Every year brings a new crop of candidates to consider, and the Dryden sample ballot this year includes eleven columns of candidates. I'd like to focus on three local candidates, and the difference I believe they can make.
Working with David Makar has been a pleasure. He has tremendous energy, seems able to talk with pretty much anyone in town and listen to what they're saying, and is interested in seeing projects through to their completion. He understands the problems Dryden faces, especially the challenges of finding consensus from a cluster of neighborhoods with very different perspectives. Perhaps most importantly, he seems to me to ask the right questions, about how to get people involved, how to bring people into the conversation, and how to keep them talking once they're in. My letter to the Journal emphasized his interest in connecting all of Dryden, and I think he'll do an excellent job of bringing people together.
Sheriff Peter Meskill has been the Sheriff I always wished we had in Steuben County when I was growing up, someone who could organize a department and keep things running. The sheriff's department is like an iceberg: we all see the road patrol tip and read about crime-fighting, but there's an enormous amount of work beyond that visible tip that needs to operate. I appreciate the road patrol, but fear that his opponents' emphasis on that one aspect is going to create problems for the department as a whole. There are a lot of potentially expensive problems to be addressed, largely to do with the jail and the surrounding infrastructure, and I believe that Peter Meskill is the right man to deal with them.
Candidates for judge aren't allowed to say what they'll do from the bench, so I can't say precisly what Elizabeth Garry would do as New York State Supreme Court Justice. Despite that, I'm happy to endorse her. Her explanation of why she couldn't comment on specific matters brought with it a tremendous amount of commitment to the neutral position a judge should take. Her campaign has been extremely organized and she's worked well with others over its course, a good sign to me of things to come. The Judicial Candidate Committee rated her "HIGHLY QUALIFIED", the highest possible rating, and I'm impressed with her qualifications, including time spent working in the court and for the court.
Posted by simon at November 7, 2006 7:19 AM in politics (local)