Our little corner of the blogosphere
Back in July 2009, Ulster is Your Town Too posted its first blog entry. “This blog is dedicated to citizenship,” read the first line of its mission statement. That message was carried out on a rough average of twice-monthly politically-oriented posts, with its most recent entry in late April of this year. Local political blogs...
The Gallo Restoration: Shayne is city’s next mayor
Back on Sept. 13, Shayne Gallo stood grimly in his spartan Broadway headquarters surrounded by a small cadre of Working Families Party volunteers, a handful of supporters, and his mother as he watched his chance at the mayor’s office ebb with the numbers flowing in — numbers which showed his opponent, Ninth Ward Alderman Hayes...
Shayne Gallo will be Kingston’s next mayor
The Gallo Restoration is reality. Kingston voters Tuesday swept Shayne Gallo into the mayoral office once held by his late brother T.R. by a wide margin over Republican challenger Ron Polacco. On the Common Council, meanwhile, Republicans maintained their two-member minority after newcomer Nate Horowitz knocked off a veteran incumbent in Ward 3 and registered...
Reynolds: Time to get serious
Experience suggests that most registered voters will decide who they plan to vote for — if they plan to vote at all — some time between this weekend and next Tuesday. For the first time since 1987, when Republican Dick White decided against a third term, candidates for the mayoralty of Kingston will be seeking...
Reynolds: Early-morning mayoral theater
Last week’s breakfast face-off among Kingston mayoral candidates at the Holiday Inn wasn’t much. Blame it on me-too candidates more intent on avoiding errors than scoring points. No one should have been surprised. I mean, what did they expect, four grown men wrestling around on the floor? This was the Kingston chamber of commerce, after...
Reynolds: The vision thing
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has done a lot of positive and far-sighted things his first year in office. Eliminating the safety provision that drivers take eye tests to renew their licenses was not one of them. That the administration swiftly reversed course in the face of incredulous indignation from DMV offices across the state was to...
Could GOP infighting hand Democrats the mayor’s office?
After nearly two weeks of see-sawing vote counts and gut-churning uncertainty, the race for Kingston’s City Hall finally came into focus this week with three candidates emerging from a bruising primary process that saw party favorites falling to under-funded grass-roots campaigners. For Democrats, that means Shayne Gallo, a city attorney and brother of the late...
Gallo wins Democratic mayoral primary
Thirteen days after Kingston Democrats went to the polls to select their candidate for their party’s line in the mayoral race, Shayne Gallo emerged from the race victorious after a nerve-wracking absentee ballot count. On Monday morning, after one last count of 22 disputed absentee ballots, Gallo prevailed over Ninth Ward Alderman Hayes Clement by...
Gallo leads Clement, Polacco edges Turco-Levin
A decision by a state Supreme Court judge could be all that stands between Kingston Democratic mayoral hopeful Hayes Clement’s elimination from November’s general election. Meanwhile, Republican Andi Turco-Levin who, like Clement, had been her party’s favorite in the primary, suffered a stunning upset when absentee ballots cast for fellow alderman Ron Polacco overcame her...
Reynolds: Tough going for primary ‘winners’
Like Kingston’s mean streets, (apparent) Republican nominee Andi Turco-Levin faces a rough road ahead in the general election. Assuming Democrat Hayes Clement’s whisker-thin six-vote primary victory over challenger Shayne Gallo — with perhaps a little more than a hundred absentee ballots to be counted — holds up, the finalists in November will be running on...
Andi leads, Ron looms: Polacco’s hustle could get him GOP line
Primary night in Kingston ended with Common Council Minority Leader Andi Turco-Levin (R-Ward 1) 21 votes ahead of her nearest rival, Ward 6 Alderman Ron Polacco. But Polacco, who waged an aggressive door-to-door campaign in the weeks leading up the vote, said that he is confident that he will prevail once the 109 absentee ballots...
So close: Clement leads Gallo by six votes
Kingston Democrats endured an agonizingly close and ultimately frustrating primary night Tuesday, which ended with two mayoral candidates locked in a virtual dead heat as they await an absentee ballot count to determine the winner. Republicans, meanwhile, saw a newcomer take a near-certain victory while the most experienced candidate in the race fell to a...