Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weighing In podcast, the show that brings you inside the Daily Gazette's featured news column.
And now, here's your host, writer of the weigh in in column, andrew, wait.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I'm andrew, waite. Thanks for listening. When the Gazette first hired me, my role was to cover Montgomery and Fulton counties out west as a reporter. And in that role, I spent a fair bit of time in Canada Harry. And frankly, because there were just compelling stories out there. And one of those stories was the race for town supervisor in the town of Canada Harry, which is separate from the village of Canada Harry, different municipality.
But in that race, there was a guy named Benny Goldstein who was in his 40s. He's from Israel. He was a very charismatic, kind of quirky guy who had been on Israel's big brother. He'd run twice unsuccessfully, for Israel's Knesset and just made for the kind of engaging figure with a personality you don't often see in local politics.
And what was interesting about that race was Goldstein was very much a newcomer in town.
He lived in the village, but he'd only lived in the village for about a year at the time of the race. And meanwhile, he was going up against Ron Devendorf, who had twice served as the village's mayor, had been living in Canada Harry since 1971, raised two kids there, an established guy who people just very much knew, ron Devendorf in Canada Jahari. And yet Goldstein was able to run a very, very competitive race by leaning into national politics. So Canada Jahari is a place that favors Republicans in voter enrollment. And Goldstein's campaign literature, his signs, et cetera, featured his support for Trump, and it was ultimately successful in really a stunning result. So what happened is Goldstein on Election Day was leading Ron Devendorf by just four votes. And they did a manual review of all the ballots and determined that four, exactly four of the ballots that hadn't been counted in those ballots, people had filled in the o of Ron Devendorf's middle initial he's Ron O divendorf. And instead of filling in the bubble, people had filled in the o. And so if those ballots in which the o had been filled in had been counted, the result of the election would have been a tie, and then it would have been up to the town council to determine who to seat. But ultimately, Ron Devendorff decided not to challenge the results of the election. And so Goldstein, a Republican beat who was a newcomer in town, beat out Davendorf, who was a Democrat but well known, and Goldstein ended up becoming the town supervisor.
Now, around that time, another story that drew me to Canada Jahari had to do with the village's dummy light. And I really hadn't known what a dummy light was at that point. But it's this traffic light, basically. It dates to 1926, and it stands in the middle of this one intersection in the village. And the story I wrote, which was just a few days, maybe a week or so after that election, that town supervisor election, the story was the dummy light had been struck by a truck and damaged for the second time in three months.
And as a result of that, the village's Republican mayor oversaw the effort to remove the dummy light. This was Jeff Baker. He was Republican mayor of the village of Canada Harry, which is distinct from the town of Canada Harry. But basically, Baker thought that having the dummy light, having it get hit, it was a liability for the town. That's what he saw, and that it opened the town up to potential lawsuits, et cetera. And he determined that it was better to remove it and to place stop signs at the intersection, which is in Wagner, which is the Wagner Square intersection. And it's a four way intersection, but it's a little bit confusing because there's a fifth road that sort of juts out, and it keeps going one direction, so it's a little bit confusing. And so that was November of 2021. And so since that time, the dummy light has been sitting in storage. Now, fast forward to 2023 and Ron Devendorf, who lost the town supervisor race, he decides he's going to run for village mayor against Republican Jeff Mayer in a spring of 2023 race. And this time, rather than running as a Democrat, Devendorf runs as an independent on the Main Street party line. And his focus, his messaging, is really about revitalizing downtown. And so the campaign stays away from national politics, the kind of national politics that the supervisor race had veered into and remains hyper local. And the dummy light was central to that campaign, with Devendorf promising he would be the guy who would bring back the dummy light that so many people love. For they see it as kind of a historical relic in town. It's nearly 100 years old, and they see it as essentially a symbol of Canada Jahari and the village of Canada Jahari's downtown. And so that was the race that Divendorf ran. His campaign literature featured photos of the dummy light, and he was even going around the village with a cardboard cutout of the dummy light, posing for photos with it. And lo and behold, he won the mayor's race by getting twice as many votes as Jeff Baker. And he credits his support of bringing the dummy light back as being the reason for his success. And now that he's mayor, he's been mayor since April, he's fulfilling that premise. He is going to bring the dummy light back to the Wagner Square intersection by the end of the year. And to me, I just look at that and I think that's what local politics should be. That's a very specific goal, a tangible goal, and it doesn't bother itself with the noise of national issues that don't really have to do with a town or village. It's just something that the people in that specific community care deeply about, and it is running a campaign that is based on that issue and then following up with fulfilling the promise made during the campaign. And so I wrote a piece basically saying that this is what politics should look like at the local level. So here's that piece.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weighing In podcast with columnist Andrew Wait.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Anyone feeling distorted by local politics may want to look to a traffic light in the village of Canada Harry. The 1920s era dummy light is set to be reinstalled at a notoriously confusing Wagner Square intersection in the Montgomery County village by the end of the year. And the story of its triumphant return after two years in storage is a signal of what local politics can be devoid of national debates and hyper focused on something that matters a great deal to locals, even if it matters very little to most everyone else.
It wasn't long ago that Canada Jahari politics were shaped by national debates. In 2021, Ronald O divendorf ran for Canada. Jahari Town Supervisor The town and village are distinct municipalities, with the village sitting within the larger town.
Devendorf was a strong candidate. The former pharmacist, who has lived in the village of Canada Harry since 1971, has raised two children there and served twice previously as the village's mayor. The Democrats should have been able to easily defeat town newcomer Benny Goldstein, a charismatic yet quirky entrepreneur and former reality TV show contestant. Originally from Israel, who at that point had only lived in Canada Jahari for about a year, he recently left the village. Remarkably, Goldstein won that election by just four votes, and he did so largely by nationalizing the small town race. Goldstein, a Republican, leaned heavily into his support of former President Donald Trump, taking advantage of a town that had more than 2400 registered Republicans, compared with fewer than 1500 registered Democrats. Two years later, Devendorf took an entirely different tack in his next campaign. This time, he ran for village mayor rather than town supervisor. And instead of running as a Democrat, Devendorf ran as part of an independent slate called the Main Street Party. Their platform focused almost exclusively on revitalizing Canada Harry's aging downtown, and the dummy light was central to their messaging. Devendorf featured images of the beloved, nearly century old traffic light on campaign literature, and he even carried around a cardboard cutout of the dummy light posing for pictures. See? In 2021, the village's Republican mayor, Jeff Baker, had overseen the removal of the dummy light after it was damaged twice over the course of three months. Baker contended the light was a liability for the town. The structure, which some in the region see as a historical relic, has four sets of lights sitting atop a yellow base that says Keep right. It's called a dummy light because it was meant to serve as a kind of stand in traffic cop fixed in the middle of the intersection without the dummy light in place. Stop signs currently govern traffic, but people wanted their dummy light back. There was a groundswell of people saying, we don't want to get rid of that, Deevendorf told me this week. So everything we did as a Main Street party and everybody we talked to, we said, we're going to look at. Bringing the dummy light back set aside whether the dummy light is truly the best option for the intersection at Montgomery, Mohawk and Church streets, while a New York State Department of Transportation traffic engineer issued a review saying a roundabout or flashing stop sign setup would be a safer alternative. Village officials say since the removal of the dummy light, accidents have been nearly five times as likely, with seven accidents occurring at the intersection since November of 2021. Relevant to local politics is no matter what the state or anyone else thinks about the traffic control measure, a feasibility study found the village has full jurisdiction over the intersection, and members of the public said they wanted their dummy light back, seeming to support spending the roughly 40,000 in restoration and reinstallation costs. So in the March 2023 mayoral election, Devendorf and his Main Street party cruised to victory over the Republican incumbent mayor by riding a wave of support for the dummy light. Sure, it wasn't the only issue, but it was an important one, and Divendorff gives the dummy light plenty of credit for his victory.
It had nothing to do with Trump or anything like that. It's all local, Deefendorf told me.
Deefendorf beat Baker, the dummy light detractor by a two to one margin in a village with a roughly 450 to 300 active voter enrollment in favor of Republicans.
Now, just months into Devendorf's latest term as village mayor, he's fulfilling the promise that he made to the people who overwhelmingly supported his campaign, regardless of party affiliation, because they wanted their dummy light reinstalled.
Does local politics get purer than that? Instead of arguing about broad theoretical national concerns that have little to do with a village or a town, local politics is best when it stays local, when its focus is on singular, tangible projects that can change a downtown. We just love it. It's part of our landscape, Matt Stanley, a local business owner, told me after the second dummy light strike in 2021. The thought of anything else just wouldn't fit. So even if the Wagner Square intersection continues to befuddle you, once the dummy light returns later this year, the story of the traffic signal offers clear direction on what local politics could be about.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weighing In podcast with columnist Andrew Wait.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: And now it's time for reader response.
So last episode I recorded was about a column I wrote about stewards leaving an Albany location and saying that higher rates of crime in the area had to do and specifically at the store had to do with their departure. And then, of course, it turned out that they didn't actually have police data that backed it up. It was more anecdotal.
And so I was pretty critical of Stewart's for making a decision that seemed to be about A that seemed to be fitting a political narrative to do with high crime when it is a company that purports to be invested in local communities.
And as with everything with Stewart's, not surprisingly, that column got a lot of response. And so I'm going to share some of that with you.
So one letter writer wrote, you sound so ignorant. The for profit company doesn't owe the community a single thing. If other businesses have already left, doesn't that say more about the area than the business? Also, the fact that they closed a profitable store further shows that they're willing to sacrifice profit in the name of safety. I'd recommend looking into another career path because you really suck at your job.
And then another person said, how irresponsible of you to attack a local company because they closed a store in a neighborhood that has proven to be an unsafe environment. Where do you get off saying they insulted a neighborhood? Are you some sort of community spokesperson? No, you're not. You're a quasijournalist supporting a tired social agenda that has done nothing but cause harm to these communities. The members of this community are ultimately responsible for their own community. The fact that it is an unsafe area is not Stuart's fault. It's not the fault of the police.
It's not any politicians fault. The people need to take control of their own community and be the change that needs to happen. Until then, there's no reason why people should be put in harm's way, nor should businesses be expected to operate under increased liability. I applaud Stewart's for making the correct decision.
And then I'll close with one other note, and this one on the supportive side, agreeing with the column. I would say you hit the nail on the head. Stewart's has been closing and consolidating stores across the region for the last few years. The supposed dangerous area where Stewart's closed on Central closed the Central Avenue store could possibly and more reliably be explained if we had access to their spreadsheet. Since we don't know what that says, the answers may be that stores, including the Central Avenue store, are closing and being consolidated across the region to help their bottom line or saving their employees from harm. Or is it that they call community support or all three at once? Is the Dake Family Corporation here to provide an essential service that benefits the community? Or are they serving themselves? A reasonable person would say the answer is the latter. That's it for the latest episode of the Weighing In podcast. Thanks to Aaron Pillaya, who handles marketing for this podcast, and Jim Gilbert, who handles production. I'm andrew, waite. Take care.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weighing In podcast with columnist Andrew Waite.
