Change comes, gradually, then all at once
All seven state Legislature races in North Country have only 1 candidate
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I want you to remember another time 13 years ago, an eye-blink really.
"So many of us are dispirited by the lack of true leaders, the polarization of our communities into blue and red teams that leave no room for negotiation or compromise, and representatives marching lockstep with orders of party bosses."
I wrote that on June 19, 2011.
Consider that for a second. Sounds a lot like recent times. It sounds like nothing has changed.
Maybe, it’s always been this way.
Barack Obama was president then. We had survived the Great Recession, not yet experienced Trump’s presidency and were pre-Covid. It was almost a more innocent time.
On that June day in 2011, I was remembering the previous Election Day when I sat down for a chat with state Sen. Roy McDonald. The reason I chose McDonald was it was clear he was the safest bet to win re-election that night.
He was popular, respected and always overflowing with ideas to make his community a better place.
I can't think of anyone like that today.
But on Election Day 2010, I found a discouraged Roy McDonald. He told me he was tired of dealing with the corruption and low-life scoundrels from downstate. Yes, they were mostly Democrats, but their arrests and indictment gave truth to McDonald's concerns.
That same Election Day, Andrew Cuomo was elected governor.
He made same-sex marriage a priority for the Legislature.
Thirteen years ago, it was a controversial issue.
We at the newspaper had some experience with the issue.
Back in 2002, a 25-year-old Post-Star reporter named Matthew Sturdevant wrote an in-depth piece Sunday enterprise story titled "Growing Up Gay" that was published on the front page of The Post-Star's Sunday newspaper. The lead photograph was of two men in Congress Park in Saratoga Springs about to kiss.
"What's wrong with that," I asked in a front page explanation of the photo.
Sturdevant spent several months working on the story, interviewing gays and lesbians who had grown up in the North Country. He was spurred by the ongoing debate over civil unions in neighboring Vermont and the desire to report on a segment of our own community we rarely covered.
The response was brutal in its bigotry.
It was shocking to many of us at the newspaper and told us something we didn’t know about Hometown, USA.
Letter after letter objected to the story, the photograph and our attempt to even address the issue. They were some of the most vile letters to the editor any of us ever experienced.
One woman from Granville wrote: "Disgusting because our family doesn't need to be exposed to the gay lifestyle/agenda in our own home. The gay lifestyle is a perversion of God's plan for mankind."
And the letters got even worse.
Nine years later, Gov. Cuomo challenged the Legislature to do the right thing, but to do that he would need Republican votes in the state Senate.
Roy McDonald, 64 and in the prime of his political career, had voted against same-sex marriage in the Assembly. His constituents were mostly rural and conservative.
That's when Roy McDonald announced he had a change of heart.
He had evolved.
He would vote for same-sex marriage and then out of frustration told a reporter if people didn't like it they could take their job and shove it.
That was Roy McDonald, former Marine.
It was a Profiles in Courage moment we rarely see anymore.
I thought about Roy McDonald last night.
I thought about how few elected officials ever do the right thing anymore.
Despite his popularity among Republicans and long service to the party, McDonald was challenged in a primary.
No, it was worse than that. The party he was so loyal to his entire life turned on him because he voted his conscience. He lost by 100 votes in the primary and while he could have continued the fight in the fall election, he continued to show loyalty to his party and walked away.
But here is the most important thing to remember as the final votes are counted in this presidential election. It took nine years from the time "Growing Up Gay" was published and repudiated by a significant number of local readers until same-sex marriage became law in New York and Republicans ended Roy McDonald’s career.
Thirteen years later, most of us don't think about same-sex marriage.
It is not an issue for most of us.
Polls show that some 89 percent of young people (18-34) support same-sex marriage. Even 60 percent of seniors (65 and older) support it.
Things do change.
We do evolve.
Roy McDonald's vote was on the right side of history.
So maybe there is still hope for America, that we can survive this moment, but I suspect there will be dark days ahead as the America I knew growing up changes, as its democracy is threatened.
Many don’t understand that, or believe that. After all, democracy is in our DNA. It is our birthright.
I thought doing the right thing was in our DNA, too, especially when it came to casting our votes.
I imagine so did Roy McDonald.
So maybe it will take another four years for us to figure it out. Maybe we haven’t hit rock bottom with our politics, yet. I just hope it isn’t too late.
Two results to report
I can report with 100 percent confidence that even though Dan Stec and Matt Simpson are running unopposed for the state senate and Assembly respectively, one reader wrote to tell me he wrote in my name for the state Senate seat and Will Doolittle's name for the Assembly seat.
If I selected, I would be honored to serve.
Democracy?
North Country Public Radio pointed out this week that there is only one candidate in each of the seven races for the state Legislature in the North Country.
That's not a democracy if there is only one choice.
NCPR asked Billy Jones, a Democrat running unopposed for the state Assembly in the Plattsburgh area, what was up.
Jones said the two-year term means politicians are too busy running for office and raising money to ever get anything done. He also cited the time commitment, the financial costs, time on the road and social media attacks.
“I mean, in this political climate, maybe people don't want it," Jones told NCPR. "Maybe people don't want to put their family through that."
Oh my!
One language expert studied Donald Trump's use of violent language in the recent campaign and said it “exceeds that of any other politician in a democracy that we studied and falls just a little below the level in a selection of Fidel Castro’s May Day speeches.”
And half the country thinks that is OK.
Oh my!
Check the pockets
The clunking sound from the laundry room yesterday was a bit ominous and I hoped that the dryer was not on its last legs.
I turned it off and turned it on again and the clunking continued.
I reached in and found the problem. I had picked up one of Sophie's tennis balls in the yard and put it in my pocket.
It was now clean.
Conspiracy
You know there will be conspiracy theories galore about the election.
I was feeling that way Tuesday morning when I showed up at the 4-5 building on the Queensbury school campus to find a sign directing me across the street to a new polling location.
As someone who reads a lot of local media, I don't ever remember being notified of the change of location.
I believe it was a conspiracy?
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
America still hates women.
That's the thing about free elections -- voters are free to make a rational, ethical choice, or use their poor judgment to make a bad choice. Half the country will get what they wanted -- a venal, unfit criminal as president. And the other half, as well as the country as a whole, will suffer for it.
We can still take some solace in the fact that half of us voted for democracy and a candidate who demonstrated her ethics and good character, putting our country and its people first.
We won't go back.