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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.

 

 

Columbia County voting today by party

Below is a table of how voter turnout today in Columbia County is breaking down so far by party affiliation—on the machines at polling places, as of 5 pm.

This does not include early voting, which reportedly had been breaking heavily Democratic.

This was distilled by this site from raw data from the Board of Elections.

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.”

 

Czajka vs. Keeler: The challenger has issues (Part II)

THE INTERVIEWS

Having been asked by both District Attorney Paul Czajka and his challenger Eugene Keeler to support their campaigns, this site sat down for interviews with the two men.

Each interview was followed by extensive follow-up by email and direct message. This interviewer’s more personal take on the candidates appeared in Part I of this series.

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Gene Keeler

In the back room of Wunderbar in Hudson, Keeler began with a barked instruction: Let me talk first—no interruptions!

He proceeded to deliver a 10-minute monologue, consisting of a nearly-verbatim recitation of policy positions already posted at his website, keelerforda.com.

As the interview progressed, Keeler frequently wanted to take his comments off the record, for the purpose of inserting negative information about Czajka into this report without being held accountable for it—but sometimes forgetting whether he was on-record or off-.

By contrast, the conversation with Czajka began as just that: an actual conversation, at a public table outside Otto’s Market in Germantown. The tone was easygoing and open, and not limited to the November election. The incumbent D.A. made no demands, and did not seek to impose limitations on the back-and-forth.

At one point, an unsuccessful Democratic 2015 candidate for Town Board approached, and made an inartful show of neither recognizing Czajka nor knowing how to pronounce his name once introduced. (It’s CHAI-KAH). The Democrat made several other attempts to needle the D.A., without success. Drawing perhaps on his experience as a judge, Czajka remained smiling and even-keeled throughout, and let the person have his say.

Keeler for his part kept saying that he was running a “positive campaign,” dropping hints of instructions from the County Democratic Committee to “not go negative this time.” His failed 2011 campaign against Czajka led to a scathing rebuke from The Columbia Paper for deploying “exaggerations and innuendo to tarnish his opponent,” and in theory both Keeler and the Dems would like to avoid another scolding.

Nevertheless (as discussed in an earlier report) Keeler followed the session with several salvos of negative “opposition research” about Czajka over the subsequent days and weeks. Then, in a troubling interview with the Register-Star’s Amanda Purcell last week, Keeler abandoned all pretense of staying positive by reiterating many of his discredited 2011 attacks.

He also admitting that he had been laundering campaign information via a career criminal who is currently being prosecuted for stealing from an elderly man.

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This time around, Keeler’s ostensible focus is on bringing compassion and “reform” to the D.A.’s office. Citing his background as a social worker, he’s cobbled together a set of ideas from theorists around the country into a package of what he referred to as “collaborative justice decision-making.”

Keeler heatedly argues instead for a “decision-making system which is not top-down, arbitrary and driven by one person.” Believing that everyone has “unconscious biases,” he distrusts the idea of a prosecutor exercising his own best judgement. At Wunderbar, he contended that the current D.A.’s vaunted 90% conviction rate “does not actually protect victims or make the county safer,” and broadly alleged, without proof, that partisan and personal allegiances influence who gets prosecuted.

In place of the current system, Keeler proposes a new form of “community input on who does and doesn’t got to prison.” To achieve these goals, Keeler proposes to convene a group of “professionals from the community” to advise the D.A. “on policy procedures” and actual cases. This committee would be drawn, he said, from people serving in “nonprofits, agencies, church groups, businesses…”

Apparently, this committee would meet “to knock around the cases” even before any grand jury was convened, any jurors were selected, and long before any trial occurred—in effect pre-empting the longstanding legal procedures designed to winnow out weak cases.

Czajka’s reaction to this complicated proposal was simple: Even if he wanted to implement such a plan, he does not believe it would be Constitutional for a District Attorney “to delegate his decision-making authority” in that manner. An appointed panel would be open to the charge, he said, that “nobody voted for them.” He also would have serious concerns about confidentiality, if law enforcement or prosecutors were to share certain types of information about suspects who had not even been indicted with such a committee.

Another common-sense concern—which Keeler brushed aside—could arise from transplanting experimental programs from major cities in places like California to vastly smraller rural communities like Columbia County. Namely: It could prove impossible to assemble a standing panel of “professional” community members uninfluenced by their own allegiances to local political, economic, institutional, religious and other interests.

Allegations of inappropriate personal influence and favoritism would proliferate, as the committee’s decisions on who to prosecute and who not to prosecute invariably could be ascribed to personal connections or factionalism. The very point of grand juries and jury selection is to randomize these selections, and to vet potential jurors for obvious conflicts or unsuitability.

A hand-picked, standing panel such as Keeler proposes would be the opposite of random and neutral. It seems either an ironic choice for a candidate who has so often railed against cronyism; or else just one he has not fully thought through.

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Paul Czajka

On the topic of kinder and gentler prosecutors, Czajka highlights his experience with the County’s opioid crisis, and the endorsement of Beth Schuster, executive director of Twin County Recovery Services. Schuster touted Czajka’s “compassion and understanding,” saying that he “has demonstrated respect and support for those impacted by addiction and the family members who care for them.”

Czajka comes across as reflective, and not the least bit defensive, about his career as both a D.A. and judge.

Before election to County office, that career also included volunteering to serve in the Peace Corps, representing farmers with the USDA, working as Germantown’s town attorney, and representing the Southern Columbia Ambulance Squad pro bono.

He says that he’s left aside his more youthful ideas from 35 years ago of “changing the world” and just tries to take the thousands of cases he sees “one at a time.” 

He does express regret about “lock-’em-up” attitudes taken in the past, for example in regard to illegal drugs. He readily admits that while he was “good at” securing drug convictions, this approach did not work in the long run.

For those cases which do not result in convictions, Czajka makes no excuses, and says the buck stops with him. On principle he considers himself ultimately responsible for the outcome of every case handled by his office. He vows that he will never throw staff or law enforcement under the bus, even if doing so might save face for himself. The D.A.’s job, he adds, is as much a management position as a prosecutorial one.

The topic of shouldering blame has cropped up in each of Keeler’s attempts to regain the office he held for one term in the 1980s. He did not run for re-election in 1988 after the Wyley Gates case drew national attention, but resulted only in conspiracy convictions, rather than guilty verdicts for the four murders. (Czajka—who was briefly assigned to represent Gates “for a minute” before the accused obtained his own counsel—declined to comment on it.)

In a letter reproduced on Keeler’s website, Columbia County Democratic Committee chair Keith Kanaga sought to deflect blame for the Gates verdict on “shoddy police work.” In a 1988 profile, however, Keeler conceded to The Albany Times-Union that “he will take the verdicts ’to my grave.’”

Keeler also expressed regrets at the time that the case lost him fees from his side business as a real estate attorney. He complained to the T-U that “the Gates trial cost him $15,000 in personal business,” asking about himself in the third person: “If you were buying a house during the Gates trial, would you call Gene Keeler?”

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Far more recent, and far more damaging than the Gates trial for Keeler were his antics during the 2011 campaign. 

In that race, Keeler’s habit of attacking opponents defined his candidacy, and not for the better. In a blistering editorial, The Columbia Paper’s Parry Teasdale—mildly liberal, and liberally mild—excoriated Keeler for his campaign conduct.

Endorsing Czajka, Teasdale blasted the Democrat’s publication of a tabloid newspaper devoted collecting and repeating every knock on and rumor ever spread about Czajka. Referring to the paper as “political trash,” Teasdale said that Keeler’s reliance on “exaggerations and innuendo” left his campaign “without a shred of credibility.”

After losing that race, one might have expected Keeler to give up trying to retake his old office from more than 30 years ago—or, at least, given up using the same tactics. As detailed in Part I, Keeler gave up all pretense of running a “positive campaign” last weeks after his bizarre Register-Star interview was published.

And inexplicably, the County Democrats have turned yet again to the same candidate, which calls to mind Einstein’s remark about the insanity of expecting a different result from the same approach.

HANDICAPPING TUESDAY

So why would Keeler and the Columbia Dems expect a different result this time around?

The answers seems to be that (a) they are hoping a tidal wave disgust with Trump will lift all Democratic boats, and anyway (b) they didn’t really to find anyone to run, and so the nomination was Keeler’s for the taking.]

The Dem’s inability to find—or lack of interest in finding—someone else to run suggests either a lack of imagination, or a lack of a bench, or a lack of energy, or all three.

But unlike a generation ago, Democrats now have the highest enrollment of any party in Columbia County. Voters here have gone solidly for national candidates like Obama and (Hillary) Clinton.

And rage against the Trump administration has many more voters saying they’ll “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” In campaign emails and conversation, Czajka himself notes that more new Democrats have registered to vote locally than his margin of victory in the 2011 campaign. On the other hand, voters have also returned familiar Republicans to offices such as County Sheriff and Clerk repeatedly in years between Federal elections.

Meanwhile, though some Yellow Dog Democrats locally take the position that anyone who endorses a Republican is some kind of traitor to the cause, this lens appears to be a selective one. 

For example, the Chatham Democrats are running a Republican for Supervisor, even as the Republicans run an independent—with no public backlash from the County Democratic establishment. As much as Trump motivated Democrats in the midterm Federal elections, this may be an election cycle which features more people splitting their tickets, casting vote for the person, not the party.

Some Democratic candidates on Town tickets express private concerns that the wave of new Dem enrollment for the Delgado-Faso race in 2018 may not translate to similar results in 2019. They report that many 2018 registrants lack much interest in down-ticket local elections. Two candidates expressed fears that by sending a weak challenger like Keeler against Czajka, their own chances will be diminished, as the countywide race gives the GOP a way to motivate their base.

There is also the small problem of Keeler lacking True Blue bona fides. While he has held recent fundraisers for Columbia Democrats, he ran previously as a Republican in Rensselaer County, and ran for various offices as a member of the Independence Party. Czajka, though strongly identified as a Republican, still likes to mention that his mother was a Democratic Committeeman. He has also touted the endorsement of various Democratic attorneys, plus Democratic Supervisors Art Bassin and Ray Staats.

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Teasdale of the Columbia Paper—not registered in any party himself, but married to a Democrat, and generally seen as left-leaning—once again endorses Czajka over Keeler, as he did in 2011.

Alluding to Keeler’s long absence from the courtroom, Teasdale writes that “There is only one prosecutor seeking the job of Columbia County district attorney this year. He is Paul Czajka. He has served the county admirably for decades. He is poised to continue applying the law with an openness to new ideas and he remains unwavering in his determination to protect the people whose lives depend on the office he holds.”

Given the professionalism and equanimity Czajka displayed in his interview with this site, coupled with the dishonesty that Keeler showed in his own, it is easy to agree.

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Part III: A final personal note and coda to the Czajka-Keeler race will appear on Monday.

Czajka vs. Keeler: It’s not a close choice (Part I)

 

Left: Paul Czajka Right: Gene Keeler Source: Candidate websites

 

Both the incumbent District Attorney Paul Czajka and his challenger, Gene Keeler, asked for my support in this Fall’s elections.

Having known both candidates for more years than I can count, this put me in kind of a sticky position.

But had I not known both as friends, this would not be a difficult choice. Before explaining that choice, and what occurred during my interviews with each, it’s worth saying a bit more about those relationships, and sketching a portrait of each of the men who would be D.A.

JUDGEMENT, BOOKS & COVERS

Until Melino’s pub in Hudson closed earlier this month, I could rely on running into Gene having a solitary beer just before kickoff of the 1 pm football games, looking for a political conversation. Gene would buy me a Budweiser draft, then bend my ear about his single topic of conversation—namely, his longstanding claims about corruption in Columbia County government. Having worked as an activist against the status quo for many years, I guess I made a likely audience.

Invariably, Gene would have his eyeglasses up on his forehead, secured behind his neck with a cord. When he stood up, one of the tails of his shirt might be untucked. At some point, he’d produce a pack of dogeared index cards from his breast pocket—held together with rubber bands, where he jots down reminders to himself.

Though Gene has recently bowed to the wishes of the Columbia County Democratic Committee, and courted endorsements from establishment figures, in conversation over the years he has often been a heated critic of the party’s lack of effectiveness. Indeed, Gene has run at times as a Republican, and once sought to take over the County Independence Party leadership. For this campaign, however, he seems keen to hew to the party line, at least as much as his galvanic nature will allow it.

Likewise, I often bump into Paul at the Bell’s Pond supermarket, or in Hudson restaurants, where he is often accompanied by a jovial band of staff members. No matter the venue, he looks as if he walked off the office set of Mad Men: neatly attired like an advertising executive in a gray or blue suit, starched shirt, classic tie and, in certain weather, an oldschool men’s hat. He always appears to have visited a barber within the past 10 days, as men used to do.

Paul has been unflaggingly polite, genial, and open to conversation with me—despite some pretty unforgivable behavior toward him on my part some 15 years ago. (More on that in Part II.) He has interests which range well beyond the law, for example once lending me a copy of Saul Bellow’s terrific novel Henderson the Rain King, written while he was teaching at Bard. He also has an affinity for local political history, for which he has a remarkable memory. As a moderate Republican, he likes to mention that his mother was a Democratic committeeman.

I have seen Paul stay cool, unflappable and smiling when taken to task by people who had few facts or context to back up their verbal assaults on him.

QUALITIES & QUALIFICATIONS

Appearances shouldn’t matter. I’d be more likely to vote in a primary for Bernie Sanders, with his unkempt hair and raspy Brooklyn accent, than the more conventionally “presentable” Joe Biden. I myself own only one comb, which I can’t find at the moment... Most of my cheap Wrangler pants have tears in them from working outdoors, or feature splotches of housepaint.

But I’m not aiming to be a District Attorney. And for the books of Keeler and Czajka, their demeanors and deportment do seem to mirror their personalities. Gene struggles to stay kempt, calm and collected. Meanwhile, Paul gives the impression that his neat, orderly and upbeat bearing does reflect his habits of mind. Mens sana in corpore sano, as the saying goes.

By his own admission, Gene has not practiced law in nearly 5 years. (His detractors claim he has not set foot in a courtroom in 10.) As seen in a recent Register-Star interview, and also my own conversations with him, straightforward journalistic questions which he does not want to hear cause him to get annoyed and rattled—far more easily than is wise for a potential prosecutor.

Gene’s “reform” proposals, no matter how well-intentioned, feel half-baked and even opportunistic. When pressed, he falls back on his background as a social worker. But issues of social and racial justice took a backseat in his previous campaigns against Paul and former D.A. Beth Cozzolino—both opponents coming in for thunderous abuse of their characters.

There is indeed a need for more compassionate law enforcement and justice all across our country. But achieving these goals may require a less tendentious messenger than the Democratic nominee for D.A.. The longer we talked, the more Gene’s inability to stick to a script, let alone basic principles, emerged. Having waged a disastrously negative campaign against Paul in 2011, he will insist he is staying positive this time… but will lay right back down in the gutter with negative attacks only minutes later. 

Worse than that: Over the course of a month, I could not help but realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my friend Gene had lied to my face—more than once. In my own relationships, the one fatal quality a person can display is conscious dishonesty. Once someone lies to you, you can never trust them again, even if they apologize (which Gene hasn’t).

For those dispensing justice, lying should be even more unpardonable.

ENDORSEMENT: PAUL CZAJKA FOR D.A.

Now, I seldom vote for any Republican, unless the Democrat is unusually unfit for office. Even a moderate Republican can be objectionable, to the extent that they enable their lunatic, right-wing peers in the party. There are, however, exceptions. 

For example, in 1999 I assisted the moderate Republican Kenny Cranna in his successful campaign for Hudson Mayor against Cappy Pierro, because the Hudson Dems had drifted to the right of Strom Thurmond. Cranna proved a big disappointment. But I don’t regret at all keeping the Pierro gang out of City Hall for a term. And some of Cranna’s running mates, such as since-deceased Treasurer Kevin Walsh, did some real good in cleaning up the City’s disastrously messy finances and giving Hudson a breather from the Scalera circus.

Moreover, this endorsement is not merely against Gene’s non-starter of a candidacy. It also recognizes that Paul is a sound, competent choice. As will be discussed in Part II, he has expressed regrets about the stern “law and order” approach of his early years as D.A. and as a judge. He seems to have moderated many of his positions and practices, except when it concerns the most vile crimes, such as child molestation. He takes a constructive and less punitive approach to pressing issues, such as the local opiod crisis. And he doesn’t fly off the handle when opponents like Keeler (or his surrogates) tar him with outlandish accusations.

Based on my interview, I have reason to believe that Paul is more than capable of staying independent from Republican orthodoxy and allegiances, and will side with the law over rank partisanship. Today, he seems the kind of person who would gladly and openly sit down with those who believe that the current ”system” is slanted against them, and actually take stock of their concerns.

Overall, Paul Czajka has the experience, skills and most of all the right temperament to do the job professionally. As such, having listened to and quizzed both candidates about their intentions, and thought long and hard about it, I’ll be voting for Paul in November. 

PART II of this series will delve journalistically into the candidates, their positions, and their credibility, and will refer henceforth to both by their last names.

Legal ethics expert calls D.A. candidate’s actions “totally unethical” and “bizarre”

 

Register-Star report undermines Keeler’s interview claims

 

This site has sat down with both incumbent Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka and challenger Gene Keeler for interviews about their November election race. The resulting article had been slated to appear this week.

However, a report this morning in The Register-Star bears immediate discussion, since Keeler’s comments to reporter Amanda Purcell strongly suggest that the Democratic candidate has been less than honest in his assertions to this site.

The Register report also contains a stunning admission from Keeler that if elected, he would have to recuse himself from the prosecution of someone he previously called “a con man,” due to his own attempts to enlist that person to aid his campaign.

A Fordham legal ethics professor interviewed by Purcell agrees that Keeler’s actions are extremely troubling, describing the situation as “shocking” and “bizarre.”

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In his interview with this site, Keeler was given an opportunity to respond to repeated assertions by detractors that he has been collaborating with Stockport’s Jeffrey Yeh.

In an investigative report last summer by Roger Hannigan Gilson in The Other Hudson Valley, for which this site’s author contributed some background research, Yeh was described as having a “criminal career” which

“stretches back at least 26 years. Yeh has been charged with at least 26 crimes by police agencies, including at least 18 felonies. He has been sentenced to incarceration at least five times.

“The charges documented tend to revolve around theft, identity theft, electronic surveillance and possessing forged financial documents. Many of his victims were known to him, such as individuals who employed him, or people he knew socially.“

Visibly upset by a question about any potential connection between Yeh and his campaign, Keeler stood up and thundered “Absolutely not!” 

Keeler then characterized Yeh as “a con man.” Several days later, he attempted to move this outburst off-the-record, though he had not asked in advance for it to be treated as such.

But now, in Purcell‘s candidate profiles for The Register-Star, Keeler calls his own veracity into question by stating the precise opposite. Rather than “absolutely not” in communication with that “con man,” Keeler told the paper on Thursday:

“he has been in communication with Jeffrey Yeh, who was indicted by a Columbia County grand jury in June on several felony charges related to alleged credit card theft. Yeh’s trial is scheduled to begin in January, after the winning candidate in the Nov. 5 election takes office.”

Keeler now admits to Purcell that he circulated negative information about Czajka to Yeh, which Yeh then published on his Facebook group. That page routinely features often salacious, usually anonymous and almost entirely unsubstantiated allegations about County law enforcement and judicial figures.

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Purcell smartly reached out to an independent legal ethics expert, Fordham Law professor James Cohen for an an outside view of the situation.

Cohen characterizes Keeler’s conflict of interest as “a breach of staggering proportion... It is totally unethical that an attorney and candidate for DA would speak to a defendant under criminal indictment.”

Keeler then attempts to brush off the formerly-denied association with Yeh as just “entertainment.” (He similarly told this site that he found Yeh’s antics “entertaining.”) Seeming to realize he may have gone too far, Keeler adds: “Do I have a problem about what [Yeh] says or does, libel and all that? Yes, there are issues there.”

When pressed by this site about why he had appeared to post in threads or like incendiary messages on Yeh’s controversial page, Keeler blamed his “fat fingar [sic].”

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On September 13th, this site asked Keeler in writing: “If you are elected D.A, is there  any conflict of interest or prior relationship which would prevent you from continuing the existing cases against Yeh begun under Czajka?” Keeler responded:

“I have no relationship with him that would prevent me from being involved with a criminal procedure if he was a witness or defendant.”

But now readers learn from The Register-Star interview that if elected, Keeler does in fact plan to recuse himself from continuing Yeh’s prosecution:

“Keeler intends to recuse himself from the case on his first day in office, if elected, and ask the judge to appoint a special prosecutor from outside the county.”

So Keeler has absolutely nothing to do with that con man... and no reason to recuse himself from his prosecution... Except when he does.

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Keeler also insisted repeatedly in his September interview, and in subsequent direct messages, that he is “running a positive campaign.”

Both Keeler himself and sources within the Democratic Party have indicated that they did not want him engaging in the type of attacks which derailed his previous campaign.

Yet in the Register-Star article, Keeler launches a fusillade of unsubstantiated attacks, much like those of the “con man” he finds entertaining. Alleging “corruption” between the D.A.’s office and law enforcement, Keeler claims that his opponent has been “doing favors” such as “taking care of DWI records for years — reductions and disappearing cases.”

Pressed by Purcell “to produce names, Keeler did not and generalized by saying, ‘They’re police officers, former police officers. They’re everybody.’”

Leaving aside Keeler’s willingness to make extremely serious accusations without backing them up, at the very best he appears to have been less than committed to his pledge to “stay positive.”

Given that today’s political campaigns almost always involve some negative campaigning, readers might wonder why Keeler was straining so hard to keep things positive. The answer lies in his previous run for D.A., in 2011, when he published a faux-tabloid newspaper full of similarly-inflammatory material.

That Fall, the Columbia Paper’s Parry Teasdale raked Keeler over the coals for making scurrilous and unproven accusations. Teasdale lambasted the  “flimsiness of his evidence,” along with “his exaggerations and innuendo,” concluding that his antics had left his campaign with “not a shred of credibility.”

It seems history is repeating itself.

Keeler camp ducks D.A. debate

 

Left: Democratic candidate for D.A. Gene Keeler. Right: Incumbent D.A. Paul Czajka. Sources: Greenport Democratic Committee, Czajka for DA web page

 

EDITORIAL NOTE: This site has interviewed both District Attorney candidates at length, and will soon publish a short series examining the race. Some limited material from those upcoming articles is included below as it pertains to this breaking news.

 

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In politics, it’s typically the incumbent who dodges calls for a candidate debate. There’s often no upside for the front-runner to give a challenger an opportunity to catch up.

 

Such refusals can backfire, as when senior House member Joe Crowley sent a surrogate to debate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who then whupped him in the 2018 Bronx primary. But unless the race is very close, it’s usual for the incumbent to say no, and for the challenger to cry foul at the refusal.

 

Here in the upside-down world of Columbia County elections, the “usual” situation has been oddly reversed: Democratic Party chair Keith Kanaga has refused a request from GOP chair Greg Fingar for their District Attorney candidates to debate.

 

Keeler would appear to have every reason to want and need a debate. Keeler served a lone term as D.A. way back in the 1980s—but did not run for re-election after his failure to put away Wiley Gates for murdering four people, including three family members in Kinderhook. (Convicted instead on lesser charges of conspiracy, Gates today is a free man, reportedly living under a new name.)

 

Keeler has since tried but failed repeatedly to regain his old job, losing for example in 2007 to Beth Cozzolino, and to current D.A. Paul Czajka in 2011. Keeler and Czajka debated that year. And in theory, his campaign should want another debate. Keeler could use the opportunity to showcase what he claims is a change of message, from one of relentlessly attacking his opponents to what he calls a “positive campaign” centered on social justice and “reform.” With Czajka the presumptive front-runner, Keeler also appears to be badly in need of one of those “gotcha” moments which debates sometimes generate.

 

Nevertheless, in an October 11th email responding to the Republican call for debate, Kanaga said that “we see no reason to accept this invitation,” citing “personal attacks on Gene Keeler on Facebook and in his advertising.”

That reason seems doubly ironic, given that in the 2011 campaign, Czajka willingly debated Keeler despite the Dem’s publication of an outlandish faux-tabloid newspaper, which consisted almost entirely of vicious attacks on his opponent’s character. (Keeler had similarly attacked his previous opponent, Beth Cozzolino, keeping these up even after he lost the November 2007 election.)

Keeler’s tabloid mailer prompted even the normally mild-mannered Parry Teasdale of The Columbia Paper to endorse Czajka, denouncing Keeler’s tactics as “political trash talk” which left his campaign “with not a shred of credibility.”

Prior to the debate decision, when asked via text message if he would participate, Keeler gave an evasive (and somewhat illiterate answer) about “waiting for a campaign decision fingar sent kanaga a request for a debate.” When this reporter suggested it would be fascinating to listen in on a back-and-forth between Fingar and Kanaga, Keeler misunderstood the suggestion and blew up: “Do you know they have ignored me for twenty years -now this race I am at the center of their attention? Asking me for a debate? What’s that about?”

 

Keeler then added a personal attack on the mental health of both Fingar and Czajka. In other direct messages, he likewise attempted to steer this reporter to negative information about Czajka.

 

Once Kanaga’s declination came to light, Keeler did not respond to a query about the public’s interest in having candidates debate. He also did not address a question about whether refusing to debate could be seen as undermining his campaign claims about public openness and collaborative justice. Instead, Keeler thundered that “This race is not about me or my career. That’s over. This is my last attempt to put the criminal justice system on the right path. Cedar Park has a spot for me next to my parents.”

 

Asked to respond to the Keeler camp’s refusal, Czajka replied that “Believing voters deserve the benefit of observing candidates debate so as to enable them to make informed decisions (and, not unselfishly, believing I excel in such settings), I have debated every one of my opponents in all 4 of my contested elections.  Therefore, I am very disappointed we will have no debate this year.”

 

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So why would the underdog in an election go to such lengths to avoid debate? The decision (and the reasons given) are likely to send the message that the Keeler campaign does not think a debate would favor their guy.

 

The likely reason is that Kanaga and the County Dems are hoping Keeler might sneak back into office thanks to the continued wave of anti-Trump sentiment. Antonio Delgado managed to beat incumber John Faso for Congress, with a big assist from Democratic rage over the 2016 election.

 

Unlike Delgado, however, Keeler does not come across as cogently and compellingly as Delgado, especially against the more polished and experienced Czajka. In this scenario, the Democrats have every reason to keep their candidate under wraps, and hope he can succeed based on pure partisan turnout, rather than on the merits which debates are able to highlight.

 

Even more surprising after so many decades is that the Democrats are still running the same candidate who keeps losing. Perhaps voter registration has turned over enough to put Dem over the top, regardless of their local profile. However, several local Democratic candidates have expressed concern that fielding Keeler again will mainly hurt their chances in Town races, as the Czajka team turns out Republican voters who might otherwise stay home in a relatively quiet election year.

 

Whatever the reason, this decision may come back to haunt the Dems in some future election cycle, when they want one of their candidates to spar in a debate with a Republican. Now the GOP will have the perfect excuse to pick and choose when they make their own candidates available.

 

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Links to campaign sites: Czajka | Keeler

 

 

Dolan disappears from Board of Elections

James J. “Jimmy” Dolan Jr. is no longer working at the Columbia County Board of Elections, where he had served as the Democratic Election Specialist.

On Monday night, multiple sources in both the Democratic and Republican party establishment claimed that Dolan had been fired by Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin, who had hired him several years ago.

However, during a visit to the Board’s temporary offices at 401 State, a visibly tense Martin insisted on Tuesday that Dolan had chosen to resign.

When asked about one source’s claim that Dolan had been fired initially, but then offered an opportunity to quit instead, Martin repeatedly intoned, “I’m not going to comment on personnel.”

Two requests for comment from Dolan, a current Greenport Committeeman and until 1991 the highly controversial Hudson Police Chief, were not returned.

Columbia County Democratic Chair Keith Kanaga said in email that it would be “inappropriate” for him to address the matter.

Local Republicans and Democrats have long had a tacit agreement to not interfere with each other’s BOE appointments. As a general rule, it would be out of character for such moves to be made without an intense discussion happening first among party leadership.

 

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The split between Martin and Dolan doesn’t come as much of a surprise to longtime observers of the County political scene. It seemed less a question of if but when the two would come to loggerheads.

His appointment to the BOE, raised many eyebrows, given the former Chief’s past legal problems.

Dolan’s case in The New York Times in 1991

Dolan was sentenced in 1991 “to five years' probation and fined $8,000 for obstructing justice by interfering with drug investigations by other law-enforcement agencies,” according to reports in The New York Times and many other papers.

At the time of sentencing, State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Harris “criticized Mr. Dolan for trying to consolidate all police power in the city in his own hands and setting himself above the law,” according to the Times report.

“He is not psychologically suited for this line of work,” Judge Harris stated at the time.

His prosecution was led by District Attorney Paul Czajka, who per the Times brought charges that Dolan “tried to keep law-enforcement agencies out of Hudson, a city of 8,000, to protect ‘friends, relatives, subordinates and himself,’”.

In 1992, Dolan was briefly remanded to the Columbia County jail by Harris “for failure to pay his fine [and] to perform his mandated community service,” according to a report in the Albany Times-Union.

Along with Dolan’s prosecution, 1991 featured a flurry of other legal action against past and present members of the Hudson Police. An HPD detective was charged in Federal court “with soliciting cocaine and crack for his own use,” and another officer was “accused of lying to a grand jury about drug use.”

A close friend of the then-Chief was also “accused of setting fire to the car of Jill Hazelton, a reporter for a local newspaper who wrote articles containing criticism of Mr. Dolan,” according to the Times.

Asked whether she now regretted hiring Dolan, considering his history, Martin exclaimed “Oh for God’s sake!” before resuming her mantra about not commenting on personnel decisions. Martin absolutely refused to address how much or even whether she knew about Dolan’s past when he was hired.

 

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The most recent episode at the Board of Elections was not Dolan’s first attempt to make a comeback on the area political scene.

In 1998, then-Mayor Richard Scalera appointed Dolan to head up the Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency. His appointment immediately ignited a firestorm of protest, with then-activist Daniel Region pointing out that during his first election campaign Scalera had promised “never” to include Dolan in his administration.

Dolan’s brief tenure at HCDPA was marked by more controversy over inaccurate grant applications and disastrous proposals such as a toxic waste processing plant to be sited in what is now Basilica Hudson.

When later appointed Commissioner of Grants for the City, this reporter was charged with attempting to make sense of HCDPA’s files. Those files were found in almost complete disarray—apart from one neatly-kept file in Dolan’s desk drawer, which contained highlighted articles about public critics at the time, such as Time & Space Limited’s Linda Mussmann.

After resigning from the Hudson Police force, Dolan ran into problems as he sought employment with New York State.

An Appellate Division decision from 2003 found that he twice misrepresented his record on employment forms. In applying for a State job in 1996, the Court found that he “failed to mention that he violated the terms of his probation, which resulted in his incarceration and the imposition of additional community service.”

Finally securing an appointment February 2000, Dolan was dismissed less than 8 months later after his full record came to light. He sued the State for wrongful termination; but according to the court ruling denying his claim, “[T]he Director of Human Resources Management for Taxation and Finance discovered that petitioner had violated probation and had been sentenced to jail. Doubting petitioner's credibility and honesty, the Director contacted Civil Service and requested that petitioner's appointment be revoked.”

Dolan eventually moved to the Carolinas, and was seldom seen in Hudson until his return several years ago (when he actually bought this reporter a beer while we were both watching football at Melino’s).

Dolan appeared to have become much milder and more agreeable, and eager to start anew.

 

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At the time, Martin privately justified Dolan’s appointment to some who questioned it with the notion that “everyone deserves a second chance.” (Some might argue that this was actually his third or fourth chance.)

Democratic Commissioner Virginia Martin

There have been only a few known complaints about Dolan’s tenure at the Board, although Dolan reportedly blew up at Czajka earlier this year when the D.A. visited the Board of Elections and greeted him with a sunny “Good morning, Chief!”

Dolan was still on the job as of late morning Monday, if not later, according to one Democratic official.

But during a Tuesday morning visit, his desk chair was conspicuously empty in the Board’s temporary quarters at 401 State. (The BOE has had to move from its usual offices due to a persistent infestation of fleas.)

Democratic Committee Vice Chair Erin Stamper was working at the office on Tuesday, but declined to address Dolan’s situation or his replacement. When asked what her position at the Board is, Stamper replied “part-time Election assistant.”

However, Martin separately affirmed that Stamper is replacing Dolan in his capacity of Election Specialist, the third-ranking position for each party under the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner.

It’s unclear whether Stamper will retain her role as the second-ranking CCDC officer given the promotion, which puts her in the dual role of both being the #2 County Democratic party decision-maker, and also processing essential documents related to the outcome of local elections. Kanaga also did not respond to a query about whether such a dual role was proper.

Asked whether Dolan’s disappearance from the Board would leave it in a difficult position with barely six weeks left before Election Day, a tight-lipped Martin said “There is no good time for a transition here.”

Results of Hudson primary

This photo of results from Hudson polling places is per Charlie Ferrusi... It appears Kamal Johnson and Tom DiPietro won the primaries for Mayor and Council President, respectively.

Philmont: 1987 photos of Oliver North Day

For several years, I’ve been badgering my grade school friend Noah Elkin—who grew up in East Chatham—to find the photographs he took of Larry (“Ollie”) North Day, which took place in Philmont in 1987. 

Lo and behold, Noah has managed to find ’em... A gallery of a dozen or so images, depicting both pro-Ollie marchers and anti-U.S.-imperialism protesters on August 15th, 1987 can be found here. 

The gallery includes a short essay of Elkin’s memory of the day, the mood of the crowds, and how people reacted to the sudden national media attention.

North had grown up in Philmont, but no longer lived there, and declined to attend. Since then, he has been a FOX News commentator, and now heads the National Rifle Association. To this writer’s knowledge, he has not visited Philmont in the past few decades.

The march took place shortly after the conclusion of the Iran-Contra hearings, and just a few days after President Ronald Reagan made his first public statement on the scandal, in which his administration ignored the specific prohibition of Congress not to arm the anti-Communist Nicaraguan CONTRAs. Reagan offered a tepid apology, sloughing most of the blame off on National Security Adviser John Poindexter.

North had been instrumental in enacting the plan, likely devised by then-CIA director Bill Casey, and had been caught among other things shredding evidence of the illegal plot. George H.W. Bush infamously pardoned five of the convicted conspirators during his first year in office, including Eliot Abrams (who is back in the news as Trump’s point man in the effort to foment a coup in oil-rich Venezuela).

The Ollie rally was big local news, but happened to coincide with another potentially-explosive local event, the start of the Wyley Gates trial. Gates was a Canaan teenager who confessed roughly six months earlier to “shooting his father, his father's girlfriend, his brother and a 3-year-old cousin,” according to The New York Times. However, the local jury eventually “acquitted the youth of murder charges, citing shoddy police work and a coerced confession,” and Gates was only convicted of felony conspiracy.

As a result, the Philmont rally became only the second most important story of the day in local papers. A look at the stories of the day adds some additional details to the North Day festivities (or outrage, depending on how you look at it). Reports in the Register-Star stated that:

— North’s mother “called the village hall and said upon the advice of counsel, her son will not attend.”

— Catholic Reverend Charles Gaffigan declined to participate in an “ecumenical church service” planned for the occasion, saying it was “an inappropriate occaison for a religious service,” and it was scrapped.

— Copake resident Paul Marcel said he bought a commemorative t-shirt because “someday this thing will be a collector’s item.” (Is it someday yet?)

— The parade was organized by Sharon Johnson “to support [North] in his time of trouble, with the indulgence of Mayor “Po” Mossman, who was eager to boost flagging attendance at Philmont’s annual community day. Johnson claimed it would be Philmont’s “biggest celebration since servicemen returned home at the end of World War II.”

– 20 State troopers, County sheriffs, and Philmont's own “constabulary” monitored the event; Mayor Mossman “denied reports that he had alerted the National Guard” about it.

— North proponents “warned the crowd that Communist-backed forces are coming dangerously close to the southern borders of the United States,” a sentiment which seems to have recrudesced decades later among Trump supporters.

— There were some “heated arguments,” but mostly prior to the start of the parade. These included a controversy about the intention of a longstanding activist group, Columbia County Citizens for the Prevention of Nuclear War, to hold a press conference. Kathy Stumph of the group said that “I feel the responsibility and obligation to my children and to other young Americans to stand up and take issue with a celebration that mocks the very concept of true heroism.”

— The protesters declined to be a part of the parade, preferring to line the parade route. A teenaged Eddie Coons of Mellenville stated that protesters “have no right coming here and ruining it for everyone.”

— Millerton resident James Brandt held a $15 clambake fundraiser at the Rod & Gun Club to raise funds for a North Defense Fund.

— Then-Senator Al D’Amato and Congressman Jerry Soloman “sent letters of support” but begged off attending.

 

The whitewashing of Bush

Today’s Register-Star contains a treacly front-page tribute to George Herbert Walker Bush, a simply awful human being and failed President, who was so unpopular that he received only 37% of the vote in his 1992 re-election bid.

The paper’s revisionist paean includes syrupy remembrances from Columbia Economic Development Corporation director Michael Tucker.

For a more accurate description of Bush and his record, consider this from Arun Gupta:

Having read new material on and re-familiarized myself with the career of George Herbert Walker Bush, I am floored.

The amount of criminality, corruption, dictators, death squads, and drug dealing he enabled during his shadowy intrigues in office up to the presidency far outstrips anything Donald Trump has done.

This is no exaggeration. Bush set up a secret government with CIA chief William Casey. Bush subverted FBI investigations and independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. He lied to, stonewalled, and withheld evidence from Walsh who concluded the conspiracy went up to and included Reagan and Bush. Right before leaving office in December 1992, Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra figures, sparing himself from being called as a witness and possibly criminal prosecution.

George Bush Sr. trashed the Constitution and rule of law. He was an architect of the state terror, corruption, and lawlessness that gave rise to Trump. But Bush actually conspired and committed virtually all the types of crimes and misdeeds Trump may or may not have committed.

Bush did even worse. His legacy includes the horrorshow in Central America that remains as refugees flee violence and poverty. He used veterans of the Phoenix Program, the CIA death squad in Vietnam, to organize torture and murder in El Salvador while running the illegal scheme to arm the Contras.

Bush was tied to the BCCI and BNL banking scandals where billions of dollars were funneled to Saddam Hussein so he could buy weapons during the time when he gassed 5,000 Kurds to death in Halabja. The bank scandals involved laundering Saudi funds for the Contras. That illegal war saw Bush's office and the CIA enable and ignore a drug-smuggling network by the Medellin Cartel, cartels, the Contras, Panama's Manuel Noriega, and notorious freelancers like Barry Seal who shipped in many tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine, feeding the crack wars that decimated cities devastated by Reagan's neoliberal policies.

Bush oversaw the destructive invasions of Panama and Iraq. His death squad network and senior officials like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Powell, Abrams, and Negroponte returned with a vengeance after 9/11 creating the killing fields of Iraq, the global war on terror, the worldwide torture and black site gulags, and a destabilized Middle East.

Mind you, I'm not even mentioning his criminal sons, choosing Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, Willie Horton ads, the hostility to the AIDS crisis, indifference to the Rodney King riots, the war on unions, the poor, and cities, the staggering concentration of wealth.

Just to be clear, I think Trump is a grave danger. But he is very different than Bush. He is the danger of the cultish dictator, the ethnonationalist autocrat. As he is incompetent, he only can rule by tantrum and tweet, however. Bush was far smarter. His destruction involved knowing how to use the levers of power.
Here is some reading material. Start with this excellent Rolling Stone report on the secret government, death squads, Israelis, and drug smuggling. It covers the period before Oliver North comes along, who was used as a fall-guy. This era is when the alternative press shined. The Progressive, The Nation, Mother Jones, Village Voice, and other lefty outlets broke many important stories.

These reports show the media, Congress, and the courts all failed to do their job and hold the Reagan-Bush White House accountable. Trump's lawlessness is nothing new. He is just the latest and most extreme iteration of a system that's been broken and bankrupt for more than 30 years.

See Gupta’s full post for many links to source material about the non-fictional Bush. Also of interest, this conversation on the Deconstructed podcast, featuring Glenn Greenwald and Mehdi Hasan.

Election Day results

Briefly, not including absentee ballots which are yet to be counted:

* Delgado won for Congress; Faso is out.

* Gladd lost to Jordan for State Senate;

* O’Connor lost to Tague for the Assembly;

* Barrett returns to the Assembly;

* Powis leads Marino for Coronor;

* Ashby defeated Houghtling for Assembly. Note: The margin is theoretically small enough to be reversed by absentee ballots, but statistically it seems unlikely.