What brought you to New Paltz?
Like so many people, the college brought me here in the fall of 1995. I never visited the campus or went to orientation. My guidance counselor gave me a list of all majors at SUNY and I picked the art department at SUNY New Paltz.
What were your first impressions?
For the first few weeks, I stayed in the dorm. One night I got bored. Someone told me where the town was. It was nighttime. I saw these 19th-century buildings. To me it looked like Sesame Street. I saw Jim Barner from Barner Books leaning out of a second-story window of his building. People just said, “Hey Jim.” Then he said, “Oh hey!” right back. I was thinking “Where am I?” The shopkeepers know the town folks. Again, it seemed to me like Sesame Street. In the 1990’s the town was a lot weirder. There were no barricades on the stoops. Many people most nights were just sitting on the street talking to each other, sharing ideas. There were poetry readings in restaurants. More unusual characters hung out on Main Street.
You got to know everyone. It created real community. Also, it was cheap and easy to live in New Paltz. At the time I lived with seven other students. We each paid $200 in rent. That could never happen now. So many artists, writers, musicians, painters and poets all could create a viable life here at that time. The loitering culture, which I always believed in, eventually got destroyed. We need places for free, where people can meet and talk. Now I guess that is Water Street Market.
Like so many students, I stayed here after college. I was working as a house painter to pay the bills. I was a Green Party and anti-globalist activist here.
What inspired you to run for mayor of New Paltz?
After college I got recruited to the town’s environmental conservation commission. That’s how I learned how policies are created, how politics and governing works. Myself and my friends got sick of the carnival of protesting, saying what we don’t want. We asked, “How do you accomplish getting what we do want?” There were upcoming village elections. The mayor and four trustees were up for election. Tom Nyquist and Robert Feldman, his deputy mayor, had always run together, receiving about 500 votes collectively. But this time they had a falling out and ran against each other. We figured each would get about 250 votes. All it would take was 300 votes for a new candidate to prevail. We, at the Green Party, finally saw a way to really influence and implement the changes we believed would improve the lives of the people in town. Our strategy worked. I won with 320 votes. Then began the long process of finding all the ways local government could build the society we wanted to see.
What inspired you to conduct the same-sex marriages so far ahead of your time here in New Paltz?
I didn’t have any gay friends or family growing up that I knew of. One politically hot-button issue in 2000 was domestic partnerships. The conversation deteriorated to “no rights for civil unions.” That sounded insane to me, just like separate but equal. Why should there be a separate category for gay people and a separate category for straight people? Marriage is marriage! So I advocated in 2000 for marriage equality. When I ran for mayor and won, I knew mayors could perform marriages, like ship captains and priests. I looked into the Marriage equality law in New York state. I was told there is nothing in state law that forbids and nothing in state law that allows it either. It was a wide open door I could walk right through.
What was performing the marriages like for you personally?
There was a slow burn. We planned this in secret for nearly a year before we went public. The low point was the morning of the first weddings. I was in my office and I had a full-brown anxiety attack. I thought I am going get shot or arrested. I could go to jail. I had a moment of doubt. But when I went next door to the little conference room next the mayor’s office, there they were, the couple getting married, being briefed by lawyers who were ready to represent them pro-bono. I saw their children, the joy. All my fears evaporated. We announced it on a Thursday at five for a Friday at noon event. In such a short time, 3,000 people came to witness. There was a little wooden platform. Amazing how the things that happened I wasn’t even involved with. There was a platform, flowers, a violinist. Who arranged that? I stood on that stage. Behind me were dozens of news people with cameras and microphones. There was a little girl, maybe eight or nine, one of the children of the couples to be married. She was wearing a white dress with bows in her hair. She was just dancing, twirling around oblivious to city hall. She was so happy. At that moment I felt this is where I belong . This is the right thing to do.
Why did you leave New Paltz?
I left New Paltz in February 2000, just before the pandemic. I left because I went to grad school for environmental policy. I got a job in my field in Albany. I was heartbroken to leave New Paltz. If I could have found a good job in New Paltz, I would have stayed. I miss the places — Main Street, Peterskill, the mountains. I miss what everyone else goes to New Paltz for. The one thing I did not miss then but I do miss now is knowing everyone everywhere I go. Being anonymous in Albany was great for awhile. Now I miss the closeness with the community. I could not afford to live there now. I could not afford to buy a house. But if I could work remotely, I would pack up and return in a second, in a heartbeat.
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