Here we are in December…and finally, most of our November 8 elections seem to have been settled. Albeit not officially yet, given a few outstanding legal proceedings that Ulster County Board of Elections Commissioner Tom Turco says are still in need of completion.
In Olive, the final counting of 63 absentee ballots this past Monday, November 28, upheld eleven term supervisor Berndt Leifeld’s 35 vote election day lead, yielding an unofficial total of 776 votes for Leifeld, a Democrat, versus 737 for Cindy Johansen, a Republican who also ran with Conservative Party backing.
In Shandaken, Alfie Higley Jr.’s 72 vote election day lead held up as he was declared winner of a contested seat alongside incumbent Republican/Conservative Vincent Bernstein, taking 573 votes against Democrat Michael Koegel.
Finally, write-in candidate Paul Ohsberg was declared the new supervisor in Hardenburg, population 283, where no officially-sanctioned candidates appeared on the November 8 ballot. He received 43 votes to 7 for Douglas Odell, 3 for William Fielder, 2 for Wendy O’Reilly, and one each for Jake Rosa and Carl Ohsberg. As of press time, there was one challenged vote for the new supervisor being worked out, legally.
The last toss-up election was in the Town of Warwarsing, where Republican challenger Scott Carlsen was ahead of incumbent supervisor Leonard Distel, a Democrat, by 10 votes, with 17 ballots remaining to be counted and everyone scheduling to go to court “early next week,” according to Turco.
Supervisor who?
In neighboring Greene County, meanwhile, it now seems that three towns will not be able to decide the composition of their town governments, or end results from recent elections, until the new year.
In Prattsville, which was hard-hit by Tropical Storms Irene and Lee last August and September, write-in candidate Alan Huggins, a Republican town supervisor from the late 1990s and early 2000s, defeated incumbent Democrat Kory O’Hara by 15 votes…and then resigned his new position as of Tuesday, November 29, citing ill health.
According to members of the town board there, a meeting of the remaining four members of the Prattsville town board, split between Republicans and Democrats, will meet in the coming week to choose a successor for Huggins. That replacement will then serve the first year of a two-year term.
Word is that O’Hara lost to Huggins because of the local population’s anger at the estimated costs of flood repairs, and slowness of state and FEMA responses to the municipalities troubles, which included damage to one third of the hamlet’s buildings.
In Lexington, a recanvassing of votes ended with a tie between Democrat Lynn Byrne, an incumbent town board member, and her Republican opponent William Pushman, at 165 votes each. The incoming town board is saying that it has the authority to appoint its selection to the seat, apparently choosing from only between the two ballot candidates, once the board is sworn in after January 1. The board is split between the two parties.
In Halcott, Democratic and Republican endorsed candidate Walter Miller also ended up tying write-in candidate Pete Ballard, at 36 votes each, for a town council seat. They, too, are saying an appointment will be made at the town’s reorganization meeting in early January. ++
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