulette Bonanno and Julie Cohen had been reported to be more than 220 votes behind Republicans Stanley Gansowski and Terry Sullivan, the gap has narrowed to more like 60-70 votes, with an unknown number of absentees outstanding.

In Claverack, where Democrat Katy Cashen had been listed in 3rd place, the new totals now show her in 2nd, ahead of Republican Lisa Bowe but behind George Duntz. Her running mate Ian Solomon remains in 4th.

The Gallatin Town Council race remains very tight, with four candidates within 40 votes of each other now all within 20 votes of each other, again with an unknown number of absentees pending.

The Board did not post an explanation for the extraordinary delay, or why, per one Commissioner’s admission, it had released “incorrect” numbers on the evening of Election Day. Sources indicate that this may have been due to a failure to properly prepare or “zero out” some machines prior to the start of voting, but that is unconfirmed.

Candidates, officials call on BOE to get its act together

Nearly 67 hours since polls closed, candidates and their supporters continue to wait for the Columbia County Board of Elections to release comprehensive results of Tuesday’s local elections. Some are starting to get understandably antsy, and wondering what the hold-up could possibly be. 

“This truly could not be more unfair to the candidates and the process,” wrote one candidate early on Friday. That town’s race has already had all its early votes either tabulated by the machines, or hand-counted, but has not seen those numbers released. 

On Thursday, the Board’s site promised full results by the end of the day; that deadline was not met. The same promise appears again today, on Friday, but as of 3:30 pm no new data have been released.

“Not posting accurate results is causing so much confusion and yes, the conspiracy theories are swirling,” that candidate also wrote early on Friday. “This has to be addressed and corrected today. “In our case, we are certain the [Board’s partial] numbers are incorrect, as we were there for the count of the emergency ballots,” the candidate wrote.

Some County officials are also starting to chime in.

“[It] would be good to get the early votes and Election Day votes combined ASAP and presented so we are just waiting for absentees,” one Columbia County supervisor wrote to a Commissioner on Thursday, adding that doing so “would establish some credibility.” More than a day later, the Board still has not done so.

Campaigns reportedly continue “to receive numerous condolence emails and phone calls” in places where the machine-only results make it look as if their candidates are behind, though the early vote tallies will show them pulling even or behind. Participation data indicates that early voters were overwhelmingly members of the Democratic Party.

To date, the Board has published then retracted votes cast “on the machine,” then re-published new numbers. Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin has acknowledged that those initial numbers were “incorrect.” Sources indicate that a reason for this initial error may have been that some voting machines were not properly “zeroed out” before polling began, meaning the Board had to do a more forensic examination to verify those results.

Meanwhile, the more than 3,300 early votes cast in Columbia County remain embargoed for unknown reasons, perhaps related to another SNAFU involving ballots printed on the wrong stock.

The Board briefly published some partial early voting results, separated from the main tallies, and broken down by polling place—then took these files down from its website. That reversal appears to have been due to a concern that the detailed breakdown could potentially exposed how people voted, in races where only one person from a Town participated in early voting at that polling place.

However, that risk could have been easily eliminated had the Board combined all three polling places’ results and rolled them into the main results, as other counties have. 

Apparently, at least two towns had all of their votes tallied on Tuesday night, including ballots which could not be scanned and required hand-counts, leaving only absentees to be reviewed on the 18th. An estimated 500-600 other “emergency” early ballots had been expected to be hand-counted by now, but appear to remain either untallied or simply unreleased, again for reasons unknown.

Another source says that State officials are now in close communication with BOE officials in an effort to resolve and expedite whatever the mystery hold-ups may be.

However, since Monday is Veterans Day—a Federal holiday—if numbers are not published by close of business today, it seems unlikely that there will be any full results and clarifications until next Tuesday. That would make the delay of full machine and early voting results last an entire week after Election Day.

While defenders of the CCBOE have blamed “new procedures” related to early voting for the delay, other nearby counties such as Dutchess, Albany, Ulster and Greene produced their combined results in combined, easy-to-understand tables days ago.

Confusion reigns at the Columbia County Board of Elections

THURSDAY UPDATE:

3 PM: 42 hours after polls have closed, the Columbia County Board of Elections still has not published a consolidated tally of results in either Countywide or Town contests. The Board pulled its three separate Early Vote tallies down from the site, and is promising to have new numbers “later today.” 

Reports in both The Register-Star and a direct message from Commissioner Virginia Martin state that “incorrect numbers” were published on Election Night. Why there is continued reluctance to publish a full tally, including Early Votes already counted, remain unclear.

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WEDNESDAY UPDATES:

NOON: The County Election Board has posted a new set of results, but bafflingly these actually show fewer votes than the previous reports. Martin says they will have yet another posting soon.

1:30 PM: Incredibly, the BOE has made things even more confusing, by posting four separate sets of unofficial results: one for machine votes countywide, plus results from early votes in Hudson, early votes in Copake, and early votes in Valatie. There is no central tally which total these overlapping results. Apparently voters and candidates are supposed to cut-and-paste all four sets into a database and try to reconcile them to find out who won or lost...

2 PM: Paul Czajka has now declared victory in the D.A.’s race. A compilation of the confusing BOE data shows him up +3,566 votes over Keeler.

3 PM: The Board of Election has now pulled the three incomplete early voting tallies, and has only the Election Day machine results available on its site.

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On the morning after Election Day in Columbia County, some 30% of votes remain unknown to the public. The messy, developing situation leaves many candidates across the County—not to mention the general public—in suspense as to whether they won or lost.

In some close races, that suspense may continue for another couple of weeks, until the final count of absentee ballots; but many results could be known already, if the disclosure of numbers had proceeded as usual.

Nearly 17,000 votes are known as of 11 am on the day after. But by this site’s estimate—including a mix of hard numbers and educated guesses—the County Board still has some 7,500 votes either uncounted, unreported, or yet to even come in.

No results were made available as of this writing by the Board for Canaan, Clermont and Gallatin; precinct results were also missing in parts of Claverack, Greenport and Germantown. 

Countywide, only 78% of precinct results were made available to publications like the Times-Union, WNYT, et al. Based on the locations omitted, this site estimates that another 2,500 or so machine votes will eventually come in.

Normally, votes “on the machine” are read by inspectors as soon as polls closed, telephoned in to the Board, and recorded on a tally sheet for later verification. In past elections, Board staff has posted these results on the wall outside its offices as they come in on Election night for reporters, campaigns and interested citizens to review.

Asked why such disclosures were not made this year, and why machine tallies were made known for some towns but not others, Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin paused at length before saying “Our process is different this time.”

Martin vowed, however, that more information would be posted at the Board’s website later today.

Meanwhile, spreadsheets provided by the Board prior to Election Day indicate that 3,357 ballots were cast via early voting in three polling places. However, due to a clerical error, some ballots were reportedly printed on the wrong paper, making them unscannable by the electric machines.

Due to this blunder, the ballots had to be impounded, and are now being hand-counted by an unknown process as “emergency ballots.” (Unlike absentee and affidavit ballots, these are not supposed to be able to be challenged; however, it is unclear how the Board will handle any errors or ambiguities arising from how the voters filled them out.)

Martin said that she “did not think” the Board could release any of the early voting results until all of the impounded ballots were hand-counted, though the basis for withholding known results from properly-scanned ballots was unclear.

Lastly, there is an unknown number of absentee ballots which have been received by the Board, and due to provisions for postmarking and military ballots, those results will not be known for at least a couple of weeks. This site guesstimates that some 1,600 absentees may become part of the final results. That number will likely be much lower than previous years due to the advent of early voting.

The upshot for many local contests as well as the high-profile District Attorney’s race is continued uncertainty.

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In the closely-watched District Attorney’s race Czajka current holds a large 2,500-vote lead over Keeler for D.A.

But with only 78% of machine votes known, and none of the early or absentee votes, the race is technically still too close to call. This site estimates that Czajka will continue to do well in the remaining machine counts, with his lead swelling to 3,000.

That said, Democratic participation in early voting has run as high as 3:1 over Republicans and Conservatives, with about 20% of votes coming from those unaffiliated with any political party. As for absentee balloting, those votes tend to mirror Election Day results within a small percentage, but skew more Democratic.

For Keeler to catch up with Czajka, he would need to capture a whopping 80% of those early and absentee votes, which seems like a very tall order. This site expects that these results will fall short for Keeler (at more like 3:2), with Czajka likely to prevail.

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Meanwhile, in Ghent, Town Board candidates Patti Matheney and Koethi Zan have run a very robust campaign which includes a detailed voter ID and get-out-the-vote effort. For these candidates, the suspense is particularly maddening, because the impartial results appear to show them losing or close to tied.

But their data about the outstanding votes strongly indicate that Matheney will easily win, and that Zan has a very strong shot of taking the second Town Board seat.

Many other results either remain totally unknown, or up in the air due to partial reporting. No traditional publication had results for towns like Clermont as of the time of this writing; and many races fall in the way-too-close-to-call category.

The Register-Star has wisely chosen to identify many races as too close to call, such as the Claverack Town Board race, for which results for only 2 of 5 precincts were available. For the Germantown races, some data were available from the Times-Union, but the Register correctly has decided to leave the numbers blank until there are firmer numbers.

In the bizarre Chatham race between Republican Maria Lull (running on the Democratic line) and Democrat Donal Collins (running on the Republican line), which focused on major zoning changes pushed by the Lull camp, public results indicate a race that is too close to call. But private estimates by local politicos suggest that Collins has actually won in a landslide.

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Partial results havre been lopsided enough that a few of them could be confidently called. In Hudson, where November outcomes were essentially decided in the Democratic Primary, Kamal Johnson officially becomes the first African-American mayor in the City’s Hudson. Abdus Miah, who became the first local Bangaladeshi Alderman some 14 years ago, retained his County Supervisor seat. Other races (such as for Alderman in the 2nd and 4th Wards) likewise followed the earlier primary results.

In Stuyvesant, perpetual also-rans Ned Depew and Lee Jamison lost by vast margins for Supervisor and Town Board, respectively.

This site will continue to follow and update results when the Board finally discloses them.

 

 

Election 2019: Odds & ends & codas

“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.

One of many selfies posted to Facebook by Jim Chambers

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. 

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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.”