Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Gazette News Group worked hard throughout New York's primary election day Tuesday, with staffers in five counties talking to voters, election inspectors, and the candidates themselves.
After a late night and a little rest, I sat down with staff reporters Erica Buska and Ted Remsnider in the podcast studio to talk about their night, the results, and what the future holds, including several unknowns.
Here are my friends to tell you all about it.
So how's the election hangover?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: The coffee's still kicking in, but last night we had at least answers pretty quickly. It was before midnight, so we're hanging on to that.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: So I am here with the lovely Erica Buska, who was doing double triple duty.
And you were reporter mentor.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: On election night.
So what races were you at and what was the tick tock of going from 1 to 2 to 3 to figuring out what everybody else did?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Well, I was with our lovely intern Jill. So we were tag teaming to a couple places last night.
We started downtown, just talking to some voters, moved on to the watch party for Sarah Rogerson, who. Who won her Democratic primary against Patrick Nelson for the 44th Senate District. And then we moved over to Rachel Ward's watch party, where she was up against the incumbent council member, Justin Chairs for the Schenectady City seat. We got there right about as she found out that she had lost her bid and then ended up going back to Rogerson's to watch her announce her victory.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So the we kidded around about that is that you kind of got like the plan was to get Rachel Prior
[00:01:57] Speaker B: before we knew the results. Yes.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: So tell everybody the story on the Stan and Friends podcast here of how that went down as a reporter busting through the doors to see a candidate.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So she had her watch party at Uncle Ben's Tavern downtown, and we walked in and just kind of of grabbed somebody and said, hey, do you know where Sarah is? And they're like, yeah, but you could tell they weren't exactly happy. And we got to the back of the room where. Where Ward was, and. And she just kind of said, thanks for coming. It looks like, you know, we lost.
And then we just waited a few minutes, and then she gave her concession. Concession speech, but only 54 votes, so obviously a pretty tight race.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: And then there's. There's confusion because we thought there would be a Justin Chairs election night event and ended up being kind of a quiet affair.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And then you got the win, right? Literally with Justin.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So he. He told us. He told me later that night when I spoke to him. That he had found out from us that, that he had won.
And his, his gathering was a private one, so there weren't people there. But he said, you know, I asked him what that moment was like when he found out, and he, he said, you know, I'm with my mom, I'm with my dad, I'm with the people who've lifted me up in Schenectady since I was a little kid. You know, it's a really validating moment, which I'm paraphrasing, of course, but it was a great, great to, to, to hear that other side when we had gotten to hear the sad concession as we arrived as the arbiters of bad news.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: So, and that's, and it's hard, you know, you don't get that both sides of the race too often. Usually. Again, I was out in Montgomery and, excuse me, Fulton county, so I was with the Anthony Constantino, and then Atomic Adam was with Bob Smullen out there. So it's sometimes in Saratoga with those races, they'll literally be like across the street. And it's like you're watching the results come in and you're like, okay, percentage wise, look close. So you're bouncing back and forth.
So you have, I mean, you had some heavy lifting. I mean, as, as the right now Schenectady county reporter covering everything.
And then you had Sarah Rogerson. And that was kind of a. I think, the hand. Handbilliest one.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Of that.
And then the night didn't end.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: No.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: And you've got some, you've got some quandaries in the little towns.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we've got some questions. You know, it was tight in Schenectady, even though Rogerson pretty handedly won. But in Scotia, we had a race for two open trustee seats and the total votes were 32. And so one of our incumbents, Heather Gray, got seven votes. The other incumbent, Keith Brown, got six votes, and their challenger got 19 votes.
Then according to election law, you have a mandatory recount when there's a 20 vote difference.
So I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going to have to call the Board of Elections and see what's, what's the rules.
But I'm sure they're also probably scratching their heads as to what to do with a one vote difference on who gets this party line.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: The, the party line for there. And then as much as election night is over.
This was pre game.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: This is the kickoff to the run up to November.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: So what'd you think? What'd you learn for this one? You know, in, in a different area because you were up north with our friends at the Saratogian and Troy record fans of the podcast. Thank you, Emma.
The different anything different down here than it would be up in Saratoga from or in Troy. I mean the drama was a little bit less maybe from what you've had
[00:05:53] Speaker B: in the past, maybe just a little for, for Troy especially, we don't really have runoffs for, for primaries. It's mostly the Democrats have their folks, the Republicans have their folks. But this is the first time in a city where everyone is one party, so there's gonna be a contentious primary. So this was kind of the first race where historically speaking, if we look back, Chairs is likely to win his seat November because he won the Democratic nomination. So that was interesting.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Be ready for the breather.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Until we get, I mean, I don't, I don't know, is there a date when this heats up or is this going to heat up Monday?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: I don't know from what I spoke to the winning candidates, a couple of them. Rogerson said she's going to take a breath and then they're going to go back into it.
Cherish just said he's ready to keep going.
So it seems like we're just going to have it continue on. I expect it'll pick up again in August, probably particularly in the the Senate race.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: I was going to say, like Justin Chairs is on the city council.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: And that's so he's there. He had a position until and then he, you know, now he's going to run again in November. So there's work to be done amongst the, the city council. And then we'll see that Roger and Tedesco as we'll see the, the Blake Gob, the governor, the Gobblede, the oh, Blake Jeden, Jen to Beon. Yes. Which I will eventually get right before November against Anthony Constantino. And then if said Rogerson Tedesco and then we have Blakeman Hokel at the big level and things like that and then whatever else again, which didn't have to be decided yesterday, will, will get underway. What was your words of advice for young Jill?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Mostly just to just approach people and just, just ask them, hey, do you want to chat? And she got turned down a few times. I did too.
But honestly, it was just, hey, there's a bunch of people. Somebody's gonna say yes.
And so we were just kind of sitting there and, you know, waiting for folks to arrive and just trying to take it as best we could when there's a lot of races to be juggled.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: All right, what was the caffeine count yesterday?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Caffeine count? Just one coffee. 24 ounce coffee, but at three, which is abnormal for me.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: And I did start feeling it at like 4, that I needed more coffee, but I held strong so that when I got home, I was. I was out, so.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: And then today you've already kicked it off with one.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: I've kicked it off with one. I. I'm hoping it keeps me through the day because I don't like to double dip on caffeine, but I think I'm going to have to. Have to reach for something this afternoon. Yeah.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: All right, well, thank you so much. Yeah, keep up the good work.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Thank you. You too.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: All right, I'm here with Ted Remsnider on the Stan and Friends podcast. How is the primary election hangover going today?
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Pretty good. We actually got out of there, as you know, a little earlier last night than expected because Anthony Constantino declared victory around 10pm so we were out of there before midnight, which was a positive. So I take that as a victory. I got home before 1am the so
[00:09:13] Speaker A: obviously I had this with Erica. Erica's fortunate enough. Like, her races in Schenectady were like, so close physically located that she was able to bounce around. You and I were out in Fulton county at Lanzi's on the lake for the Anthony Constantino watch party and things like that. And then Todd McAdam was over with Robert Smullen for. For that watch party.
The did it.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: What did you.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: I mean, we're outsiders, we're spectators. We're informed spectators.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Did it.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Anything surprise you out of the race? I mean, where were you, you know, handicapping this? What were you thinking?
[00:09:55] Speaker C: I was thinking that Constantino was going to get a solid victory, but his margin, it was 20 last I saw, was a little higher than I expected.
It seemed like he had all the momentum, particularly since the Trump endorsement in April. I think that really flipped the race.
Smollen had endorsement from a lot of the state Republican establishment, including about a dozen county GOP committees. But once Trump weighed in, that really, Constantino had based his whole campaign around being a Trump supporter. And once Trump had actually given his seal of approval, I think that really flipped everything. It was really hard for Small to overcome that. It didn't help that debate in May when Smallen refused to shake Constantino's hand at the end, kind of made him look like the smaller person. So I think the race had Been kind of. The writing had been on the wall for a while, but it was a larger margin of victory than I had anticipated.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: The.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: How about.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: How about for this primary? And you again, you just, like, literally walked in the door.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: I stumbled him.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: The.
You know, how was the turnout? How was the voter turnout? Was this active? Was this excite. An excitable race?
[00:11:08] Speaker C: It was good turnout. I haven't seen the. The numbers are still being tallied as of this morning, but I think the turnout is. Was good. Yeah, the turnout was up, particularly for the New York 21. There was a lot of media attention on it, and there was a lot of advertising because Constantino's put over $7 million. He's the sticker meal CEO if people don't know he's put over $7 million of his own money into this race. And I was watching, like, the U.S. open Golf on Sunday and, like, on NBC, and every commercial break, it was a Constantino commercial. So he. He really flooded the market with commercials and, you know, small and couldn't keep up with that. So. But there was a lot of interest.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: I think one thing that happened, and I know angel, our intern, who's. Who's with us for the summer, doing a lot of video with the audience team, and I. It was a conversation I had up in Saratoga that.
And I believe Colin even mentioned it, is that you had voters going to polling places, looking to vote in that primary, but it's not their district.
Is. Is that surprising or is it surprising? It's just, like, because the media attention has become like, a little bit of a household battle. Or is it just one poll inspector was like, you don't even. You don't. You know, literally, it was the. Get off my lawn. It was like, you don't even know who your representative is.
So what was your thoughts on that?
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Yeah, it might have just been the advertising. I mean, like our own Daily Gazette website, it has had Constantino banners on it for months. And, you know, maybe some people in Schenectady will see that and think the race that pertains to them. So I could see the media coverage and. And the marketing kind of, like, seeps through, and people, you know, don't even realize that that's not even, you know, who they're voting for. But that's understandable. Like, when you see all the ads and everything, you just becomes part of the noise.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: I know. Heading into last night's Republican priming, both candidates were asked, if they lost, would they run as an independent or in the case of Bob Small in the conservative line.
I think going in both were we're going to win Tuesday now that that proverbial dust is, has settled.
I saw Bob Smollen's comments last night were that, you know, he acknowledged that he is on the conservative line and that he'll take a couple days to, to evaluate and things like that.
Thoughts on if he would continue to run on that conservative line and look to garner the seat in that aspect. And, and what kind of impact do you see, you know, come November? Because I think you get a breather for a couple weeks before this starts all over again.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: I think that he will eventually drop off of that. It might not take long because the Republican Party in Washington is going to want, you know, put the pressure on him to step aside because they don't want to lose that seat to Blake Gender Bean, the Democratic nominee. So I think he'll get pushed aside if he doesn't, you know, willingly leave the race. And he's a lifelong Republican. He's a member of the state assembly, obviously, I don't think he's going to want to burn bridges with the, the overall party. Even though a lot of these established Republicans in New York aren't thrilled with Constantino, the establishment, a lot of the elected officials and committee party chairs, I don't think it would do well for Small. And if he wants to run again sometime down the road, to, to play that spoiler role is, you know, just a petty thing to do. I mean, there's a lot of bad blood in this race, so it could have tipped over to that point where he won't want to step aside, but I think he eventually will. Just for, you know, career preservation. I don't think it's a smart move to stay on that.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: And we've got Ted Remsneider here with the Daily Gazette with the Community Journalism Fund, our government and our politics and government reporter. Here we were, we were at the, as we said with Constantino watch party last night.
And one thing that was interesting out of Anthony Constantino's speech, he kind of declared victory. It was more like, what are we up by?
[00:15:06] Speaker C: It took him a while to get to the point where he declared victory. He was like he was waiting for more.
Yeah, he Talked for about 10 minutes, I think, before he, you know, basically said we won.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Right. It was a lot of thank yous and a little bit different. Anthony Constantino, we've seen in the past a little bit more emotional.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah, he got choked up when he talked about his late father and that
[00:15:24] Speaker A: that was part of it. And then talked about the race.
I was, I think from seeing conversations that you've had with Anthony Constantino, and I just been around as, as a photographer and seeing things.
He was pretty gracious with Bob Smulling and, and the race itself, that kind of surprised me because I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't know if he had it in him, but I thought that was pretty respectful.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I was surprised by that, too. He, he basically was gracious towards Small and immediately started attacking Jen to Bean. So he, like, still had someone to attack. It was like he got his graciousness out there and moved on. And then it was like, well, I'm not going to be too gracious because then he just went after gender bean for five, 10 minutes. So I think he's, you know, and I think we've seen Trump even do that in the past where he's, he'll beat, he'll win an election or he'll, he'll even talk about like, you know, Hillary Clinton positively after election, which is surprising. But, yeah, he basically, he was gracious towards Small in a surprising way. But then he immediately went in on Jen to Bean. So that's going to be the next five months. Here is attack, attack, attack.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: And you kind of, kind of like had the same role, switched roles, because for, for a long period of time together, you were the Schenectady City reporter. So, you know, the running joke I like to portray, whether it's funny or not, is, you know, Schenectady City politics, the gift that keeps on giving. So, you know, Erica Buska was, was in on that in the niski, you know, the state Senate race for the, the Republican, excuse me, the Democratic primary. Sarah Rogerson there. And then obviously Skecti City Council had had a primary there with Justin Chairs and Rachel Ward.
Are you still watching it a little bit or. Because, I mean, this, you know, the 21st is taking up a ton of oxygen.
[00:17:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I still, and I wrote occasionally about a preview of that race as well, and there was an article I did that created a bit of a stir about Justin. The Democratic Party in the city was accusing Justin Chairs of falsifying some parts of his resume. He ended up surviving last night by 54 votes. It was a, that was a really tight race. Interesting. I figured he would win because he was the incumbent and more of the known quantity, but.
And he's going to be the heavy favorite against the Republican candidate, Sarah Ibrahim, who's another political neophyte. So he's strongly favored to win one more year to fill the term of Joe Mancini, who left last summer. So, and then if he wins that, then he might run again for a full four years after that. But yeah, it was a close race and it was surprising that Rachel ward was down 54 and just conceded immediately. But they must know that there's, you know, not enough write in votes or anything to really have any chance to flip it. So. But yeah, that was a close race
[00:18:20] Speaker A: for, for me again, you know, Jack of all trades. So really not specializing in anything when we look towards November is, you know, is the double feature going to be the, the Constantino Blake race along with the Rogerson Tedesco race? Are those like the, that, is that the double, is that the double header we're going to see, you think?
[00:18:41] Speaker C: Those are the two interesting ones. And I think Rogerson Tedesco's been in there six, seven terms. I think she has a chance, particularly if there is, I mean, both of these candidates, Jen de Bean and Rogerson, are going to be on the bout alongside Kathy Hokel, who's going to be, you know, a solid favorite against Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate. So, and there could be a blue wave. You never know in a midterm election. So I think Rogerson, just total speculation, has a good chance at flipping that seed and gender. Bean probably has a chance of flipping the Stefanic seat. But Constantino is going to be hard to overcome because he's the guy with, you know, a lot of the momentum and a lot of the attention right now, but you never know what could happen in the next few months.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: So talking to Erica, Sarah Rogerson said she's going to take a break and then, you know, move on with the campaign.
What's Tim Remsteiner do? Do you get, you get Thursday off because you got work to do today for the recap, and then you're like, I can't wait for the weekend. And then wash, rinse, repeat, and then you hit the ground running on Monday
[00:19:42] Speaker C: or no, we're going to do a kind of do an overview of the 21 race today for Thursday's paper and we'll see what we're doing after that. But yeah, it's going to be full on for the next few months here, so there's not much time for a break. But yeah, the campaign is going to reset now for a few days. It's like they got to get their strategies together and start get their ads up and everything. So I'm sure Constantino won't take long to start going after gender bean more.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: And then are you like every five year old boy and girl like you can't wait for Christmas because that means all, all this will be settled hopefully
[00:20:17] Speaker C: by Christmas, by November. Yeah.
And hopefully we can get a debate this time because we want to debate with Constantino, Gendabin, maybe Rodgers and Tedesco and we want to be involved in it. So we got, you know, Constantino and Small ended up doing one last minute debate on CBS 6. It was agreed to that morning after he had turned down a bunch of other debates including ours. So hopefully we can he said he'll do a general election debate with us so we want to hold them to that. Gotcha.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: And then obviously, you know, Jim Tedesco and Sarah Rogerson also being awesome. You know I think, I think two quality, I mean and now Rogerson's gaining, I think is a known candidate. And, and so that'll be interesting to see. So again, everything that you see, Ted Wright as part of the Community Journalism Fund is, is with the Daily Gazette is in front of our paywall. It's always free to read.
So please do that. Don't be afraid to hit the subscribe button to get everything that the Daily Gazette News Group provides throughout its, its breadth of newspapers throughout the, I'm going to say northeast now because it seems like we're just growing all the time. So we're getting, we're getting new additions all the time, which is a great place to be at. So Tem Rem Snyder, government politics reporter with the Community Journalism Fund here at the Gazette. Stan and friends. And if it happens, look forward on Thursdays. Thanks, Ted. Thank you, thank you for listening and thanks to all of my friends, old and new, who have made this possible.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: Thomas Demopoulos, journalist John McIntyre and it is publisher of the Spotlight.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Chad Arnold, reporter with the Daily Gazette.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Rita Garrett Hootie, AKA Mrs. Stan or Stan's wife.
