Voters in the Montgomery County Village of Fort Plain will choose their next mayor through write-in ballots Tuesday after the sudden death of the incumbent last week.
A week ago, interim Fort Plain Village Mayor John Vesp died after a battle with cancer. Vesp, who had been seeking election in Tuesday’s special election, stepped into the role when then-Mayor Mark Nearbin resigned in September.
Vesp was unchallenged in his bid to fill the year-long remainder of Nearbin’s term, and due to his death so close to the election, only his name will appear on the ballot.
If voters want to elect a new mayor, they’ll have to write in a candidate. If Vesp wins, the village board will make an appointment.
Fort Plain Village Clerk David Briggs explains…
“But a write-in a candidate, obviously, in any race can win an election by getting more votes. But if he, posthumously being on the ballot, if the former mayor gets the most vote, he would actually have been re-elected, in essence. But because he passed, the board then makes an appointment for the mayor’s position,” said Briggs.
With Vesp’s death eight days before the vote, one candidate has stepped forward to run as a write-in.
School teacher Pat Hanifin says he hasn’t even had time to seek endorsements from local political organizations for his last-minute run.
“This has been such a whirlwind. The best thing I was able to do was a local business made signs for me to place in the windows of businesses as a write-in candidate, and basically everything has been word-of-mouth,” said Hanifin.
The 52-year-old Hanifin, who describes himself as a moderate Republican, said he was thinking of jumping into local politics after retiring. Now, with Vesp’s death, he is changing his plans a bit.
If his write-in campaign falls short Tuesday, Hanifin hasn’t ruled out running again in the future.
“It’s something I’ve always been interested in, but it was something I was probably going to wait until I retire from my teaching job, which I retire in two years, 2024. So the timeline has been moved up a little bit. So, yeah, I would definitely keep that as a possibility to run, yes,” said Hanifin.
If elected, Hanifin said he wants to focus on promoting the businesses and assets within the small community of under 2,000 residents.
“You know, the businesses that we currently have and a lot of the posiitves that we have including the Fort Plain Museum, the Fort Plain Library, and of course a wonderful police and fire department and DPW. So I want to embrace that and I want to promote that, and then what we can do is move on from there to see what else we can do. We haven’t had industry in this village in many years,” said Hanifin.
Polls in the Fort Plain special election are open from noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday.
The next regular village board meeting has been scheduled for March 29th.
