albanyweblog.com
Updated
April 17, 2007
A weblog about the politics and affairs of the old and glorious City of Albany, New York, USA. Articles written and disseminated from Albany's beautiful and historic South End by Daniel Van Riper. If you wish to make a response, have anything to add or would like to make an empty threat, please contact me.
April 17, 2007
Outsourcing The Democratic Picnic
Apparently, Albany County is not good enough for the Albany County Democrats
The Albany County Democratic Party appears to be more powerful than ever before. No longer is it mostly confined to the City of Albany and a few Hilltown burgs, like in the old days. One by one the suburban municipalities have fallen to the mighty party. Of the major townships, only Colonie remains Republican. But the ancient Colonie Republican machine, by all reports, is about ready to turn Democratic.
And yet... something is profoundly wrong with the County Democrats. I’m not talking about the split in the leadership, the old boys versus the new boys. To everyone’s surprise, last year’s power struggles seem to have been resolved peacefully. No, something is rotten at the base of the pyramid.
Last Friday the Thirteenth I got this email from our First Ward Democratic Party Ward Leader, Regina Goodbee. She had sent it to all the First Ward Dem Committee persons. The ones with email, that is:
Subject: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
SATURDAY, JULY 21, 2007 @ KRAUS'S - HALF MOON GROVE - $25.00 IN ADVANCE AND $30.00 AT THE DOOR
12 NOON - 5 PM BEER/SODA/BURGERS/HOT DOGS/SAUSAGE & PEPPERS CORN/FRENCH FRIES/CLAM CHOWDER/FRESH FRUIT/CHICKEN WINGS/PASTA SALAD/POTATO SALAD/ AND MORE!!
FOR DETAILS PLS CALL HEADQUARTERS @ 438-8282
MON - FRI MORNINGS 9 AM - 1 PM
P.S. THEY ARE TAKING ADS FOR THE PICNIC BOOK
IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN TICKETS PLS LET ME KNOW, THANKS.
Regina takes her volunteer job seriously and does it well. Once upon a time, the fifteen ward leaders in the City were powerful personages, the distributors of largess. While still prestigious, today it's mostly a thankless task which mainly involves motivating a bunch of barely motivated committee persons to get off their butts and do electoral work. And sometimes it means dealing with troublemakers.
As I’ve mentioned before, The Wife and I are Democratic Committee persons. It’s an elected position, we represent our immediate neighborhood to the County Party. We’ve done this for some fourteen years.
The Wife and I haven’t exactly been unquestioning obedient party functionaries. I have to admit that the higher echelons of Party leadership do not like us very much. In fact, I think that I can say that their attitude toward the two of us can be described as fear and hatred.
Several years ago, Albany's two NY State Assembly Men, Ron Canestrari and Jack McEneny, went out of their respective ways to squash me and The Wife. These two enormous political monsters reduced our clout inside the Party to almost zero. This was like having two big ugly scary giants come down from the mountain with massive bloody sledgehammers to bash a couple of cute puppies into the pavement.
It’s too damned complicated to explain here what these big bad old boys did to us, but it involved redistricting. Let’s just say that we found out the hard way that gerrymandering can be used not merely to accrue advantages to incumbent politicians, it can be used to punish troublemakers. That includes irritating little barking dissidents such as ourselves.
So, thanks to our two Assembly Men, the election district that The Wife and I represent was reduced to exactly one City block. The normal election district in the City of Albany contains up to a thousand voters. Ours contains, as of last election, twenty nine.
The upside for The Wife and I is that we don’t have to work very hard around election time. Our main job as committee persons is to knock on doors to get our neighbors to sign qualifying petitions for candidates. Hell, we can catch most of our walk sheet of voting neighbors in one evening. And when it’s time to run for our committee positions again, all we need to get is three signatures on our own petitions to qualify for the ballot.
Yes, I like to avoid work whenever possible. If the big bad boys want to really punish us, they’ll expand our district to a thousand voters after the next census. Then you’ll really hear me holler.
Anyway, back to the email from Regina. I knew that the annual Democratic picnic had run into trouble. Last year it got kicked out of the Altamont Fairgrounds after some sort of dispute, and a poor substitute was held at the Polish American Hall in Albany, hastily arranged at the last minute. I heard it was a depressing affair, almost drowned by torrential rain.
But where is this new venue? I’d never heard of Kraus’s Half Moon Grove. So I sent out a query to the committee, “Where exactly is this place?” Dominick Calsolaro replied:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
It is in SARATOGA COUNTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
KRAUS’S is off exit 8, just over the Mohawk River bridges.
Note the emphatic punctuation. Well, as readers of this blog are well aware, I am not known for going out of my way to keep my honest opinion to myself. Without much thought, I broadcasted to the committee the following reply:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
That's embarrassing. I mean like, what are they thinking? I'm not going. Nor am I going to encourage anyone to go. Sheesh.
Watch for the local media to make fun of the Party over this.
-dwvr
A funny thing I’ve found about running my mouth... computer, whatever. I never know if I am expressing what everybody is thinking, or giving everyone within earshot an excuse for not inviting me to their house. It seems that this time I screwed up the future invitations. Maureen O’Brien, LCSW, ACSW, her therapist feathers apparently a bit ruffled, threw this reply back:
RE: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Maybe it would be fair to ask why, first? I have heard there was a reason why they picked it, although I’m not sure what it is.
I’ve never been too good at picking up on subtly worded warnings that I’m crossing the line into offensive. So, after The Wife and I walked back from a lovely dinner and a bottle of Italian red wine at My Linh’s Vietnamese restaurant on Delaware Avenue, old motor mouth sent out the following reply at 10:52 PM:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Yes Maureen, undoubtedly there is a reason. And whatever the reason, I'm sure it's very ridiculous.
Tonight, over dinner, The Wife said, "Now we have two leaders. Are they both stupid?"
-dwvr
Okay, I shouldn’t have brought The Wife into this thread. After all, she had just downed glass of wine number two over the appetizers when she uttered this bon mot, which I thought was rather clever. At the time, that is, after some wine.
Her somewhat witty reference was to the compromise that saved the County Democratic Party from a fatal split down the middle that would have been fought out in a public courtroom. Frank Commisso offered a power sharing plan to David Bosworth, which he accepted. For the first time, the Party has two chair persons.
This was a very smart move on the part of Commisso, and it was smart of Mr. Bosworth to accept. The guy ejected from this alliance was Mayor Jerry Jennings, who will be busy in the near future defending his power base inside the City of Albany. Meanwhile, Commisso and Bosworth have agreed to defer their rivalry until another time, perhaps three and a half years from now when Party elections come up again.
But what the hell is going on with this picnic that they have to hold it in Saratoga County, practically in Clifton Park? I find it hard to believe that they can’t find someplace in Albany County. It seems to me that the Party is telling the world, “Our County isn’t good enough for us. We’d all rather spend our time in Saratoga County, which we think is a better place.”
At 11:02 PM Judith Mazza, former ward leader and long time Democratic activist, no doubt clutched her head with both hands, snarled, and sent this explanation:
RE: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
The reason actually is not stupid — it is because they had to find a place that would do all the work, supply and cook all the food for a reasonable price. No one wants to do the work in making the picnic happen any more. Everyone wants the picnic, but not do the picnic.
All the wards and towns who used to do the planning and executing—getting the food donations, ordering all the stuff (including paper products, etc) get entertainment, the play things for kids, etc, etc, etc. I used to go to picnic meetings and fewer and fewer people showed up every year.
Now Altamont wants $7500 up front and supply nothing, including clean up , portajohns, etc. It is way too much work for the few who want or can do it. So, Krauss’ is well known, will do everything, and the price is right. It is on the other side of the river — just across the county line, but is used by people everywhere. That is the deal. You are not the only ones who have asked the question about the location in another county, but no one else has come up with a better workable idea. -Judith
The Wife said to me, “Well, no one asked me to volunteer.” “Would you?” I asked. “Do you have the time?” She said, “That depends on who’s asking and what they want me to do. I’ve always assumed that they didn’t want someone like me because I’m not one of the right kind of people.”
That’s probably part of the problem. The Wife and I have always felt the exclusion very sharply, sometimes violently and in our faces. From what I’ve seen, there’s been a long standing policy of freezing out the “wrong people” like us from participating in Party functions.
But there’s another thing. Doing volunteer work for the Party has traditionally been a way of doing service in exchange for favors that the Party bestows upon you and your neighborhood. Well, it’s old news that the Party no longer bestows much of anything anymore. The need for obligation to the Party has mostly disappeared, but a sense of altruism for the common cause has yet to take its place.
Old blabberface had to fire off one more attempt at profundity at 11:18 PM:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Well, Judith, that's sad. No one wants to do the work. The Democratic Party is more dominant in the county than ever before, but you're saying that it no longer has the volunteer resources to put together a lousy picnic. This does not speak well for the party. Perhaps it would have been better to can the picnic than to humiliate ourselves in this fashion, and to expose our weaknesses in this way.
Perhaps this is how a split party behaves.
-dwvrWell finally, the usually mild mannered Regina the Ward Leader hit the cyberspace at 11:43 PM to tell me to STFU and behave:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Dan
Thanks for expressing your concerns, but in order to bring unity within the Democratic party we need to come together. You may not like the idea of the location or have other issues, I don't know?
But to say "you're not going" is unacceptable to me. As a committee member you have an obligation to your constituents to represent them, it not all about you. Also I didn't appreciate the language you used calling people STUPID. I personally feel that all committee members in the 1st ward should attend the picnic, but if for some reason you cannot attend that's fine, but I hope you and Lynne would consider attending.
As the Ward Leader, my goal for the 1st Ward is to bring unity in our community and therefore I need all committee members on board. We represent each other and stand as one.
As always, thanks for all your support.
Regina
But then, Regina added a postscript at 11:48 PM:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
I don't think anyone from the 1st ward volunteered and we were not asked.
The not so cute puppy has made another mess and got tied up in the yard. I didn’t have much to say to her admonishment, except:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Ouch. Reprimand received and acknowledged.
But I think these things need to be discussed.
-dwvr
Finally, at two minutes after midnight, Regina finished it:
Re: ALBANY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PICNIC - 2007
Thanks.
Managing volunteers is like training puppies. It requires patience and a forgiving attitude.
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