The Infamous Warren Redlich

I'm really getting famous ... well in Guilderland anyway, and maybe infamous rather than famous. Below are sections of a mailer that was sent to many voters in Guilderland:


What's most interesting about this is the political strategy. I'm not a candidate this year. I'm on the board, but I'm not up for re-election until 2011.

This negative mailer mentions my name three times, but doesn't mention the names of any of our candidates. A similar mailer mentions my name four times and only mentions one of our candidates' names once.

Breaking down the strategy, at first it appears they're trying to avoid building name recognition for our candidates. This is a common approach, especially for well-known incumbents facing relatively unknown challengers. If the voters don't know who your opponent is, then attacking your opponent helps voters recognize the name.

The part about attacking me is, for me of course, fascinating. It would appear that the incumbents think my name is mud. It's hard to say whether this is accurate. I tend to think most people don't even know who I am. People don't come up to talk to me in the supermarket, nor do they sneer at me in disgust. They don't seem to notice me at all.

So did they do a poll which showed I have high negatives? It's possible, but I suspect not. Usually when a poll is done in town, word gets around that people got a poll call. The odds are that someone who knows me, my wife or my mother would have gotten one of these calls and would have told us. That's what happens when you've been part of a community for 36 years.

More likely, the people making the decisions think I have high negatives. Maybe they're right. It's still not clear that voters will transfer those negative feelings to our candidates, but we'll see.

On some of the points in their mailer:

1. "Chaos, rudeness, negativity and a circus-like atmosphere at Town meetings"

While we have had a couple of over-the-top meetings, most have been calm - perhaps even boring to watch. The number of unanimous votes is somewhere over 80%.

The circus moments are entirely attributable to Ken Runion. He's stormed out of two meetings. I've stayed to the end of every meeting. He's orchestrated incidents, such as the DWI meeting (I'm a DWI lawyer) where several people attacked my proposals to reduce court congestion. More on that below.

Negativity? Yes. I have been negative. When Runion wants to give inappropriate tax breaks to large corporations, politically connected insiders, and felons, I'm going to be negative about that. I'm not kidding about the felon thing. The gas station at 1611 Western Avenue was purchased for $350K in 2004, but assessed for $185K in 2005. The owner is currently doing 7 years in federal prison for money laundering. See article in The Business Review.

When Ken Runion hides critical information like a massive sales tax shortfall, or a looming pension crisis in Guilderland, I'm going to be negative. When he raises his own pay while cutting paramedics, I'm going to be negative about that too.

2. ... direct police not to arrest certain driving while intoxicated offenders

That is grossly inaccurate. The proposals I made had nothing to do with arrests - they concerned decisions made by our police after the arrest. I did a blog post explaining this at the time: DWI DWAI Aggravated DWI and Plea Bargaining.

Then there's this bit:

I didn't know I was going to get control of Town Hall. Sounds great! Runion does have control of Town Hall because everything he does is backed by two reliable yes votes. They have voted unanimously on just about everything for about 6 years.

But reality creeps in. I will be, as I am now, one of five board members. And unlike the Supervisor, I will not be there full-time. The candidates on my team are strong-willed. No one is going to control them. The biggest problem will not be one person controlling things, but resolving disputes among ourselves.

Then there's this one:

It definitely will be a message. If the voters support Runion, I will respect their wishes. But here's the bigger question - if the voters reject Runion, will the Democrats accept the result?

In 2007 the Democrats rejected the voters' message. The following appeared in the Altamont Enterprise, 11/8/2007:

The town's highest vote-getter with 5,401 votes was incumbent Democratic Town Clerk Rosemary Centi. She cried as she made her acceptance speech, saying, "That's what you get when you're a master of communication," a reference to Grimm, who runs a communications consulting business. "A little bit of truth, wrapped around a lie."

...

"This was a campaign of one lie after another," Connolly angrily said of the town board race.

Caputo said that the race was "an injustice to the rest of us and to the town of Guilderland."

...

"It's easily lost in one night all of the things that have happened. You have to put it in perspective," Bosworth told Democratic onlookers. "This was not a mandate for change like some have suggested. We've had three months of negativity."

Compare that to how the Republicans responded to their loss in the 11/10/05 Enterprise:
Wednesday, Donegan sent a letter to the Enterprise editor congratulating Slavick and Pastore and thanking everyone who worked on his campaign.
...
Glenning, a vice president for the Bank of America, told The Enterprise Wednesday that he congratulates the winners. He did not go to Dorato’s Tuesday night with other Republicans, but watched the results on television at home with his wife and daughter, he said.

"The greatest thing in an election is the public gets to be heard," Glenning said Wednesday. "We ran a good campaign, everybody did."

Makes you think a little more about where the rudeness and negativity comes from.

Politics Can Be Frustrating

Running for office has its advantages and disadvantages. Mostly it's the latter. If you win there are some advantages, but winning is difficult for non-incumbents and even when you do win it's not as rosy as you might think.

One example of the frustration is how you can get attacked. Sometimes it comes from the opposition. Depending on the nature of these attacks, it's usually not so bad. You see that coming.

But sometimes you get blindsided. You might get sandbagged by someone you thought was a close ally. Usually this is more of a private matter. On the public side, you might get flamed by a wingnut. One friend of mine has been accused of all sorts of things by a guy who seems mentally unbalanced to me. When you see everything he does together, you know he's nuts. But someone might read one thing he says somewhere and not know the full story.

I'll say this: Politics is hard enough. If you've got a problem with a candidate, then it's okay not to support that candidate. It's also okay to criticize your opponent, as long as you stay within reasonable bounds. To quote a good friend, "it's what they do, not who they are." Translating ... criticize them for their actions, but don't call them names.

But if your problem is with a candidate and you don't have a horse in the race, then stay out of that one. Find a candidate you like and support that candidate. We need more positive in politics and less negative. Or heck, run as a candidate yourself. Run once and you'll understand how hard it is, and you might not be so quick to go after someone else.

Nick Cassaro and Negative Politics

I've had a couple comments on this blog recently by someone named Nick Cassaro (or so the commenter identifies himself). The comments are a good example of a problem in politics.

On my most recent post about running for Congress, Cassaro writes:

Again?!! You want to lose three times in a row? Why do that to yourself and to your family?

I have nothing against the Republican party and wouldn't rule out voting Republican (and have voted Republican) but you just aren't right for the Capital Region.

On another recent post about Mike Huckabee, Cassaro writes:
... if I did agree with your economic policies and found out that you did not have the moral values that go back to the founding of this country, I would not vote for you. McNulty is a devout Catholic and that simply resonates with ... voters such as myself. I don't devalue other religions, and I would certainly vote for a devout Protestant or a devout Muslim or a devout Jew. But an Atheist? No. A candidate should mention something about his/her faith.

One thing that few appreciate about politics is that being a candidate is not easy for most people. Nick Cassaro is among those who enjoy attacking candidates. This is a tactic that makes running for office unpleasant. It doesn't bother me, but I know many candidates who find such attacks a rude awakening, and they never want to run for office again. In the end, this leads to a world where incumbents run unopposed. Is this consistent with Nick Cassaro's moral values?

Not that Cassaro is alone. In our recent Guilderland race we were attacked constantly by town employee Don Csaposs. He's continuing his attacks on the Times Union's Local Politics blog under the "sockpuppet" name factsdontlieliarslie. Read more about Csaposs and his attacks in this article by Casey Seiler.