Primary day is about six months away. In Albany, the Democratic establishment may have lined up behind sitting County Executive Dan McCoy, but challenger Dan Egan is pressing on.
Albany historian and former New York State Assemblyman Jack McEneny has one yardstick by which he suggests sizing up any politician: "You're only as good as your last mistake."
So going into an anticipated primary challenge for county executive, incumbent Dan McCoy's camp is quiet for now, with McCoy holding back until Egan formally declares his candidacy, something he's announced he'll do next week.
Recently endorsed by Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Congressman Paul Tonko, McCoy already has a fundraising edge. McCoy has bucked the county nursing home albatross that hung over his predecessor. He's championed veteran's causes, enacted a ban on styrofoam cups, worked hard to eliminate so-called toxic toys — and most of all been a vocal opponent of dangerous oil trains, grabbing national headlines.
Egan, though, served as an Albany School Board member, a position McEneny notes has been a ticket to ride for many political aspirants. "We've seen a number of people, former Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk, for example, was on her school board and became a state senator. We've seen the Mayor of Albany, Kathy Sheehan, was active in the school board, elected. My principal successor, since I've got two of them, was Pat Fahy, she was on the school board, and it's actually a pretty logical route for people to go into, into elected office."
Indeed, for Fahy, her association with the school board was more of a catapult than a stepping stone. "I ran in a very difficult year, it was a five-way race for two seats. At one point there were nine people considering running. For me, it was a high visibility campaign because I campaigned on renovating the Albany Schools. And I was one of the founding member of Parents Advocating Small Schools, so the referendum that rebuilt virtually all of the Albany schools with the exception of the high school and ASH, the Albany School of the Humanities, that was critical."
Fahy scored high on name recognition, which she attributes to her pro-education activism. McEneny says people who are interested in civic service often gravitate to politics. "Coming from a school is a particularly good thing, or even a library board, if it's one that has its own budget, because, in addition to the communication and civic involvement and showing up and listening to people and so on and so forth, you also have a pretty abrupt education on what budget is like. You realize the reality between the things that you'd like to do and the things that you can do because of a lack of resources."
Egan plans to formally declare his candidacy on Tuesday. Some media outlets have reported Egan skipped out on two important school board votes and recently abruptly resigned to distance himself from the governor's report that identified several "failing" schools, Albany High and Hackett Middle School. "That's not accurate. I notified the president of the board back in December that I would be leaving, That's long before those votes were scheduled and long before the governor's information was released. I then gave everybody a heads up again in January and then a couple of days before I resigned. And the reason I resigned, I didn't want to introduce politics into the Albany city school board. They have to concentrate on governing our schools, and we didn't want the distraction, I didn't want the distraction of people looking at what I was doing through a political lens."
Egan notes that on January 24th he emailed his boardmates advocating for the school referendum vote to be held in November with the general election, which was agreed upon. And with regard to the governor's report card: "Look, Albany city schools have lost over $30 million in state aid in the last six years since the economic crisis hit, and the state has reduced funding to schools, that's hit a lot of school districts very hard. And when I'm county executive I'm gonna do everything I can to advocate for full funding for all of our public schools."
McEneny concedes anything can happen in a primary challenge, the key race in a city and county where Democrats hold an overwhelming enrollment edge. His first election in partisan politics wound up as a tie against an 18-year incumbent... "...who was the majority leader of the county legislature and the committeemen - even though it takes place in a very public forum it's actually a party election, and so the committeemen broke the tie, gave it to the incumbent, and I wound up being elected in a write-in election with over 3,000 votes cast, just on a county legislative district, so, you can beat city hall."
Much can happen before primary day in September, when McCoy goes for a second four-year term.
