Dems to control county board?
A story in the Times Union says that this may be the year that Democrats take more control of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors. If all the county’s endorsed Democrats win, nine of the 23 town supervisors will be Democrats, but they would hold 120,387.5 of the 235,509 weighted votes in the county, a majority of the voting power. Democrats could choose leaders on the board and committees and more say in the county’s budget. One tiny potential problem for the Dems: GOP voters in the county outnumber them 68,386 to 56,830, with 56,439 unaffiliated voters.
To support the present and future of daily, original reporting in Saratoga Springs, please consider a paid subscription of only $6/month or $50/year.
MSF vs. Gaston
Shafer Gaston, the Democratic-endorsed candidate for Commissioner of Finance has been the target of the Facebook page Moving Saratoga Forward, a conservative website. The MSF group has highlighted Gaston’s foreclosure information about the house Gaston and his ex-wife Tara Gaston, the former County Supervisor from Saratoga Springs, owned jointly.
MSF contends that Gaston was choosing to support candidates in races while he should have been paying his mortgage, but in an email to the Dispatch, Gaston said the paperwork they are citing is just the process of moving the responsibility for the mortgage from Tara to Shafer.
The VA Mortgage he holds means that modifications move at the speed of the Veterans Administration, Shafer Gaston wrote to the Dispatch.
“Well, we needed to have a foreclosure conference [with the VA] to modify the mortgage to being under my name, and that required consent from the VA. October meetings turned into December, and then into February, and finally in May of 2025 everything was in order,” he wrote.
The loan is caught up with a new schedule of payments, and Shafer Gaston is now the party responsible for paying the bill, he wrote. Gaston faces JoAnne Kiernan, an independent who has won the endorsement of One Saratoga. She is also the current deputy mayor under Mayor John Safford, a Republican.
Sit-down’s with the candidates
District Attorney: A Times Union story highlights the differences between the GOP’s Brett Eby and the Democrat’s Bobby Logan in their race for County District Attorney. Eby says he has experience as a defender, a prosecutor and as a legal aid to judges, and having that experience from all views of the courtroom has prepared him for the county’s top prosecutor’s job. Logan cites his 16 years experience especially as an Assistant District Attorney, the story says.
Mayor’s race: Another Times Union story highlights the differences between incumbent Mayor John Safford, endorsed by the Republicans, and his opponent Michele Madigan, endorsed by the Democrats. She is a current county board supervisor and the former Commissioner of Finance. Madigan is looking at an AI future for the city and hopes to reignite the Smart City initiative that she spearheaded as commissioner. Safford, completing his first term as mayor, is running on a record of civility, bringing calm discourse to the oft-times raucous city council meetings and reinvigorating some of the smaller committees such as the Arts Commission. He also has been working on police Civilian Review Board, which he says is now operational.