On the ground

DRC Straw Poll Results
US Senate – 6 Year Term Vote Percent
Senator Charles Schumer 362 98.37%
Phil Krone 6 1.63%
Total 368 100.00%
This is a weighted vote and the numbers do not equal individual voters.
US Senate – 2 Year Term Vote Percent
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand 359 95.73%
Jonathon Tasini 5 1.33%
Scott Noren 11 2.93%
Total 375 100.00%
This is a weighted vote and the numbers do not equal individual voters.
Comptroller Vote Percent
Tom DiNapoli Unanimous
Lt. Governor Vote Percent
Bill Samuels 125 36.13%
Chris St. Lawrence 185 53.47%
Write – ins 26 7.51%
Blank ballots 10 2.89%
Total 346 100.00%
This is a weighted vote and the numbers do not equal individual voters.
Attorny General Vote Percent
Richard Brodsky 22 6.21%
Sean Coffey 52 14.69%
Eric Dinallo 166 46.89%
Kathleen Rice 79 22.32%
Eric Scheidermann 33 9.32%
Voided Ballot 2 0.56%
Total 354 100.00%
This is a weighted vote and the numbers do not equal individual voters.
Governor Vote Percent
Andrew Cuomo(Write-In) Unanimous
DRC Executive Committee election-Top 5 vote getters are elected
Candidates Vote Percent
Cindy Lockrow-Schimmerling 147 19.29%
Don Ackerman 125 16.40%
Ted Young 115 15.09%
Dan McCandless 113 14.83%
Dottie Betz 105 13.78%
Mark Bellardini 103 13.52%
Mike Kunzwiler(Write-In) 54 7.1%
Total 762 100.00%
This is a weighted vote and the numbers do not equal individual voters.

Last weekend, members of the NY State Democratic Committee’s Rural Conference (including Chair Cindy and two of the state committee members from Delaware County) met in Niagara Falls for our annual conference and straw poll.

A good time was had by all and the straw poll acted as a sort of opening salvo in the feverish campaign season that will be 2010, with an unusually large number of offices up for grabs: governor, lt. governor, attorney general, comptroller, U.S. Senator (both of them), U.S. Representative, plus all members of both the State Assembly and the State Senate.

It’s unfortunate that we haven’t been able to find candidates to challenge either Pete Lopez in the 127th Assembly District or Cliff Crouch in the 107th Assembly District — which brings me to the real topic of this post.

Meet David Sager.

David is a Sullivan County legislator, a former Republican and the probable Democratic candidate to challenge Senator John Bonacic this year for his Senate seat here in the 42nd District.

Sager was endorsed by the DCDC at our last meeting on April 28th but has not yet received the similar nod from the other counties in the district: Sullivan, Ulster and Orange.

So, while we wait for that, let me tell you a little about David.

He is, as I said, a member of the Sullivan County Legislature representing District 1, which includes the towns of Bethel, Cochecton, Delaware and Tusten. Before that, he was twice elected Sullivan County Coroner (in 2000 and in 2004). In fact, he was the youngest person in history to be elected to that office.

I won’t venture to guess how old he is but I will say simply that he is youthful but not inexperienced. Best of both worlds, in fact.

The issues he is most concerned about are gas drilling (”It must be safe, legal, economically beneficial to all, and subject to local control.”), watershed flood mitigation, the environment, local agriculture, and accountability in government.

“I will meet with the people and talk with them about what-ever issues they have,” Sager told us. “I want the people to know that I care, and that I will fight like a dog for you.”

As of this writing, David’s web site isn’t live yet. As soon as it is, it will be added to the candidate web sites in the side bar.

If you scroll down the page, you can’t help thinking about how much has changed since those entries were posted, huh?

Cindy may luv the gov, but that wasn’t enough to overcome the unfortunate scandal that chased Governor Paterson out of the race. It’s too bad, too, because it has pretty much completely overshadowed the courage and integrity he has shown in tackling the state’s fiscal and economic problems head on, rather than sucking up to core constituencies and leaving the shambles for somebody else to solve.

At this point, everybody is being incredibly coy about it — almost reminds one of “he-who-shall-not-be-named” Voldemort — but we’re all pretty sure that our Democratic candidate for governor will be Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Mr. Cuomo is expected to make his announcement later this month and we are not suffering from any lack of individuals longing to take his place as Attorney General.

The other big change from what is reflected below is that Harold Ford seems to have slithered back out of the lime light and withdrawn his prospective primary challenge to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. This leaves her (a) without a primary challenge to face and (b) at the moment, without a Republican opponent, either.

It’s been interesting to note how little enthusiasm there seems to be from the state GOP to take on Kirsten the Dragon Slayer. Not that I blame them. She’s a great campaigner, raising buckets of money and really terrific when she’s live, and she works her tail off for her constituents once she’s in office, too.

As for the issues with the new voting machines … you’ll be hearing a lot more from us about that in the near future.

Here at the DCDC, we’re gearing up for this year’s campaigns, looking to elect and re-elect good Democrats to all levels of government. Everything from governor down to members of the NY State Democratic Committee will be on the ballot. It’ll be exciting and it’ll probably be a lot of fun, besides.

So, yeah … a lot has changed but it’s all good.

This is something along the lines of a public service announcement.

Click on this graphic and you’ll find a nifty little thing to play around with, courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Delaware County is not doing so well with response rates, particularly when compared with either the national average or with the rest of upstate New York, as you can see if you click through and have a look at the aforementioned maps.

If you visit the web site and drill down to the township level, you’ll see that, internally, Delaware County is all over the map (no pun intended). Response rates range from a high of 62% in Sidney to a low of 31% in Andes.

You know why this matters, right? Census data helps officials figure out how many Congressional seats we get, because that is dependent on population in the House of Representatives. It also dictates how much federal funding we get for things like Medicaid, education and first responders.

We’re losing enough population already, the last thing we need is to be undercounted because people aren’t submitting their Census forms!

So, we’d like to encourage all of you to get those forms done and returned to the Census Bureau. It really does take just ten minutes (that’s how long it took me in a household with seven people, so you should be just fine) and it’s for a very worthy cause.

We’re not supposed to be taking sides yet and so we’re not. But, I’ll admit, sometimes it gets kind of fun when other people do.