GUILDERLAND - In an upset, the town's Democratic leader and the town's longest-serving councilman were ousted in Tuesday's election.

Making their first Republican runs for the board - Mark Grimm and Warren Redlich - won decisively over Guilderland Democratic chairman and Albany County co-chairman, Councilman David Bosworth, and three-term Democratic Councilman Michael Ricard.

Bosworth, who was credited with turning the previously all-Republican town board completely Democratic, received the fewest votes by an unofficial count.

Democrats had dominated in Guilderland since 2001, when they ended over a century of Republican rule. Tuesday, the incumbent Democratic supervisor, town clerk, and town judge ran unopposed, as did the long-time Republican highway superintendent, a holdout from the GOP era.

The Republicans fielded only three candidates in this election and all of them won.
Grimm and Redlich made campaign claims about unfair property assessments, targeting Ricard for having a "sweetheart deal," and about conflicts of interest, targeting Bosworth for his county-funded job.

Grimm and Redlich received 3,980 and 3,788 votes respectively to Ricard's 3,585 votes and Bosworth's 3,581. The board of elections sent out 272 absentee ballots and has received 201, which will be counted Thursday.
The town's highest vote-getter with 5,401 votes was incumbent Democratic Town Clerk Rosemary Centi. She cried as she made her acceptance speech, saying, "That's what you get when you're a master of communication," a reference to Grimm, who runs a communications consulting business. "A little bit of truth, wrapped around a lie."
Grimm called his win "an historic upset," saying, "A county chairman lost his hometown." He also said he was getting people to believe in politics again.

Tense times

The mood was dismal, and at times tense, at the Cabernet Café Tuesday night where dozens of Democrats met to tally results and support each other. Two large whiteboards were filled with blue and red markers as the tallies came in from the board of elections.

The applause was loud for the town's winning Democratic members.

Tax Receiver Jean Cataldo, the town's biggest vote-getter in the last election, and Chief Court Clerk Eileen Dean helped fill out the whiteboards after the polls closed. Lieutenant Curtis Cox of the Guilderland Police was also on hand, in a civilian capacity, to help post the vote totals.
The mood in the room continued to become disheartened as the red column for the Republicans grew more quickly than the Democrats' blue column. Murmurs of "the assessments" could be heard in the crowd throughout the evening as a possible explanation for the strong Republican showing.

Current town board members, mingled with zoning board members, including Chairman Peter Barber, and local officials, including Altamont Mayor James Gaughan, Assemblyman John McEneny, and Independence Party Chairman Paul Caputo. Newly-elected county legislators Mary Lou Connolly, William Alyward, and Bryan Clenahan were also on hand along with defeated county legislator Dennis Feeney.

The town's development director, was there too.

Donald Csaposs was active in the Democrats' campaign, writing forceful letters to the Enterprise editor, and coming under attack by the GOP candidates. One Republican election flyer depicted the Town Hall sign with Donald Csaposs's name on top.

Several Democrats were critical in their speeches.
"This was a campaign of one lie after another," Connolly angrily said of the town board race.
Caputo said that the race was "an injustice to the rest of us"and to the town of Guilderland."

Democrats maintain that the loss is not a blow to their party.

Bosworth and Ricard did not officially concede the loss Tuesday night, waiting until all of the absentee ballots are counted, but both thanked their supporters and spoke of their accomplishments on the board.
"It's easily lost in one night all of the things that have happened"You have to put it in perspective," Bosworth told Democratic onlookers. "This was not a mandate for change like some have suggested"We've had three months of negatively"We need to put a positive look forward.
"This is only one inning of the ball game," Bosworth concluded of the town's Democratic Party. "We will remain in the majority."

Ricard said that he couldn't have accomplished anything without his supporters over the past decade. He thanked everyone involved in his campaign and those who voted for him.

Happy winners

Down the road on Western Avenue, at Dorato's Restaurant in Star Plaza, the mood was upbeat and jovial as a handful of supporters gathered to celebrate and congratulate the Republican winners.
Democrats say their challengers ran "a dirty campaign," mired in personal attacks, while Republicans say that they "simply stuck to the facts" and did not attack anyone.
"I want what happened here tonight to grow," Grimm said while watching results from the last of the polling districts in Guilderland broadcast on television. "I truly believe that this is a movement in politics"getting people to believe again."

He attributed his win to going to over 9,000 households in town and getting the word out that change was possible.
"Back in July and August, when everyone else was on the beach, I was out there biking house to house," said Grimm. "When they [Democrats] attacked me"people said, 'Wait a second. That's not the guy that I met and shook hands with.
"I'm not surprised by this," Grimm concluded, and then pointed to his running mate, Redlich, saying "We believed in each other and supported each other and made a perfect team."
Grimm called it "the ultimate grassroots victory."
Redlich, a lawyer, said that Grimm inspired him to believe that change could be possible, and, of his own win, he said "It's almost shocking. This is my hometown"It is a tremendous honor and a privilege."

He added that the voters agreed the town's assessment process was broken and it needed to be fixed.
"First, we have to figure out how it is broken," Redlich said.

As for the accusations of personal attacks, Redlich said it was never personal and the Republicans didn't attack anyone.
"That's ridiculous. When you're running against a unanimous team"you're running on that their doing something wrong," he said to The Enterprise. "We dealt with things larger newspapers didn't care about, but local voters did."
Redlich said he focused on "at home" issues that voters identified with, not divisive issues.
"There's a reality about town politics. You don't run on the war in Iraq or abortion," said Redlich. "We don't decide national policy in a town office, we deal with budgets and taxes."

No stranger to politics both locally and nationally, Redlich, a former Democrat, ran on the Libertarian line in 2001 for Guilderland Town Board and ran against Congressmen Michael McNulty twice. He lost all of those races by wide margins. This will be the first time either Redlich or Grimm are elected to office.

The campaigns

Campaigning was intense on both sides during the run up to Tuesday's election. Enrolled Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans in town, being roughly a third of Guilderland's nearly 35,000 residents, and the party was clearly more dominant prior to this election.

The town's Democratic Party is larger, better financed, and better organized than what has been a floundering town Republican Party. The town's GOP has had a different chair for the past three years and an almost non-existent committee member enrollment.

Now, with two Republican councilmen on the town board, that may change.

Barbara Davis, who was Grimm's original running mate and who declined her party's nomination for the council position, became the town's Republican chair in July. Davis could not be reached yesterday to comment on the Republican wins.

She became the chair after Albany County Legislator Lee Carman stepped down, citing a conflict of interest in his own race and being chairman. He chided Bosworth at the time to do the same.

Carman won re-election by about 100 votes on Tuesday against attorney Dennis Feeney who was also a former county legislator from District 30. Democrat Bryan Clenahan was appointed to fill in Feeney's old post in that district and subsequently ran on Tuesday unopposed. (See related story.)

Substituted for Davis after she dropped out in July, Redlich used the wrong forms for his petition and he was sued by Councilman Ricard when he first entered the race.

Redlich won the suit in the state's Supreme Court, but it was overturned in the Appellate Court Division when Ricard appealed.

However, Redlich filed a second substitution petition after his first one, which was not challenged by the Albany County Board of Elections, and he was allowed to remain on the ballot.

Ricard said he sued Redlich because Redlich had not followed the proper procedures or did not have the proper signatures.
Redlich fired back at the time, saying that Ricard was trying to knock him off the ballot and "deprive Guilderland voters of a choice." He worked the sentiment into a Dr. Suess-style rhyme, which he read during a town board meeting last month stating, "Mike Ricard, you tried to knock me off the ballot, but you didn't have the proper mallet."
Campaigning on assessments, Redlich accused Ricard and Bosworth of having their homes assessed lower than the town-wide average. Both of the incumbents responded by saying they owned older homes, with Ricard's not having municipal sewer or water hookups, and that there were "no deals."

They said Redlich's assessment was higher because he owned a brand new $300,000 home.

Grimm campaigned on a variety of hot-button issues, including increased town spending, the investigation of former police chief James Murley, a secretive Town Hall, personal pay hikes, and conflict-of-interests issues.

Letters to the Enterprise editor on various matters between Democrats and Republicans appeared weekly leading up to Tuesday's election.
Democrats described the campaign as "nasty" at times or referred to the charges as personal attacks. Bosworth said that the Republicans "were making up issues where there were none" because they had no issues of their own. He likened their campaign strategies to smear tactics.

Supervisor Runion touted the town's sound fiscal policies during his administration, getting the best financial rating from Moody, and an 8-percent tax rate decrease since 2001, when he wrote his first budget.
Grimm refuted the supervisor's statements by asking voters if they were paying "more or less taxes" than they were six years ago.