Local Politics

Attended a local candidates forum last night. Gotta say if last night was all I was going on, I probably would not vote for either Adrienne or Joey as their presentations were the least specific in terms of Yeah, great—but what are you gonna do?

Small towns have very specific problems.

Adrienne & Joey gave the same stump speeches they give when they are out canvassing. Those stump speeches work when you're trying to connect with people: The Town of Shawangunk has major issues with medical, food, & transportation scarcity. Like there isn't a single grocery store in the entire Town of Shawangunk! People will shoot the breeze with you on these things for hours.

As a Town council member or a member of the County Legislature, though, there is not a goddamn thing Adrienne & Joey can do about medical, food, & transportation scarcity.

You gotta keep the actual speechifying to issues you can do something about — like road maintenance, like snow plough schedules, like the Transfer Station, like local AirBnb regulation, like the toxic junkyard that sits in the middle of the river wetlands and probably should be declared a Superfund site. But Adrienne & Joey didn't talk about those issues.

Did they even know about them?

Adrienne & Joey are both NYC transplants.

But, I mean, I'm a transplant & I knew about them. I did the research.

At this point, I am not terribly sanguine about either of their chances. But we shall see what we shall see. The biggest determinant of local election outcomes is actually the weather on Election Day.

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Also, Jane the town clerk came up to me & told me she was sorry I'd left Vision of Wallkill. "You had some really good ideas," she told me.

Was she really sorry? Or was she trying to secure my vote? 😀 Of course, she's running unopposed, so she doesn't really need my vote.

The rest of the VoW ladies sat at their table giving me serious side-eye.

So, this was sweet of Jane. I guess.