Winning and losing candidates in November’s Saratoga Springs elections returned to Skidmore College Monday night to review the results with political science students.
Students from Professor Bob Turner’s first-year seminar “Real Democracy” presented the results of a survey polling Saratoga Springs voters.
The focus ran the gamut from the differences in candidates’ campaigns to the impact of perceived incivility in city council meetings.
Erick Maganda’s compared national politics and political realities on a local level.
“Obviously it’s still very partisan, very polarized as we’ve seen national politics are. But, like, at local elections a Democrat could vote for a Republican, a Republican could vote for a Democrat it’s still very much, like, not what we see today when we look at Congress or like all these, like, big, you know the national political scene,” explained Maganda.
Republican Mayor-elect John Safford won a three-way race, defeating first-term Democrat Ron Kim.
“Yeah, I was surprised to see the number of Democrats who voted for me. And, there was then confirmation, too, that what we ran on was safety and civility, and of course I’m committed to trying to do something about the homelessness problem. And those are the three major things that people seemed to be interested in. So, a lot reasons why I ended up winning,” said Safford.
One of the pillars of Safford’s campaign was touting a supposed crime wave in Saratoga Springs, which Cam Whitney said was a hot topic in class discussions.
“I mean I think that is like an easy gimme for any politician; just say there’s crime. The media will usually back that. Not with data, with, like, anecdotal things. So, just say there’s crime and that’s gonna get you a lot of votes if you’re promising to stop crime,” said Whitney.
Whitney continued, bringing the point around to one of the main issues of the campaign.
“Yeah, I think the homelessness issue is the biggest thing where they can say, ‘crime is happening and it’s because of homeless—homeless people and you can walk downtown anywhere and see homeless people downtown pretty often.’ So, as long as you just link those two ideas and you say ‘crime is the result of homeless people,’ or you imply that idea, you might not explicitly say it, that’s kind of an easy gimme that people all across the country do,” explained Whitney.
Democratic Commissioner of Public Safety Jim Montagnino lost his bid for a second term amid a prolonged feud with Mayor Kim, a former ally.
Montagnino was at the event and had this reaction to the presentations:
“The Democratic Party was split in both the mayoral election because the Saratoga One candidate is a lifelong Democrat and in the Public Safety race where Kristen Dart ran as an independent candidate but she’s a Democrat with a lot of Democrat support. So, the lesson really is; if the Democratic Party is united as we were in 2021, we ran the table, and, if we’re not united as we were in 2023, we’re going down in flames,” said Montagnino.
The day before the election the city Democratic Committee pulled its endorsement of Montagnino over a mailer critics labeled as racist, furthering the rift in the party. The students’ survey showed that nearly 30% of respondents said they decided who they were voting for either days before or the day of the election.
Emily Landolfi recounted the class’s reaction to the last-minute dramatics.
“We have like a group chat so we were like texting one another, like, ‘guys this is what’s going on.’ And we were going to the parties afterwards, like the victor’s parties and, like, the people who did not win’s parties – the loser’s parties – and it was interesting to that still, like, playing out while we were there and how hopeful they still seemed even though, like, it seemed like it wasn’t gong to go their way. And to see the reaction of the Republicans after the fact that they won. But our conversations were definitely, definitely changed because a lot of us were just, like, at the edge of our seats,” explained Landolfi.
As far as the class’s predictions for the election, Nathaniel Lewis said they all called Safford’s victory.
“I’d say we were pretty on the money,” said Lewis.
