Vote Early and Often for Old Pop Mannion!

I think I struck too sentimental a note with my Fugue for the Disenchanted the other day.

Got the impression I left the impression that when I said that when I vote I'm voting for Bobby Kennedy and my father that I meant it symbolically.

I think I also gave the impression that Pop Mannion is playing with Bobby in that great touch football game in the sky.

Nope.  Pop Mannion is alive and well, and when I say I vote for him, I mean that in a very literal way, because I have voted for him.  My very first vote was for Mannion for State Senate.  He was running in the Democratic primary the year I turned 18.  It was a four way race and he lost.

But he was already our town supervisor, had been for five years and would be for five more, so I got to vote for him again the next year when he won re-election for the third time and two years again after that when he won again.  I'd have kept on voting for him but he decided to call it quits after his fifth term.

In suburban towns in New York State, the supervisor is roughly equivalent to a mayor.  I'm told there's a difference besides the job title but although my father taught me a lot of things he was never able to teach me what that difference is.

He did another stint as town supervisor later, eight years this time, but by then I was out of the house, out of college, and far out of town, voting for losing Democratic candidates in Indiana and winning ones in Syracuse, with the odd Republican and third party candidate thrown in now and then.

So when I say that I vote for the candidate who best represents my father, I have a pretty specific idea of what that candidate needs to stand for and want to do in office.

For almost the whole of his first tenure as supervisor, my father was the only Democrat on the town board.  He had one fellow Democrat serving with him for a couple of years, but that was it.  The town was very Republican then.  My father was the first Democrat to serve on the town board in its 106 year history to that date.  That was a frustrating experience for my dad.  He couldn't get much done.  Republicans on the local level are like Republicans at the National Level---they hate taxes.  The difference is that on the local level they are also usually serious about cutting spending so that they can cut taxes.  And since suburban town governments don't do much more than provide essential services, cutting spending means cutting services.

Republicans tend to keep taxes lower, but roads don't get plowed as often as they need to be, pot holes don't get filled.

My father spent a lot of time convincing any two of the four Republican town councilmen---in New York State many towns don't have councils, they have boards, but they still have councilmen and women; I guess they think the pun might be too damning if they called them boardmen and boardwomen---that if the town was going to run properly, it would have to spend money to do it, which took a lot of convincing.

One Republican who served on the board with him bragged---bragged---that it made him sick to his stomach to vote to spend money.

It took even more convincing to make them see that from time to time to get that money they would have to raise taxes or at least not cut them drastically.

He managed to convince them more than a few times to win some 3-2 votes.  He was even able to convince three and even all four of the Republicans once in a while.

Another way local Republicans are like the National Republicans is that they like to let Business have whatever it wants.  On the local level this means unrestricted development although it's usually called "increasing the tax base."

To be fair, on the local level the distinctions between Republicans and Democrats often blur to the point of being erased.  Town Board members have to live in the town and Republicans just as much as Democrats don't want a McDonald's built across the street from them or a highway put through their backyards.

And to be fair again, honesty and integrity are not doled out by the County Board of Elections when you register to vote, with so much being given to Democrats and so much to Republicans.  Lots of lazy, corrupt, or just plain dumb Democrats think an easy way to balance the town budget is to let developers pave over every inch of the town that they aren't putting a building on.

At any rate, for ten years my father wasn't able to do much in the way of improvements.  He was able to build the first major stretch of what is now a beautiful long bike trail along the Mohawk River.  He found the town a new, cleaner, tastier water supply.  He expanded the police force---the budget line was set when the town was half its present size and had many dozens of miles of fewer roads---upgraded their equipment and with the help of the police chief made the department more professional.  But mainly his job was to make sure that the town did its essential jobs well.  He hired a new highway superintendent who was a bit of a martinet, and a whimsical martinet at that, but he knew neither fear nor favor---one night he had our car towed when I left it parked on the street during an overnight snowstorm and his plows needed to get through.  He knew whose car it was too.  My dad, though, rightly blamed me for my forgetfulness and not the highway superintendent for his zeal and made me pay the fine to get the car back.---and, boy, did he make sure the roads were plowed and the potholes filled.  And my father spent most of his time on the job running to people's homes to help them with problems that only the town could fix, like broken sewer mains, and negotiating disputes between neighbors.

He enjoyed it but after ten years it wore him down.  He was disappointed that he'd had little chance to give the town some things he'd dreamed of giving it and with it looking as though the Republicans would always hold the majority of seats on the board, he decided not to run for re-election.

Times change.  Towns change.  People come and go.  Even while he was supervisor the town was becoming more Democratic.  When he took office the town's voter registration was close to 2 to 1, Republicans to Democrats.  By the time he left, it was close to even, and by the time he returned to the job, which he did under interesting and surprising (to him) circumstances, Democrats were in the ascendency and the Town Board had a three to two Democratic majority.

End of part one.  Part two is here.

Comments

[Chrys]

Such a nice tribute to your father. Good dad. Good son.

[cali dem]

Ah ha! Now I know why you are such a reasonable (no, not sentimental, although what really is wrong with being sentimental every now & then?) voice when writing about politics - you know that sometimes elected officials or politicians are *real people.*

Bravo!

[The Heretik]

A good reminder of how split "New York" is in politics. Republicans exert far more influence still than most non New Yorkers might realize. Upstate New York and Long Island might as well be in a different universe from The City, as even people from Queens refer to Manhattan.

[Tilli (Mojave Desert)]

Looking forward to Part Two, with its "interesting and surprising circumstances"!

[denisdekat]

Nice to have this after your other post. I like your running stories, good technique too :)

Nice to see your pop was a nice guy in politics. That probably explains a lot about you ;)

[Exiled in NJ]

This is lovely, just lovely and it so portrays what I saw of the politics of that area.

When we found our dream house in the town of Kinderhook, we did not realize that New York State required a lawyer to represent us. Our realtor gave us a name; he turned out to be the Democrat who ran for supervisor. He got us registered, explaining that "Independent" was a party in NY, unlike in PA, so we became Democrats.

Our 'next door' neighbor, whose house sat a quater mile away and had a paddock for his horse, was a GOP Mahoff, being an Under Secretary of NY State. He ran for supervisor against our lawyer twice and lost both times by less than ten votes.

I might have voted for him, but in five years there, he spoke to me twice: once to offer to plow my drive just after I'd run the John Deere blower over it and the second time to tell me to get my dog off his land.

If I ever think of voting GOP, I think of KS [his initials] and grab a knife to cut off the hand that might pull that lever.

Your description of the board meetings and issues sounds like those in Columbia County. I wonder if you have any old "Mannion" signs that dotted the lawns of your Dad's locale.

[grishaxxx]

It's local, all right, and no better model than your Pop's career. I'm eager to hear Part 2, but, as you said in Part 1, "...after ten years it wore him down." More of the no-tax/services-anyway bunch should give it a shot. I don't think most people have any idea what a bitch it is to provide what they take for granted in the way of their local and immediate public services - water, sewage, fire and rescue, cops, streets, bridges, keeping the public ways clear of excess brush, picking up road kill, pest control...you name it. Just because they take it for granted, they don't pay that much attention to who's in charge, until it's too late, usually.

The recent fuck-ups in national disaster relief may have jolted a lot of people, but I still think far too many are working harder at rationalization and scapegoating and profiteering than are converted to a vision of the common good. Not a new story, but still an ugly one.

Anyway, on to the local turn-around saga, Lance! What changed? And props to Pop!!