Muscato v. McIntee

One of the most interesting facets of this year's Gates' election was the "interplay" bewteen Democrat candidates Frank Muscato and Mark McIntee. Muscato is the current Democrat leader and previously unsuccessful candidate for the County Legislature. McIntee was the lone Democrat on the Town Board.

I was quite surprised when Muscato announced that he would be running for a Town Board seat. I assumed that even the most optimistic person realized that Chris Diponzio was a mortal lock to win re-election and that neither Muscato nor McIntee could beat him. As such, Muscato had to believe he could beat McIntee, otherwise, there was no point in running.

Even if Muscato wasn't aiming to unseat McIntee, his candidacy did hurt him. I know that a certain number of people think its a good idea to vote for one Democrat and one Republican in a Town Board race. If McIntee was the only Democrat running, he would have received all of those votes. With Frank in the race, those votes were split up, lowering Mark's possible best result.

Further, Muscato's being in the race led to McIntee running the wrong campaign. If he ran alone, Mark could have claimed that as the Democrat "watchdog" on the Board, he kept the GOP in line. He could have tried to take credit for many of the good results garnered by the Town Board, like tax cuts, budget surplusses, economic development and the new Library. (In actual fact, Mark was a pretty toothless watchdog, voting with the GOP majority well over 90% of the time; but it would have been a good campaign posture).

Instead, as Muscato's running mate, McIntee was reduced to making arcane arguments regarding the use of the proceeds from the sale of the Public Safety Building, the execution of the Library lease, and the hiring of  ...gasp!... a Republican!... as Deputy Town Clerk. That negative campaign went absolutely nowhere and contributed to the nearly 2 to 1 thrashing the Dems took at the polls.

When Frank Muscato announced his candidacy, I asked Mark why Frank didn't like him. Mark scoffed at the question. Given the way things turned out, maybe Mark ought to be asking that question himself.