Did you know that since 2019 the candidates for the office of Ulster County executive have been chosen by a group of fewer than 300 politically connected insiders? It’s true.
The last time the voters of Ulster County were asked who should serve as county executive ahead of a primary was 2015. Three years later, duly elected executive Mike Hein resigned to work in state government. On his way out, Hein appointed Adele Reiter, his chief of staff, to run the county until the next election, when Democrat Pat Ryan bested Republican Terry Bernardo. Ryan served three years and ran for a vacant congressional seat last year. He tapped deputy county executive Johanna Contreras as his replacement.
He could just as easily selected county deputy executive Mark Rider, first in line of succession since Ryan’s election in 2019. The promotion of Contreras came three months before the special election.
The manner of arrival for these four county executives in a four-year timespan brings into question the protocol of succession after a vacancy — how a replacement should be chosen and how and when an election should occur if it is out of synch with the exiting political calendar.
The revision commission
“The succession as I’ve seen it with the county executive has just been unsatisfactory,” said Brian Woltman, one of the eleven members of the current Charter Revision Commission. “This scenario wasn’t envisioned by the framers of the charter. We go straight to having an unelected official who has never faced voters serving in probably the most powerful single office that we have in county government.”
His statement got no pushback from Dr. Gerald Benjamin, seated in the rows of spectator chairs. Benjamin is the original framer of the Ulster County Charter, a former chair of the county legislature, and a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz, where the center for political science is named after him.
“I just actually took a significant portion of the substance from other charters that I thought were good,” explained Benjamin. “But I wrote some of the sections that were new. There’s a section on intergovernmental collaboration. I wrote it.”
Woltman inaugurated the discussion last December when he introduced a plan to create the position of a prime deputy executive, who in the event of a vacancy in the office of the county executive would assume the executive’s duties for the remainder of the term of office. To hold office, Woltman’s replacement would require the approval of the county legislature.
“Several problems with that,” said Benjamin, disagreeing. “You’re actually creating a lieutenant governor, which lieutenant governor isn’t really independently elected. That’s been the trouble nationally for decades with lieutenant governors. Some places have actually abolished the position.”
Incumbency’s edge
The main problem as Benjamin saw it was the incentive such appointments create to forego elections entirely. “You’re effectively giving somebody such a great advantage in the electorate environment relative to other people,” he said, “that the effective choice might be the naming of the person rather than any election.”
Benjamin offered the example of state comptroller Tom DiNapoli. “Been left in place for twelve years,” said Benjamin, “simply because the legislature appointed him when the predecessor was indicted and convicted and removed from office.”
Dave Donaldson, a member of the commission, retired from the legislature after 28 years, remembered the framing of the original charter. The county executive picking their running mate didn’t ensure that the person picked was qualified, he argued. Just the opposite.
“The people that are running for the office of the executive,” Donaldson said, “will probably end up choosing somebody that that’ll help them get a few votes. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to be all that qualified.”
Commission member Hector Rodriguez agreed.
“The risk is the same with every executive,” he said “You know, there was fear of the concept of the popular but incompetent executive winning back in, you know, 2007 …. That’s always going to be an issue that’s never going away.”
What troubled him, Woltman added, was the timing of this last vacancy, particularly because it happened right in the middle of the budget season.
“Honestly, who formulated this budget?” asked Woltman. “And whose philosophy does it represent? Because, as Hector said earlier, a budget is a statement of your priorities.”
Donaldson attempted to walk Woltman back off his ledge.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” said Donaldson. “The other side of it is we have an elected comptroller who’s been here for a while. You have the legislative body who, many of these people have been there for a while. You have the same financial commissioner [Burt Gulnick] who’s been there forever and a day. So you know, we’re not talking about everything falling apart.”
Woltman’s worry has gained some traction. Gulnick would resign three months later after that discussion and presently faces charges related to alleged fiscal mismanagement. Come November, a third of the legislature, including most of its leadership, will not be seeking re-election. Sands shift.
The filling of vacancies
The trouble begins when a county executive sees greener pastures on the other side of the split-rail fence erected by their own term limits. The situation has now evolved. They leave. Depending on where along the political calendar they climb over, a special election gets triggered.
When Hein went to Albany, the special election to complete the remainder of his term was held on April 30 of that year. Aware that the election calendar stipulated a primary later in the year, those who scheduled the special election decided to do without the opinion of the general public.
Instead, party operatives prepared the sausage themselves. Committee members for the Democrats fielded Pat Ryan. Committee members for the Republicans fielded Jack Hayes. Then the voters were allowed to choose. Of the 117,432 persons eligible to vote in that election, only 17,466 did.
“Anytime you throw an election that voters are not used to participating in, the turnout reflects that,” remarked Ashley Torres, Democratic Party commissioner of the Ulster County Board Elections (BoE).
When Pat Ryan vacated the same office in 2019 close enough to the general election on November 8, the special election benefitted from the traditional turnout. Some 78,724 votes were cast in that election, or 61 percent of the qualified voters in the county.
The costs of elections
Special elections consume considerable resources. Torres estimated the cost of holding an election at upwards of $160,000.
“It’s very expensive,” said Torres. “And in a practical sense, running an election, you have to have voting systems that can power that election.”
Recounts cost money, too. In 2022 The BoE had to conduct one in 2022 for the state Supreme Court, All the voting systems [in Ulster County] were essentially impounded, said Torres. The 78,724 ballots were counted by hand three separate times because three candidates were running. That election wasn’t certified until December 13.
“These special elections put us in a bit of a pickle,” confirmed John Quigley, Republican BoE commissioner, “especially in this past August 6 situation, where multiple scenarios could have played out that would have essentially had us running four elections in one year.”
Torres said that scenario would have been virtually impossible. “We would have had to have asked Dutchess County, for example, to let us borrow voting systems while we’re also doing a recount and trying to run early voting days.”
The current charter states that a special election will be called if a vacancy occurs more than six months before the next general election. And that election has to take place within 90 days.,
The first requirement for anyone running for county office is to collect a thousand signatures from enrolled voters. There is a month-long window to get that done.
The signatures can be challenged by opponents, as they are every election cycle. Assuming sufficient signatures to survive the scrutiny, the primary is held.
State law has moved primaries from September to June.
If county executive Jen Metzger were to leave her job tomorrow to become governor of New York, Metzger could select chief of staff Chris Kelly to run the county until a special election could be called. Metzger could also appoint the night janitor if she saw fit. There’s nothing in the charter against her doing so.
If the special election were called before next November, there need not be a primary. The political party insiders, at last count 295 Democratic county committee members and 21 Republican county committee members. could again select their preferred representatives.
Unless this issue is resolved before the next unexpected vacancy at the top, Ulster County could find itself being served the same soup, politically speaking, just reheated.
What is the solution?
“Right now, it becomes the ultimate insider baseball,” proclaimed Rodriguez. “In terms of how those individuals become the candidate in a special election … because the current system right now becomes the party insiders making a selection on behalf of the voters before that individual even stands for election.”
“Well, the nominating process is ancillary,” said Benjamin.
“Unfortunately, it’s no longer ancillary,” retorted Rodriguez. “It’s front and center.”
Validating the paranoia of the common people everywhere, Benjamin said the quiet part out loud. “Some people think that party conferences and caucuses pick better candidates than primaries.”
A heavy silence fell, perhaps because everyone present was aware they were being recorded. Rodriguez raised his eyebrows, took off his glasses, and crossed his arms.
“The fact of the matter is…” began Benjamin before he was interrupted by the dry, cynical laugh of commission member Thomas Kadgen through the P.A. speaker. Kadgen attends the commission meetings via videoconferencing.
“That’s an oligarchy,” he said. Rule by the few over the many.
Benjamin conceded there was no definitive best way.
The ballot measure
After almost a year of deliberation, the charter revision commission has offered a solution for the consideration of the full county legislature just in time for November’s general election, to be presented directly for the judgment of the voters. If passed, the measure will end the current practice of political parties selecting candidates for a special election without a primary and instead provide adequate time for primaries to nominate candidates for the ballot at the next general election.
The ballot measure will also require the county legislature, as representatives of the electorate, to approve the succession line of any qualified electors the county executive selects to serve as acting county executive until the next general election.
In some ways, the deliberations of the local charter commission in Kingston, New York provided a mini-version of the discussions of the role of the nation’s chief executive at the federal constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Those consequential decisions, too often taken for granted as the structure of the American system of government after 236 years of evolutionary experience, were made after bitter struggles among competing interests that didn’t see eye to eye on very much. Constitutional change does not come easily.
The full legislature was expected to consider a vote on the language this Tuesday night, August 15.
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