As of early Wednesday morning, voters in the Town of Gardiner seemed eager to return Ulster County Legislature chair Tracey Bartels (Democrat, Working Families) to her seat representing District 16, by a wide margin of 1,236 to 538 votes (69.67 to 30.33 percent) over Jordan Manley (Republican, Conservative, Independence), a computer programmer and political neophyte who bought a home in Shawangunk in 2018. If the two Town of Shawangunk voting districts — whose results hadn’t yet been reported by the Ulster County Board of Elections as of early Wednesday morning — follow suit, Bartels will embark upon her seventh term as legislator in January, having served from 2004 to 2007 and again from 2012 to the present.
Gardiner’s only other tossup was a ballot measure proposing to increase the Gardiner Library’s budget for the first time since the opening of its new building in 2008. The referendum question, “Shall the annual contribution of the Town of Gardiner for the operating budget of the Gardiner Library be increased by $46,846 to the sum of $276,076.00 annually?” was overwhelmingly approved by the voters by 1,233 to 523 votes, a 70.22 percent to 29.78 percent split.
Incumbent municipal officials seeking reelection — all of them Democrats — faced no opposition this time around. Marybeth Majestic secured her third term as town supervisor with 1,345 votes to 24 write-ins. On the Town Board, deputy supervisor Laura Walls was reelected with 1,264 votes, and Franco Carucci, recently appointed to fill out Mike Reynolds’ unexpired term when Reynolds moved out of Gardiner, got a green light for his first full term with 1,210 votes; 12 write-in votes for Town Board were cast. Bruce Blatchly, who has served as town justice since 1995, was approved for another term with 1,354 votes to 6 write-ins.
All reported vote tallies are unofficial and include the results of early voting as recorded by the Ulster County Board of Elections.
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