After major losses in citywide elections, the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee hosted a meeting this weekend which resulted in a vote to remove non-committee residents in attendance.
Following November 4th’s city elections, Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee Chair Otis Maxwell sent out an email inviting the public to attend Saturday’s committee meeting.
Two days before the meeting another email went out uninviting any non-committee members.
Only four of the committee’s nine endorsed candidates won in this month’s election, with only three being in competitive races.
“We came expecting to be able to hear and observe the meeting and perhaps make comments but that wasn’t the case and where I think—the problem was the tone and the tenor in the room was a little dismissive of residents and citizens who came,” said Julie Cuneo.
Julie Cuneo has lived in Saratoga Springs since 2010 and had previously served on the committee and hopes to get involved again.
She was one of a dozen residents turned away from the meeting and had been hoping to discuss the less-than-ideal results of the election and the future of the party.
“So, the committee was just short sighted in just sort of proceeding to get through their agenda. They had in their heads it was a closed meeting, citizens came and they rejected any opportunity to engage which I think, in retrospect, in hindsight, they realize was an error on their part. Because to have given us even two minutes for the people who came out, for the people who had something to offer, we’ll never know why those individuals came,” said Cuneo.
Chair Otis Maxwell tells WAMC that while Saturday’s meeting didn’t allow for the public to share their concerns, the committee did approve future forums for exactly that, though their dates have not been set.
“As a committee we are very concerned about the lack of success. We did have three elected but we wanted to have a lot more. And so we needed to caucus among ourselves and figure out what to do including to potentially change leadership. And as far as talking to the public, we absolutely want to talk to the public and one of the things we decided to do at the meeting was to have some public forums to try and get input from folks and see what we can do better to elect more folks in the future,” said Maxwell.
Sarah Burger was one of two Democrats elected to represent the city on the county board of supervisors. She has also previously chaired the city’s Democratic committee.
She was disappointed that a motion to have the executive committee resign failed.
“The executive committee needs to resign. The voters have spoken, again, in Saratoga Springs. And what is clear from the results of this election is that a leadership change is needed. We need a hard reset on the committee in an election and I don’t know what they’re so afraid of. If the people on the executive committee want to run again, they can run again and we can have an open discussion about who we are. I think this committee needs to go back to the basics of who we are, why we’re here, what our mission is, and what our role is in this community,” said Burger.
Maxwell says leadership change isn’t out of the question, but right now he’s focused on recruiting new candidates and hearing from voters.
“Well, it’s been pointed out to me that I did vote for myself to stay and the reason I did that was I was very encouraged by the response of people who were excited about this outreach to the voters and I would say quite a number of committee members have come forward and said ‘hey, I would like to be part of that effort,’ and I thought well I could be useful in spearheading that and I’m going to do it. In the long run my job is to help Democrats get elected and if I’m not doing that I shouldn’t be there,” said Maxwell.
