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Instant takeaways from the NY-19 Democratic primary

The results of this highly unusual seven-candidate regional primary will take a long time to fully digest, but here are some immediate takeaways:

• As predicted, the projected winner is in line for victory without a solid mandate. Antonio Delgado as of 11:15 pm on Tuesday is ahead with less than 1/4 (22%) of the votes cast, with some results still rolling in.
• Looked at one way, this means that 78% of Dem primary voters go to bed disappointed.
• Gareth Rhodes was in second place as of 11:15 pm. He won Columbia County, with Delgado second.
• Turnout in Columbia was about 30% among registered Dems; turnout districtwide was more like 26%. About 35,000 participated, much better than the less-contested Teachout-Yandik primary in 2016. But that still means almost 100,000 Dems did not bother to make a choice.
• Delgado appears to be a candidate virtually all Dems will get behind, especially with the fever to blunt Trump and the GOP in Congress. His GOP opponent, John Faso, can be expected to go after his heavy funding from by New York City law firms and lobbying connections.
• Erin Collier’s belated attempt to capture the women’s vote fizzled, earning less than 5% despite women making up more than 50% of the electorate.
• Brian Flynn’s campaign underperformed many expectations, coming in 5th slightly behind firebrand ex-CIA agent Jeff Beals as of 11:15 pm.
• Many of the candidates may look tomorrow at Dave Clegg as the spoiler in the race. Clegg garnered the vast majority (over 70%) of his votes in one County, Ulster. His votes in Ulster alone would have put any of the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th contenders into contention with or ahead of Delgado. While this could be said of some others as well, Clegg is the only one whose support came pretty much exclusively from his home turf.
• Thankfully, corporate spook Pat Ryan did not win. (Maybe now he will be liberated to get back to his true passion, getting paid by big business and spy agencies to snoop on union leaders, journalists and activists.)
• Beals, once expected to finish near the bottom of the heap, did a good deal better than expected, most likely due to extensive late exposure via an “This American Life” profile. (One suspects that a large number of likely primary voters are also WAMC listeners.)
• One is left wonder what would have happened in a two- or three-way race between Delgado and one of the other top contenders. He might well have won narrowly, but with so many candidates cannibalizing each others’ support, it is very hard to say whether the best candidate won, or just the best-funded.
• Notably, pretty much none of the candidates had any district-wide profile prior to running, and little if any experience serving in local elected positions. One again wonders what would had happened if, say, someone like New York State Assembly member Didi Barrett had run. Would as many challengers have come forward, if any? That the Dems fielded seven new faces could be a sign of fresh blood, or a symptom of not having much of a bench from which to draw.

Sat., 6-8 pm: Laetitia Hussain installation opens at John Davis Gallery

A new installation of sculpture and paintings by Laetitia Hussain opens Saturday, August 22nd from 6-8 pm in the “barn” at John Davis Gallery.

The gallery is located between 3rd and 4th streets at 362-1/2 Warren Street, and the installation will remain on view until September 20th.

Holcim-Lafarge deal hits rocky patch

Image: Agg-net.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed megamerger of cement giants Holcim and Lafarge has hit a snag, with Holcim’s board rejecting proposed terms from Lafarge.

Lafarge operates a large cement plant on the Hudson River near Ravena and Coeymans, while Holcim appears to have sold its interests in its former Catskill plant, Greenport quarries, and Hudson waterfront properties to smaller construction materials businesses. (This site is not 100% confident that they have fully relinquished all future mining rights or other options on its former Hudson Valley holdings.)

Though the Journal characterizes this news as “cast[ing] serious doubt” on the merger, it seems more of a speedbump than a roadblock. Each company’s stock is down today, Lafarge’s substantially. The boards of these two massive industrial polluters have major incentives to see the merger through to completion, so Holcim’s move looks more like posturing to gain concessions than a deal-breaker.

UPDATE: The New York Times also weighs in on the development.

[h/t Peter Jung, Ken Dow]

NYT features Hudson installations

Above: Installation by Laetitia Hussain

The New York Times has just published a long review plus a slide show of last weekend’s whole-house series of installations by 14 artists in the former Smith family residence on State Street in Hudson. The main article can be read here and the accompanying slideshow is here.

Pete Seeger goes drifting along

Pete Seeger and the Beacon Sloop Club sing Woody Guthrie’s So Long, It’ Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)

 
When opponents of the St. Lawrence Cement plant were accused of being NIMBYs, I’d always invoke Pete Seeger’s line: “That word should be spelled with an I, for Now I Must Be Involved.” A short remembrance is here from his great admirer Alan Chartock of WAMC.

2013 in review

Some of the biggest ups and downs of the year include:

• Biggest Sale of a Small Object: Auctioneer Colin Stair of Stair Galleries in Hudson sold a Tsarist figurine by Fabergé for $5.2 million in October to an undisclosed phone bidder. The figurine was discovered in a Rhinebeck attic.
• Wackiest Would-Be Terrorist: County resident (and Kinderhook Elk) Eric Feight was arrested as part of a harebrained plot to build a ray gun intended to beam radiation into mosques, with the apparent crackpot goal of giving Muslims cancer.
• Most Avant-Garde New Building in an Historic District: Grigori Fatayev built this handsome black box off Willard Place behind the Allen Street home of painter Tony Thompson. The building now serves as Thompson’s studio.
• Most Welcome Threat to Leave the County: Following two catastrophic fires in 2012, and after suing the Town of Ghent for upholding its zoning code in 2013, TCI of NY threatened to move their PCB (mis-) handling business across the river to Coeymans. While many breathed a sigh of relief, reminding TCI to not let the door hit them in the back on the way out, it remains to be seen whether Coeymans will really take on the troubled company. The first weeks of the New Year may provide an answer, as the end date for the postponement of TCI’s lawsuit comes due. The company agreed to drop the suit if they found a new home.
• Liveliest Glimpse of Old Hudson: A  video of people hanging out and partying in the 7th Street park in the early 1990s was posted by YouTuber Satansdarkmetal.
• Most Misleading Local Headline: The Register-Star titled an article about the Board of Supervisors voting to keep on pursuing eminent domain against Meadowgreens owner Carmen Nero: “Board Rejects Eminent Domain Resolution.”
• Most Pandering Local Headline: For its article about a local engineer who allegedly “zoned out” while speeding a Metro-North train into a fatal accident around a curve at Spuyten Duyvil, Columbia Paper editor Parry Teasdale used this headline: “Germantown Engineer Assists Crash Probe.”
• Most Heartening Turnout at a Public Meeting: Hundreds streamed into the Livingston Town Garage for the first public meeting of Livingston Farmers & Families, which is organizing to alter or stop a massive power line project from Upstate to NYC. The meeting featured the political speech of the year, a ripsnorter by farmer and Town Board member Will Yandik, who seems destined for higher office.
• Clumsiest Campaign Rollout: The first major media introduction of newly-minted Hudson Valley resident Sean Eldridge, who is seeking to unseat Congressman Chris Gibson, came in the early Summer pages of the New York Times. But the article mainly provided fodder for his opponent. The Times’ revelations about the cost of Eldridge’s Shokan house, with the implication that he and Facebook zillionnaire Chris Hughes had shopped around for a district to run in, were swiftly followed by an Albany Times-Union exposé of how Eldridge’s campaign was paying area residents $100 a pop to focus group attack messages on Gibson.
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Once Thought to Be More Enlightened: Mistakenly thinking that the press and public had left the room, Hudson Development Corporation director Sheena Salvino denigrated citizens who had come out to support the Community Garden as a “mob.”
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Never Thought to Be More Enlightened: County Economic Development tsar Ken Flood shared his unvarnished opinion with Ghent resident Kevin Delahanty that “restaurants in Hudson and Chatham ... don’t provide good jobs except for the owners.”
• Worthiest Ideas Gathering Dust on Some Politician’s Shelf: In July, the Columbia County Emergency Management Council proposed a series of sensible, forward-thinking guidelines to prevent major disasters. Little or nothing has been heard about their recommendations in the six months since.
• Ugliest Use of Social Media by an Elected Official: Ghent Town Board member Richard Sardo opined in a Facebook post that MSNBC host (and Berkshire County resident) Rachel Maddow “looks very much like an ugly man.” Sardo, who coupled this assessment of Maddow’s looks with his barely-disguised hots for FOX anchor Megyn Kelly, badly lost his Tea Party bid for Town Supervisor against Republican Mike Benvenuto.
• Most Gratifying Told ’Ya So: The Valley Alliance was vindicated as the City of Hudson glumly acknowledged the group’s contention that the people, not Holcim, already owned 4.4 acres along the Waterfront. Research by the Alliance demonstrated that the riverfront lands had been improperly sold in the early 1980s without State approval.
• Least Merited Award: Hudson Phoenix president John Tonelli was given the Chamber of Commerce’s “Businessperson of the Year” award in June, just months after announcing the arrival of his plastics extrusion business. But Phoenix seemingly never made any hires, and according to a Chamber source the company had “ceased operations” by November.
• Least Festive Street Fest: A car show put on by American Glory’s Joe Fierro, with little or no notification to neighbors, shut down the 300 block of Warren Street on a Spring Saturday, but attracted little interest.
• Most Hilarious Banter Between Star Chefs: A New York Magazine article about the opening of Fish & Game featured this exchange between the restaurants’ principals, Zak Pelaccio and Jori Jayne Emde:

  Foraging for ingredients turns out to have its limitations. Before long, Pelaccio suggests we give up the mushroom hunt. Emde reluctantly agrees. “I mean, I can smell mushrooms though,” she says, then tells me about recently sniffing her way to ramps. “Zak calls me a hound dog.” She gives an animalistic howl. “It’s weird, that’s the sound I make when we’re having sex.”
  
  “It boosts my self-esteem,” says Pelaccio.
  
  “Like you need it,” she returns.
  
  “We always need it,” Pelaccio says.

• Least Effective Tool for Promoting Business: In March, the Columbia County Industrial Develpment Agency (IDA) had to revoke its Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) plan for fish-breeder Local Ocean, as the company had gone into default. Yet another past Chamber award-winner, the company announced its closing in August.
• Lamest Campaign by a Candidate Claiming to be a Skilled Organizer: Hudson’s Victor Mendolia garnered the lowest number of votes of any mayoral candidate in a two-person race in recent memory, possibly in City history. The former City Democratic chair lost his campaign manager in the process of losing to incumbent Bill Hallenbeck, despite Democrats having a massive registration advantage over Republicans, and despite Hallenbeck himself earning fewer votes than his first run. Turnout was almost half of Hudson elections of a decade ago, despite the number of registered voters staying the same. As of August, Mendolia had spent more on restaurant dinners than his campaign had banked up for the Fall campaign.
• Most Important Unread Mail: Government records uncovered by Ghent resident Patti Matheney revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had warned local emergency officials of the presence of highly-explosive sodium in the TCI building. But the warning apparently went unheeded, contributing (along with egregious negligence by the company itself) to some 12-15 explosions when water was dumped on the company’s smoldering building. Shamelessly, TCI attorney Bill Better shamelessly tried to use this revelation to deflect responsibility from his client.
• Most Confusing Campaign Signage: Road signs for the Taghkanic Republican slate seemed to deliberately conflate 20something candidate Ryan Skoda with his much better-known father, farmer (and sitting Town Board member) Richard Skoda.
• Most Concerted Effort to Deny the Obvious: Hudson City Attorney Cheryl Roberts, Alderman Cappy Pierro, Council President Don Moore, and attorney Giff Whitbeck repeatedly attempted to deny that Standard Oil had occupied a key piece of the Hudson Waterfront, even after clear evidence was brought forth to prove it. Roberts, who had incorrectly identified the Standard Oil location, and lectured citizens about being “completely wrong,” even wondered aloud whether oil tanks existed in the 1880s. Moore similarly wagged his finger at the public about “being careful.” Eventually, the Gang of Four could not help acknowleding their mistake, brushing it off with barely a shrug. (Their motivation appeared to be a desire to avoid any investigation into contamination.)
• Most Selfish Bogarting of Scarce Public Services: The new Barlow Hotel somehow convinced the City of Hudson to not only build an awning over the sidewalk, but also to grant the business exclusive use of two parking spaces in the 500 block of Warren, ostensibly for loading and unloading of baggage. The request was granted despite the block being the the busiest in Hudson, and there being a vast public parking lot immediately behind the hotel. (This frequent perambulator of that part of the street has yet to see a single guest using the two much-needed spaces for their intended purpose.) The City has not clarified what the criteria are for securing one’s own private parking spaces, but no doubt others would love to get the same special treatment.
• Least Dignified Post-Election Email: Claverack resident Chris Lastovicka broke with American election tradition in trashing the Town’s voters in the wake of her partner’s loss of her Supervisor seat. Incumbent Robin Andrews lost by 20 votes to Republican Kippy Weigelt. Lastovicka blamed weekenders whom she claimed did not turn in enough absentee ballots—despite Andrews picking up 60 votes from absentees. No blame was assigned to the candidate herself for failing to take a stand on issues such as TCI or the County Airport, or for opposing both an increase in the State minimum wage and common sense gun regulations.
• Most Blatant Media Conflict of Interest: Community radio station WGXC had scheduled an interview with recently-departed Mendolia campaign manager Clay Laugier. But the interview on the @Issue show was abruptly canceled without explanation—the most obvious being that Laugier was likely to be critical of Mendolia—a co-host of the show, on leave at the time.
• Two Most Pleasant Out-of-County Finds of the Year: Discovering that Dope Jams Records of Brooklyn had reopened in Oak Hill (Greene County) and stumbling upon an utterly authentic northern Chinese restaurant in Wappingers Falls.
• Most Missed Bar, Bar Owner, and Bar Patron: 2013 brought the sad demise of the Iron Horse bar, its owner Frank Martino, and one of its most loyal patrons—former Hudson Police Commissioner Jeff “Sweeps” Bagnall. Join me in pouring one out tonight, New Year’s Eve, for all three.

Country Matters

Country Living magazine has posted a list of 50 places they think are must-visits in the Hudson Valley at this link; their more detailed version is here.

Storm reports and outage maps

You can check the status of your power (and possible restoration times) at the links below:

NYSEG Outage Viewer | National Grid Power Outage Map

As of 10:30 pm, NYSEG shows over 900 customers without power, and National Grid shows over 3,000. Of those with the latter service, Germantown, Livingston and Taghkanic appear to have the most outages.

The storm at this point has an erratic, volatile feel to it. For a half-hour this evening, it was quiet and dry, and stars could be seen through breaks in the rapidly-moving clouds overhead.

Here are some of the tips that have come in so far, but at this point they are too numerous to mention:

• Power is out in the Glenco Mills area as of 8 pm, with sparks seen flying off a pole on Old Route 82;
• A downed tree and power line closed Route 22 in Hillsdale near Route 21 around 5 pm, according to a Philmont resident; UPDATE: Officials say 22 is back open;
• Multiple trees down on Route 28 have knocked power out in parts of Kinderhook, according to Columbia County 911.
• Power went out around Churchtown a bit before 9 pm;
• On Facebook, Columbia County 911 reported the closure around 11:30 pm of Route 9 between County Route 10 and Maple Lane in Livingston, due to “several power poles down,” saying that this “will be an extended closure.”

If you have storm-related news, pictures or alerts, feel free to post them below in comments, or email [email protected] ... Lastly, this NOAA Flash animation of the storm’s water vapor loop is pretty amazing.

UPDATE: As of Tuesday morning, it's breezy but calm and mostly dry here in Taghkanic. Seems we were mostly spared.

Observing TCI

It’s not online (yet), but a comprehensive article by Tracy Frisch about the TCI of NY fire appears in the new print edition of The Hill Country Observer. In addition to gathering many key details of the August 1st inferno (including several mentions of this site), Frisch includes an second piece addressing TCI’s track record in Newburgh, Athens and Ghent.

The Observer is distributed free and can be found in many coffee and lunch places, and other around the region. To find a copy, a list of their distribution points is posted here.

Bacon Fest: sucks if you felt burned

The promoters of Bacon Fest are offering an apology following widespread complaints about last weekend’s first-time event in Hudson. “We apologize if we inadvertently left people feeling disappointed. That sucks and we are sorry,” says the unattributed statement on the event’s website. 

Many attendees who did not arrive at the event’s 9 am opening bell did not get much if any charred pig fat, apparently due to organizers and exhibitors underestimating popular demand.

“Lots of people came to Bacon Fest and didn’t get any bacon,” confessed one of the judges on his blog.

After boasting that 3,000 people attended—1,000 for free after the bacon ran out within a matter of hours—and that $3,000 was raised for charity, and that “the streets of Hudson were overflowing with people, most of them wearing bacon t-shirts,” Bacon Fest gets around to expressing its regrets:

“It was never our intention to shortchange anyone on food or fun. Where we exceeded in motivation, enthusiasm and dedication, we fell short on experience. We know better now, and from these mistakes we will build a better executed festival for next year.”

(Note: Hudson-Catskill Newspapers reported attendance in the “hundreds.”)

Looking on the bright side, event organizers further posit that “it was an unintended compliment to the day that festival goers, unhappy with the state of the event, took to the streets to search out other food options and poured into the businesses of Hudson, many for the first time ever.”

But “all that being said,” the statement continues, “the day was not a total success.” Indeed, the one-day festival has been getting raked over the coals on its Facebook page...

• “What a disappointment... no bacon smell and some of the vendors didn't even have bacon.”


• “I was very disappointed in this festival. I will not attend again. Troy’s Pig Out is much more worth the trip than Hudson. There is NO cover charge and goes for two days without running out of food or Bacon.”


• “Very disappointed that when I was in line at 1:00 with advanced tickets , was only offered a 50% refund if we entered.”


• We showed up at 10am and were disapointed by the size of the event for the $10 entrance fee. We left and went to the Chatham Fair which was HUGE and fun. I run an event for 1,000 people and use the same tent company and your tent was a 1/4 of the size of our tent. It's such a beautiful location and I expected so much more.”
  


• “Still so angry over this.”

... and in the comments on the Albany Times-Union’s various food blog posts:

• Personally, I think that would be a great release for a public relations professor to take and give to a class to rip apart.


• This was a complete waste of time; not enough vendors, not enough samples, not enough to make me go back again.
  


• We went to the garlic fest on Saturday, in Bennington. That was AWESOME! Note to baconfest organizers: just copy them.  

Vowing to return, Bacon Fest says that “we know better now, and from these mistakes we will build a better executed festival for next year” to continue their stated goal of “work[ing] together to build a better world, especially one fueled by the power of bacon... never underestimate the power of bacon.” *Grunt.*

Gore Vidal, the Valley’s first newcomer

Gore Vidal, upstate at Edgewater

Gore Vidal bought a house upstate for $16,000 in 1946—a full 62 years ago. His Barrytown home, called Edgewater, is one of the only Hudson Valley mansions located on the west side of the railroad tracks. (It’s now owned by the financier and historic preservationist Dick Jenrette, who purchased it from him in 1969 for $125,000.)

Considering that the Hudson Valley seems to get rediscovered every 10 years or so, it’s tempting to view Vidal as the original “newcomer,” except that he was born at West Point. But apart from his birthplace, Vidal must have come across to his new neighbors on the River as the ultimate City interloper. A novelist, critic, playwright, occasional actor, Army veteran, quipster and quixotic political candidate, Vidal was also a tart-tongued tastemaker: contrarian, iconoclastic, left-wing, blue-blooded and promiscuously bisexual to boot. (He claimed a tally of conquests that rivals Wilt Chamberlain’s.)

Theatrically immodest, Vidal said that “There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.” He was much more out of the British mold of journalist/authors, cultivating high-profile feuds (with Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Charlton Heston, et al.) both out of personal conviction and also to milk their publicity value.

Unlike his sparkling earlier essays, Vidal’s later work could feel a bit overly-vehement and repetitive, even when one agreed with his politics. Though celebrated as a supreme stylist, the prose of his well-known historical novels is less than fluid, though still enjoyable for their imaginative leaps, bordering on outright fabications—such as his attempt to rehabilitate Aaron Burr, at the expense of Hamilton and Jefferson. More purely enjoyable is lighter fiction, such as Kalki (about a hapless would-be savior arriving on earth near the end of the world). His late-life cameos on TV and film, from The Simpsons to Gattaca, made better use of a persona that was long-since established, and by his own admission a relic of a different time in American history.

Intellectually and socially elite, Vidal was at the same time a political populist, writing that “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

Of his time in the Valley, Vidal wrote:

When a writer moves into the house that he most wants or needs, the result is often a sudden release of new energy. Henry James's move to Lamb House produced The Wings of the Dove, Somerset Maugham's move to Villa Mauresque resulted in his only satisfactory novel, Cakes and Ale. In my case, there was a burst of energy and imagination of a sort not accessible to me before. Overnight—the result of the octagonal library?”I jettisoned what I called ‘the na­tional manner,' the gray, slow realism of most American writing, not to mention the strict absence of wit and color...

According to The Poughkeepsie Journal, the actress Joanne Woodward told Vidal he “never should have sold that house,” and that the writer “dreamed” all the remainder of his life of moving back.

Saturday • 1 pm • Hudson

Links: Facebook event page | Native Hill tumblr page | Bing Map