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New! Click HERE to see the final results for the November 2023 election in Waterford. And Click HERE to see a PDF showing the final results for all of Saratoga County on the Board of Election's Website.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT #1 !!!
The very short season for getting petitions signed for all political offices up for election in the November 2024 election starts on Tuesday, February 27th. We need your cooperation and assistance with getting the number of signatures needed for each petition prior to March 27!
We're pleading for your help … with “help” meaning nothing more in this case than reaching out to to tell us that you're willing to sign our petitions, or responding positively if we knock on your door. Please send us a message using the contact form at the bottom of this page, and we can arrange a time and place to meet.
Our very small corps of petition carriers will be collecting signatures on petitions for the following offices:
STATE DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE, 108TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT
Saratoga County Board of Election records indicate there are 1,650 registered Dems in the Town and Village of Waterford! So it really shouldn't be such a chore to get the required number of 108 Waterford Democrats to sign a petition to fill the slots for two Waterford Representatives for the State Democratic Committee.
But unfortunately, it is. So especially for this petition, we seek your help.
PLEASE let us know if you are willing to sign the petition!
The Waterford Democratic Committee has nominated two at-large candidates for this office. They are:
Irene H. Sylvester
Henry Glavin
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DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE TOWN/VILLAGE OF WATERFORD
The number of petition signatures needed vary with each of Waterford's 7 voting districts. The Waterford Committee has put forward five active members of the Committee to represent 5 of the 7 districts (no candidates have volunteered to represent Districts 3 and 7)
District 1. Max Kintner
District 2. Mary Pliska
District 4. Brenda Pestillo
District 5. Pauline Bartel
District 6. Irene Sylvester
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SARATOGA COUNTY TREASURER
Democratic Candidate: Michelle D Madigan
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NEW YORK STATE SENATE, 44TH DISTRICT
Democratic Candidate: Minita Sanghvi
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NEW YORK ASSEMBLY, 108TH DISTRICT
Democratic Candidate: John McDonald III
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U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 20TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, NEW YORK STATE
Democratic Candidate: Paul Tonko
Barb Turpin stepped down as Chair of the Waterford Democratic Committee in September. Barb and her husband, Mark, continue to work hard in an advisory capacity to the new Chairperson and for the entire committee. That will end sometimes later this year, however, because Barb and Mark are building a new home in Washington County and will be leaving the Waterford and Saratoga County Democratic Committees.
Those who have had the rewarding opportunity to work alongside the Turpins in any of their multiple volunteer efforts – or in their campaigns to win a seat on the Town and Village Councils – understand that losing them is a blow to all Waterfordians, whatever their political party affiliation. Their unflagging energy in trying to make Waterford a better town and village will be sorely missed. No doubt they will be strident advocates for citizens in Washington County (Good luck with that!), but sadly they won’t be such a huge part of the Waterford Community.
We thank Mark and Barb for all they have done in so many volunteer capacities in Waterford, and wish them the very best!
Barb Turpin’s upcoming departure left the chairperson’s seat open, which led to a default selection of the only person on the committee willing to assume that mantle.
That would be me, Max Kintner, who in addition to being the new Chairperson is the novice webmaster and composer of this newsletter and website.
From time to time, in future information releases, I will be sending out personal commentaries and short op-eds about issues and topics. If you’re inclined to read them, you will likely find out a little more about me … for whatever that’s worth.
Meanwhile, by way of a very brief introduction, my wife of 38 years, Mary Pliska, and I are from the South; I was mostly raised in Texas and Mary is from Oklahoma. I have graduate degrees in Latin American Studies from Tulane University, in New Orleans, which perhaps explains in part why we lived in Guatemala for several years before moving to the NY Capital District in 2005. Three years later, in 2008, we moved to our home in Waterford Village. I currently work for Northern Rivers Family of Services as an in-house consultant to social workers in the NYS Children’s Health Homes Program. We are both lifelong Democrats. I cast my first vote for George McGovern in 1972, and have not missed a national election since.
Welcome to the page for the Democratic Committee of Waterford, New York.
If you didn't know the Waterford Democrats have a website, that's completely understandable. Because although it's actually been in place for a couple of years, it has lain dormant and unvisited because:
1) Nobody on the committee really knows how to make or update a website, and …
2) We didn't know what to put here, so …
3) We haven't told anybody that it exists
As you are likely very much aware, however, a frightening and traumatic election is bearing down on us, giving the Waterford Committe the incentive to try once again to get the website up and running. In combination with a newsletter, it seems the most likely and only affordable way to distribute information to our fellow Democrats, and to share information that hopefully somebody out there will consider useful and maybe even inspiring and/or fortifying enough to assertively express a preference for democracy over authoritarianism and fascism.
Celebrating the resurrection of a Waterford Democratic Newsletter!
It seems entirely unlikely that anybody has been sitting on the edge of their seat waiting anxiously and gasping “WHEN will the next Waterford Democratic Committee Newsletter Arrive!” Right?
Because if so, you've been gasping for a long time … like since 2021? And even then there were there were no more than half-a-dozen, before the collective consciousness of Democrats once again receded into the conservative woodwork of Waterford. But as mentioned above, we … meaning everybody in the United States as well as Waterford … are back on the precipice of what could easily be a very dark time in the future of the United States. And it seems like a propitious and necessary time to get the newsletter up and running so that all of us Democrats can huddle in fear, scream in anger, and/or commiserate in grief together while hoping that freedom and democracy will not in in November.
A Few Thoughts From the new Chair & Newsletter Editor about Democratic Fear and the Waterford Democratic Committee
In describing how she managed a successful campaign last November, a speaker at the County Democratic Meeting on February 23 said the real challenge was to convince voters they did not have to be afraid. It was only when people began realizing that they did not have to fear the entrenched Republican culture and the political machine, she said, that victory became possible.
Her words resonated with me, because since moving to Waterford in 2008 Mary and I have noticed that while there is a good deal of grumbling about the village and town government, only very rarely does anybody challenge town or village officials. I understand their reticence, because it takes courage to stand up in a council meeting already knowing that your complaint or problem is going to be dismissed with a wave of the hand and an empty promise to “look into it,” or a well-reheared retort that “nothing can be done about it.” On the plus side, meanwhile, our Village and Town officials are by and large competent functionaries. Short on vision and imagination, true, but pretty good at getting the trash picked up, the streets plowed, and minimal government services are provided.
The articulation of fear as a barrier to change really struck a chord in me, because my sense is that over the last few years the fear has intensified in response to the Republican Party's base becoming increasingly extreme, to the point that it's ever more difficult for family, friends, and neighbors to have honest conversations. It's an old bromide that politics and religion are subjects best avoided. But the Trump flags flying in the neighbors' yards, and the rants in line at Hannafords, and the ugly comments on Facebook makes civil communication with our fellow Waterfordians much more difficult.
My hope as Chair and creator of this newsletter and website is to create a safe medium for Democrats, and to motivate other Democrats to join with us in whatever way they feel comfortable.
This site and the communication that I hope will emanate from it is an experiment. We're holding our breath in hopes that it works, and will actually become a medium that local Democrats can appreciate. This is a pilot project, with the ultimate goal of increasing the visibility of the Democratic Committee and promoting fair, open, and honest government in Waterford and beyond.
So, a few words about the website and newsletters are perhaps appropriate.
As noted above, this is the first newsletter from the committee in a very long time. At least two years?
There’s a number of reasons for that, but the big two reasons are that:
1) We have a very small, very busy group of committee members, have lives to live and jobs to do, so there's not a lot of spare time. And …
2) Our past newsletters focused on bits and pieces of local news perceived as relevant to the work of the Committee, with the primary function of reminding people that the Committee existed rather than actually disseminating “news.” But let's face it: not many significant and interesting or relevant tidbits bob to the surface very often in a town like Waterford. So whoever was assigned the chore of composing the newsletter scrambled to find something … anything … to put in the pages just to justify sending one out at all. But the world, and I think our town, is a different place now, and it's madness not to use the newsletter to share real news in order to broaden the horizons and consider our little town and village in the context of the wider region and world.
There's a philosophical discussion waiting to be had in which we ask the question, “What's the Purpose of a Waterford Democratic Committee?” That's a conversation we should have. But not now. A much better use of the newsletter right now would be to keep sharing the occasional gossipy soundbytes about local politics on the rare occasions they come up, while taking a more regional perspective that might induce Waterfordians to think about our community’s relationship with surrounding towns and regional politics. We also believe that it's appropriate for our local committee to foster conversation about state and national politics that are directly relevant to us here in Waterford, and possibly to collaborate with adjacent communities to advance the greater good. If Waterford is seen, as it should be, as integrally connected to county, region, state, and country in which we live, there's more highly relevant news that we could ever include in a newsletter.
So we hope you will bear with us as we try to make this website and occasional Democratic emails more inclusive and useful. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, or complaints or kudos, please tell us by replying to our emails or through the “contact us” options at the bottom of this and most pages.
Our ultimate goal is to help our fellow Democrats and like-minded voters of all classes and parties to maintain courage and hope in the months ahead. It's an unfortunate truth … one that surely we ALL recognize … that the Republican Party across the nation and right here at home has become so ugly, hostile, and threatening that most Democrats in Waterford quite simply live with low-grade fear. Of course that doesn't mean we hide in the closet, trembling. But even in casual conversations it regularly comes up that Democrats are afraid of vandalism in response to a a yard-sign in front of our house, or a bumpersticker on our cars, or a semi-controversial post on the Facebook community page. Most of us bite our tongue instead of openly expressing our thoughts because we're afraid of the backlash from belligerent and intolerant neighbors and friends. And none of remembers a time where there was more tension and worry about politics in our lives, because there never has been a time like this in America, since at leat the Civil War. Waterfordians, just like just everyone else in America, are anxious and on edge about their everyday relations, as well as the short and the long term future of our community, our country, and our world.
A network of Democratic contacts and friends is one of the few, and almost certainly the most likely way for Democrats to retain some sense of perspective and hope for the political future. Local Democrats will need to collectively and individually decide whether there's something we can actually DO. But meanwhile, the worst and long-term most dangerous option is to dread the future in isolation and retreat into despair and silence.
So please join with us in any way you can … even if that only means volunteering to sign the petitions, or sharing a community response by email to something in the newsletter. Or if you're inclined, we would welcome new participants in occasional activities of the Democratic Committee. It's not much work at all, and represents one of the few opportunities Waterfordians have to share conversation and thoughts about politics and quality of life with like-minded neighbors.
And again, please share your response to the newsletter and website (and soon, a members only Facebook Page as well) ideas with us. And please spread the word. If you have friends or family members that would like to join with us, please share the news with them that there is a small (very small) core of concerned Democrats in Waterford that need their presence, and their help.