My Republican Dilemma

I joined the Republican party a couple of years ago. I wasn't satisfied with my previous registration, largely due to my own ignorance about that party's positions, and I decided to start shopping around for one that fit me better.  I don't subscribe to the idea that political parties are inherited on faith like religions (okay, I don't subscribe to that idea for religions, either), but I opted to join the party of my parents to make an informed decision.  The fact that Republicans have a reputation for villainy also factored in, because whenever it becomes socially acceptable to bash a group, I want to know more.

So last year I went to the New Paltz Republican caucus for the first time, and it was suggested that I nominate Mike Nielson for Highway Superintendent.  He didn't take the line, but his actions since would make any fiscal conservative proud, especially considering that one longtime member told me afterwards, "Let's see if your boy Nielson can do the work with his full-time job in Kingston."  It was certainly a splashy way to enter into party politics.

Nevertheless, I regret doing it, and I won't do it again.

As I told Nielson recently, if we're going to have party politics, let's have party politics.  Although my nomination failed, at least two registered Democrats ran on the Republican line for town positions last year.  I don't think that's right.

There are good reasons for a candidate to want his or her name on more than one line.  And with the timing of local caucuses - this year both are expected to be in August - it makes sense to try for as many as possible, to avoid that awkward feeling when your own party gives the nod to someone else.  It's legal and it's appropriate.

It also undermines democracy.

In college, I made it a habit of running for the main leadership role of a club I belonged to every year.  I never wanted the position, but it bothered me that only one candidate was willing to step up. That's not democracy by any measure I understand, even if it works in countries like China and Russia.  Democracy is about choice, and not just the choice of which line to vote for Toni Hokanson on.

I'm a thinking voter, and I do my best to choose a candidate based on qualifications.  I've never voted a party line in my life.  Many people do vote their party line, though, and don't care about choices, because they only see their preferred row.  These folks are also done a disservice, because in their ignorance they can cast a vote for someone who isn't a member of their own party.

So my dilemma is that there are some good candidates in this town who I may vote for in November, but whom I won't be supporting come the caucus because they belong to another party, and in my mind belong on another line.  But New Paltz is a town virtually run by a cabal which excludes not only Republicans, but many Democrats and virtually all members of other parties.

In short, there's no qualified Republicans willing to step up.  No one willing to help me, to help us have a choice.

To curtail any suggestions to the contrary, I have a career I love which requires me to be out of town when most local meetings are held.  That alone makes me an inappropriate candidate for any local elected office, so I can't step up and put my money where my mouth is.

I'd like to shake the trees, though, and help find some willing citizens to take a stab at civic duty.  New Paltz has too long been bereft of choice on Election Day, and I for one would very much like to help solve that problem at the Republican caucus by casting a vote for a GOP candidate or two.

Lessons learned from the 2011 village elections

This was a great year for political junkies and others in New Paltz.  Four mayoral candidates, 7 competing for two trustee seats, and two more vying for a two-year term in a cursed seat.  I heard a lot of different views and watched many different strategies.  Here's a smattering of what I learned.  Hopefully it will help candidates in future elections.

1. Negative campaigning doesn't work.  Watching the debates, I got the impression that three people were running for mayor, but the fourth was running against Jason West.  This strategy is often employed when an opponent has a hate club, but it always seems to fail.  Rick Lazio has made a career out of having no qualifications other than not being Hillary or not being Cuomo. John Kerry was possibly the only man alive who could have lost to Bush in 2004, all due to his "I'm not George" campaign.  People want to know what you are,, not what you're not.
2. Turn your signs around.  One candidate's lawn signs were always placed parallel to the sidewalk, where they were visible mostly to residents and neighbors across the street.  Unless you've got several hundred very obedient tenants, turn your signs so we can read them as we walk and drive by.
3. Public speaking matters . . . somewhat.  Not every candidate was cut out for public speaking.  One earned my respect because he was willing to try anyway.  He got nearly 300 votes despite that disadvantage.
4. Knock on doors.  I got two door-knocks that I know about, one of which caught us at home.  Both the knockers won last night.  It's the only way to reach out, particularly if you have trouble speaking to large groups.  Walk around.  Talk to people.  Be memorable.
5. The red card.  Whoever sent the anti-West "red card" out just prior to the election most likely got him votes.  No matter who it was, it was slimy and underhanded.  One candidate was implicated by some due to his public anti-West comments (see how keeping things positive helps?), and fair or not, I think the votes West due to the red card may have been destined for that other candidate.  I will publicly disclose that person's identity as soon as I have proof.
6. Seniors matter even more.  Senior citizens are more likely to vote, have more time to pay attention, and have the experience to form solid opinions about what works and what doesn't.  Woodland Pond has made it possible to reach out to a big chunk of the senior community easily, and I saw a lot of residents voting when I did.  I also heard a lot of condescending remarks aimed at seniors during the campaign ("you're lucky to be here"), and the folks on line with me confirmed that yes, they were indeed insulted. Senior citizens know more than younger people, and see things with a perspective we just can't grasp at a younger age. Ignore them, or patronize them, at your peril.

Here's hoping for a nondysfunctional village board.

Grow up and vote!

A New Paltz lawn decoration

I invited all the mayoral candidates to put a sign on my lawn.  Only one responded, and my wife saw the sign, but I never did.  By the time I stepped outside on Sunday, both our sign and the one across the street (for the same candidate) were gone.

This has happened before, and I warned the candidates of the possibility.  But I was expecting signs to go missing in the dark of night, when the students are crawling back to bed, and that they would be replaced with lawn decorations.  When I have invited businesses to put a sign on my lawn, that's usually what happens.  They disappear, either to be tossed into the undergrowth or to hang on a dorm room wall.

But these signs disappeared on a Sunday morning, when the alcohol which promotes mischief has moved on to creating stupor and hangovers.  My previous political sign took effort to remove, so I suspected foul play; this one was much easier to take, but I think it was more likely an opponent, not an admirer, who nicked it.

I guess over 200 years of being a college town takes its toll on the adults, too.  But I still love this town, despite the ninnies and cowards who share it with me.

Who am I voting for?

This year's village elections are so interesting that it seems like half the letters in this week's paper were from out of town.  It's not an easy choice, and I haven't actually made it yet, because I don't like closing my mind off to the possibilities.  Voting is an art perfected by procrastination - you never know what may change someone's mind.

I like to ask questions which are unorthodox, because they provide a lot of insight.  Like whether or not you'd be willing to wear a top hat if elected mayor, or whether you support a village militia.  Questions like that tell me a lot about how a candidate views the job, or views the village.  I know that I've only got one vote, but we all know how important one vote is in the Village of New Paltz, don't we?

I know that the clever voters are only voting for one four-year trustee spot, because they don't want their votes to counteract each other.  I can't tell you which pairs of candidates would cause that to happen, but there are plenty of people closer to the pulse of the voters than I.

More and more I am finding that I trust candidates who have lived in New Paltz for more than twenty minutes (that's Dener minutes, each one equals a year).  I don't care if the candidate's family hauled stones for Jean Hasbrouck, though; just because you're related to history doesn't mean that you have any knowledge or appreciation of it.

My bias towards age is in part fueled by two subpar trustees which we've elected in the past ten years.  We've also had plenty of terrible trustees and mayors who were much older, so I don't completely trust my gut on this one.  At least one young candidate strikes me as being completely unaware about village concerns and issues.  Another seems quite the opposite.

I'd like to see the residency requirements monitored and enforced more aggressively.  There's no reason for rumor or expectation of trustees not living in the village; we need a rule that can be tracked and verified so the situation can be dealt with.  I'd like to add to that an attendance requirement.  I don't care if the village board meets twice a year or 200, but trustees should be attendance for the vast majority of the time.

At the Chamber of Commerce forum I came to realize that village politics do not have to be dominated by people with engaging public speaking skills.  This is a small town, so if we choose, we can elect someone who is shy, or suffers from stage fright, or whose reflective personality doesn't lend itself to quick, off-the-cuff answers.  We also don't have to vote for one person because it will improve the chances of someone else being elected.  No, we can actually choose to vote for the people that will put the best foot of New Paltz forward.

Sorry I don't have any endorsements, or even decisions, quite yet.  Elections are just too important to rush.

Open call to New Paltz Village candidates

If you're thinking of running for office in the Village of New Paltz in the May 2011 election, I would like to talk to you.  Here's what I would like to know:

1. What are you running for?
2. Have you announced?  (I will not force your hand; someone already tried to get me to do this to a potential candidate but I'm not that easy to manipulate.)
3. Would you be interested in providing:
1. a guest post here?
2. an interview?

If you would like to contact me and do not have my contact information, feel free to leave a comment on this post.  All comments are moderated and I will be the only one to see them; they will be removed after I have read them.  Just give me an email address or phone number (or Facebook profile) at which to contact you.

Bullet (vote) for my BOE candidate

After getting a lot of insight about my Board of Ed endorsements, and listening more to the buzz leading up to the election, I'm going to have to take a bullet . . . vote for my preferred candidate, Dominick Profaci.

I'm not going to vote for Mary Ann Tozzi, primarily because she's unwilling to look at administrative salaries like Maria Rice's for cost savings.  I applaud Ms. Rice for foregoing a pay increase, and I do not blame her or any of her incredible staff for taking the highest salary they can negotiate.  However, even asking these good people to squeak by on a mere $150,000 a year could go a long way to finding the money for maybe a dozen teachers.

My neutral assessment of Bob Rich is also shakier, but the reasons why are entirely hearsay and inappropriate to share at this time.

The other election

In the midst of all this School Board stuff, I just learned that at least one candidate has declared for Village Mayor.  Any comments about who you'd like to see in the race?  Only a year left, no time to waste!  If you haven't declared by now, you may already be late!

Some of the people I would like to see run for mayor of New Paltz include Michael Zierler, Jason West, Anton Stewart, Rachel Lagodka, Ira Margolis, Justin Holmes, and Theresa Fall.  I don't know if I would vote for any of them, but if they ran I expect I'd have a better idea.  I have other thoughts but can't remember which side of the gerrymandered village line they live on, so I'll wait and see.

Of course, one of the criteria I'm going to evaluate mayoral candidates on in the coming year is their willingness to wear a top hat, and how good they look in one.

One gadfly's endorsements for New Paltz school board

Since I've been paying attention to how transparent the candidates have been during this School Board election, I almost didn't stop to consider which candidates I want to vote for.  I am not a big fan of politics, but since I've been vocal about how consistently bad the coverage of this race has been, I might as well offer an opinion.

It's really not that easy to get a sense of people from the sound bites they issue. I have to assume that the three candidates that haven't served on the board have no clue what they're getting into, and that the three who been around the District are good at saying what they think people want to hear.  All in all, though, I've made my choices and offer my thinking:

Candidates I don't support

• Michael Swigart.  Mike's very forthright, and I really appreciate understanding his positions.  I trust him to say what he's actually going to do, and his plans involve increasing class size, which I believe is the wrong approach.  Cutting teachers is not the way to cut the fat from the budget.  Mike is also a fan of building new, and I believe he's probably going to redouble the efforts to do so.  The renovation project did go through as it was proposed, but keeping the middle school where it is continues to be a big priority for a lot of people.  He was a lone voice calling for a full district building analysis for a long time, and this is an idea which is gaining ground.
• Edgar Rodriguez, and not because his lawsuit.  Edgar is promoting this idea of dropping twelfth grade, when finding ways to educate our kids better in the time we have makes more sense than just booting them out earlier.  I'm actually a big supporter of kids leaving school when they've gotten all the education they can handle, but this idea abdicates the responsibility we have towards education.

Candidates I do support

• MaryAnn Tozzi, who will bring the blue-collar perspective that the Board needs.  She's got a kid in the district but also has a tax bill to pay.
• Dominick Profaci, who is the only candidate in a long time to point out what the real problem is - tying school funding to property values.  He believes the BOE should be trying to change that, and I couldn't agree more.  We don't need property tax reform, though, we need property tax abolition.  Our present system punishes people for wanting to stay in the homes and pits lifelong residents against their grandchildren in a struggle over limited resources.  There's got to be a better way.

The other two candidates simply didn't move either way.  Juliet Coxum's reported desire to have the board set up "ad hoc community committees with community members to help them make decisions that affect the schools" sounds like a lot of bureaucratic busywork to me.  Bob Rich has a track record in building consensus for capital projects.  Neither one elicits a strong opinion from me, though.

Did somebody swat the Gadfly?

Over a month without any new posts . . . what gives? Well, life happened to both of us. If we could get more intelligent-yet-somewhat-polite people to participate we could prevent such sad little gaps, but blogging is apparently not a participatory sport for most of the residents of Die Pfalz, so we'll make do.

Some quick updates:

• The contest response was underwhelming - one and a half entries. Thank you to the person who submitted a complete entry! Having the community review a single entry is just plain silly, so I'll probably just show it to kT and we'll decide if we like it or not. Again, if there's a particular type of prize that would be motivational, please let us know - but if you do, you'd darn well better submit an entry if we agree to it!
• I've been avoiding committing to any political candidates yet, because I want to know who's running and make as informed a decision as I can. My biggest personal criterion is transparency in government, which means that incumbents with a track record for secrecy are going to have a harder time impressing me that untried candidates who have no such baggage. I'm sure kT has different criteria than I do, and if either of us endorse any candidates here it will not be a collective endorsement unless we say so. I kinda hope we disagree - the whole point of this blog is to get different New Paltz viewpoints represented.
• The free pool experiment continues.
• Woodland Pond will be the subject of a special Village Planning Board meeting on August 24. They want to change some of the requirements for getting a certificate of occupancy.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Write On, New Paltz!

The other day while attending a seminar on small business marketing I got my first election pen of the season. I was surprised, because with the cold, rainy season we've been having, it just doesn't seem like it's late enough in the year to be handing out election pens already.

Climate change aside, I think pens as campaign tools are a very important symbol in New Paltz. We recently decided, if my count is correct, a third race with a write-in candidate winning, and that's pretty amazing. We know how to write in a candidate in New Paltz, and I think that it's the purest form of democracy. I think we should consider institutionalizing it.

Yes, I would like to propose that, instead of voting for a party slate, we just get rid of candidates on the ballot completely. Here's how it could work:

1. Town or village clerk publishes the requirements for the position. This is already available, but it's got to be easy to find on the town and village web sites, as well in the local newspapers.
2. Voting machines wouldn't have a single name listed.
3. Instructions for writing in a candidate would be posted in large boards outside, and small posters inside the booths.
4. Votes would be counted as always.
5. Votes for candidates found to be ineligible would be discarded as always.

So what's the benefit? I can see a couple.

1. Voters have to think before they vote.
2. They can't assume someone is qualified because of the line they're running on, because nobody's listed.
3. Candidates will have to really work to win a seat, like Jeff Logan did.

I understand that Jeff might not like this idea, but he was blindsided - the man should have had his party's nomination. In this plan, nominations don't particularly mean squat. I'm sure that the Democrats would campaign for their chosen candidate, and they may even have a leg up still, but it would be a real election. Anyone wanting to vote would have to actually pay attention if he or she wanted to make sure that his or her vote was for an eligible individual. Furthermore, it's possible that you may vote for someone who doesn't want the job, if you're just another mindless voter.

I can't wait to see the reasons people won't like this idea, because I predict that they will mostly be thinly-veiled suggestions that people aren't actually smart enough to vote without help. That's where the Founding Fathers went wrong with the Electoral College, and I challenge anyone to use the "stupidity clause" and put their name to it.

Of course, the pen I was given stopped writing almost immediately, which could mean that the candidate chose promotional products poorly, or it could be an ominous portent. We shall see.

Was I invited to this party?

When I was approaching the age of 18, I was seriously thinking about how I would register myself to vote. I had grown up in a dyed-in-the-wool, old-school Republican household, but my older sister had outed herself to me as a Democrat a few years before. For the most part I found politics to be incredibly dull, but the way my father ranted at the evening news and my sister's passion for debate suggested there was more to it than my teenaged mind could yet comprehend.

Ultimately I opted to join no party, because it seemed like such a Big Deal to join either one. (I don't know if there simply were no other parties at the time, or if I was just ignorant of them; I knew that Anderson had run an impressive third campaign for the Presidency, but it never occurred to me that there were more options to choose from.) Even as a freshman in college I understood that a political party said something about your philosophy, and my own philosophy, that of a young man who hugged trees and hated everything else, didn't seem adequately represented.

I eventually joined a party and was quite content with it until I discovered it had a zillion different agendas that had nothing to do with my environmental positions. It was my fault for checking the box without doing my homework, and it actually served me well until it started fielding major candidates. I decided in the autumn that the party I was registered with had neither the power to accomplish anything of interest, nor the focus to accomplish much that I cared about, so I decided to change my registration to Republican.

Why Republican? Well, blame my father for that one - pretty much all my positive associations with the Republican brand come from him. Dad taught me that you don't solve problems by throwing money at them, that people need to live within their means without expecting a handout, and that we should have learned something from Prohibition before we started the War on Drugs. He believed that it's better to assume people are smart and ethical enough to make good decisions - but that you have to let them make bad decisions, too, without expectation of a handout from the government if you screw your life up.

The Republican party doesn't actually fit my own philosophy any better than the Green did, but it matches in different ways. I think the Green foreign policy platform is just as insane as the Republican energy policy. Truth is, there isn't a party out there that fits how I look at the world perfectly. From what I've read in this very blog, one either picks a party that fits one's philosophy or tries to mold one to that image. The former is impossible for me, and I don't care enough about politics to waste any effort on the latter. As my friends know, I expect to drift from party to party for the next couple of election cycles, seeing what different registrations feel like.

Of course, as long as I stick to New Paltz, my party affiliation is completely irrelevant. In fact, not only is mine irrelevant, I don't really care about anybody else's, either. People who are a party first and person next annoy me to no end. Political parties are a tool, and party loyalists lose track of that fact.

I've been actively lobbying a friend of mine to switch from a smaller party and become a Democrat for a few months now. My reasoning is that if, as I'm told, political decisions only get made in the Democratic caucus, that my friend, a politically active individual, should be in the thick of things trying to make changes. However I don't expect my advice to be heeded, because my friend doesn't wish to offend the head of the party by switching.

I understand that this isn't a big town, and people know each other, but are you going to political meetings to change the world or have drinks with friends? This is a college town - there are plenty of chances to have a drink with friends. I don't understand why someone would care about politics, and then associate emotions with it. Political activity is a tool that can accomplish many things, but so is a drill press - and I don't have a drink with my drill press.

Bill Mulcahy's letters to the editor suggest that so much is wrong in New Paltz because the Democrats control Town Hall. I sometimes agree with Bill's assessment of the problems, but I think it's because we elected five individuals that don't represent our interests. I don't care about their party affiliation, I care about who they are and what they do in the job. Yes, a party can suggest something about how a person would do a job if elected, but until I meet an honest politician I will think that party affiliation is an awfully speculative method of choosing a candidate.

I like the way the Village does it - parties really don't matter in those elections as much. I liked the last town council election even more - you can bet that every vote had thought put into it, if only to remember how to spell the candidate's name. I wonder if we can abolish petitions entirely in the Village and make all races entirely write-in campaigns? Sure would make the candidates work for every vote.

I know, if we did that we wouldn't get as many candidates that open doors for people, but hey, that's politics.

Candidate Without a Clue

Voting this morning was interesting, to say the least. It was my first time voting in a general election since I moved into the Village of New Paltz, so I wasn't entirely sure where my polling place was.

I cruised over to the High School where I've voted in years past, and I was surprised when I parked in the front of the building where I always had previously. Not one sign, not one poll worker to indicate where voting occurred; the front doors were locked and the stern warnings that visitors should report to the main office were unaltered. I watched several other confused voters go through the same process before I went around the back. I found out that I now vote in the Middle School, but seeing the poor organization was instructive.

The Middle School had a clear sign on the door that voters needed to enter, and I had no trouble finding my way. Writing in my choice for Town Council was not at all difficult. As I was leaving through the same door, I found it being held open by a gentleman who was speaking to someone I could not see. I assumed that he was simply being thoughtless; like most municipal buildings, the Middle School is being heated already, and his holding the door open was wasting energy. As I left, though, I saw that the unnamed man was speaking to write-in candidate Jeff Logan, who was busily tying the door open. The sign that guided me into the polling place, I noted, was now obscured by the position of the door itself.

I waited for Mr. Logan to finish his conversation. "Isn't the heat on in the building?" I asked him.

He considered. "Yes, it is," he replied. He didn't look entirely sure why I would ask.

"My tax dollars are paying for that heat, and propping the door open is wasteful. If you're running for government office, you should consider that," I replied.

"Yes," he agreed. He made no effort to untie the door.

I am pleased that I chose not to vote for Mr. Logan, who has been running solely on the length of his residency. However, part of me hopes he wins. After all, it's much easier to be a gadfly if the politicians make it clear that they don't give a damn about their constituents.