Freak Power

Sharon Boyd wore a look Tuesday evening that screamed for a strong Manhattan, sans the vermouth, maraschino cherry or any other sweet ingredient that might dull the bitter sting of defeat. In one short day, her husband went from mayoral hopeful –perhaps even a favorite –to dejected third party candidate, after being handily defeated by Valerie Keehn during the Democratic primary.

“The zealots come out,” she grimly opined to a Saratogian reporter from Gordon Boyd’s barside camp at Gaffney’s. “It’s harder to bring the moderates out.”

Four blocks away at the Circus Cafe, it was a different scene at Kamp Keehn, which bore a fittingly circus-like aura. With what seemed to be a repeat of the primary upset from two years’ prior, Mayor Valerie Keehn seemed almost smitten by her impending victory, exulting with an ear-to-ear smile amid the revelry of her supporters.

“Wow,” she exclaimed through the cacophony of sound ringing through the restaurant. “I’m thrilled with the results and I’m very relieved.”

Unlike her relatively close-margined victory against former Deputy Mayor Hank Kuczynski, Keehn cruised to an easy win against Boyd, securing an unofficial lead of 537 votes. The sound defeat left some Boyd supporters wondering what the hell happened between the goose egg Keehn laid during the League of Women Voters debate and the goose eggs they were seeing on the chalkboard showing their candidate’s vote tally.

Conversely, Boyd’s defeat left many Keehniacs with an inalienable feeling of déjà vu and a certain sense of invincibility. The last time she came from behind, she struck down the establishment and rose to the mayor’s office; surely she’ll repeat in November, the thinking goes. Keehn, herself, even seemed to take the victory as a voter mandate.

“People realize that I’ve been working hard for them since the day I was elected,” she told The Saratogian.

Undoubtedly, Keehn secured an upset victory and one that solidified the power of her remarkably loyal base. They turned out at the polls despite the remarkably bad showing she had during last week’s debate, after which even the most forgiving of voters could sense the mayor was in for a tough ride.

But as poignant as Keehn’s victory may seem to some political pundits, it really wasn’t very shocking at all. As the mayor’s “Democracy for Saratoga” campaign did in 2005, she managed gel her supporters and make a strong showing at an election often overlooked by the more fickle-minded among the electorate.

As Lady Boyd suggested, Keehn relied upon the freak-power vote, a contingent of folks existing on the far-left neo-liberal side of the party; the type of people that wouldn’t sit next to a Republican even if their feet were blistered and it were the last seat in the house. She also garnered a certain degree of support from the city’s police union, as their chief continues to get his ducks in a row for his Public Safety Taj Mahal.

Despite her nearly 2-to-1 margin of victory, however, Keehn’s victory was far from crushing and anything but a mandate, as some of Wednesday’s headlines suggest. In fact, Keehn picked up a paltry 310 votes during this year’s primary, failing to add substantially to her Democratic base during her first term in office. All together, she managed to accrue about 21 percent of the city’s 5,429 registered democratic voters, which is enough to seize the primary but far less than she’ll need to emerge victorious against Scott Johnson, her Republican challenger.

Keehn now must seek out at least an additional 3,500 voters across the city to either head out to the polls or cross party lines. She also needs to face the almost insurmountable job of mending the almost bottomless chasm she helped forge among city Democrats, which is a much more difficult task along the road to re-election.

After Keehn handily won the party line in 2005, she had a major helping hand from longtime party heavyweight Tom McTygue and Kuczynski, who publically endorsed her. At the time, the Public Works fixture put ills aside to help oust Michael Lenz, his immediate adversary on the City Council. The likelihood of this repeating is about as probably as Barbaro coming back from the grave to win next years’ Travers stakes.

Ironically, the decision in the Mayor’s race could ultimately rest with Keehn’s recently vanquished opponent, who was too busy licking his recently acquired wounds to decide on making a go at the general election. Boyd could vindictively pluck his name from the ballot and pledge his 600-some-odd votes to Johnson, which would all but spell doom for the mayor's re-election bit. He could also extend the olive branch and do the same for Keehn, which would be a bit tricky given some of the mayor’s recent rhetoric against his followers.

Boyd could throw the ultimate wrench into works by running for the election anyway, in effect spurring a three-way election. As Lady Boyd espoused, there is a much greater pool of moderates to draw from in a city that is increasingly centrist. But there’s also a chance he could propel Keehn to office by splitting the moderate vote with Johnson, who admitted Tuesday his positions are very similar to Boyd’s.

In the end, the vast sea of Spa City moderates could find themselves in a rather untenable situation come November, especially those who bear any sort of tacit or lingering allegiance to the Democratic Party. There has been too much hate spewed by Keehn’s rabid online interlopers to forge the dream of county Committee Chairman Larry Bullman. Many of these same moderates have soured to the vitriol and are plotting their vote on how to oust Keehn, rather than concentrate on the best possible candidate.