How soon they forget

Republican Public Works candidate Skip Scirocco placed another trio of feathers in his cap, seizing what he seems to consider a resounding endorsement from the 600-some-odd Skidmore students registered to vote in the Spa City’s upcoming election. The hurtling Volkswagen sports compact took a quick pit stop off the campaign superhighway to grab a trio of endorsements from Skidmore’s Young Republican Assembly, Democrats and the Environmental Action Club.

“It’s never happened before,” Scirocco told the Saratogian Monday. “This is a first –we made history today.”

Although his exuberance is a bit over the top for what will probably amount to about 200 votes across the board, Scirocco is right in one regard. He did make history; or at least he paved over a good deal of it by seizing any endorsement from student groups other than the standard thumbs-up from Skidmore’s junior GOP.

See, the city Republicans have been anything but friendly toward the small liberal arts college wedged at the end of North Broadway. In fact, there’s an ample history of the city and county Republicans doing just about everything in their power to quell any voice from the college’s small cadre of voters.

Let’s pan back to November 2001, just six months after Skidmore first received its own on-campus voting district. During the college’s first-ever on-campus general election, students soundly voted for Democratic candidates. In every case, they tallied more than 300 votes for the Democrats and even propelled Public Works fixture Tom McTygue to victory during a contentious election year.

The following winter, the county GOP decided to lash out against the students during a special state Assembly election for Bobby D’Andrea’s seat in the Legislature. Some students arriving at the polls found themselves staring at an affidavit waved by Republican poll watchers.

Three months later, the Republican-led city council then launched a campaign to move Skidmore’s fledgling polling place from the college’s Case Center to the city center off campus. The logic behind the move was simple: Skidmore vastly supports liberal candidates and college students are inherently lazy. So if you move the polls more than a mile away from the bong and ensure there’s no Tuesday night beer specials downtown, you can ensure the Democrats will lose a small but valuable number of votes.

The only reprieve given to the college was by then Democratic elections commissioner William Fruci, who spotted the ploy for what it was and refused to sign off on the city’s resolution. The county Board of Elections later decided the whole affair was bogus because the city had tried to move the polling area six days past the deadline to do so.

By the 2003 election, the Republicans were on a power play to seize the mayor’s office and secure a supermajority on the council. At the time, Scirocco was happily serving on the county Board of Supervisors and didn’t seem too concerned about his challenger; some fringe Green Party candidate named Cheryl Keyrouze.

Again, allegations of Republican poll intimidation crept up. Only this time, they were far more wide-spread and far more publicized. One student reported being thrust an affidavit by GOP poll watchers and being told “the district attorney can prosecute you on a felony charge” if the document was filled out incorrectly. Others claimed Republican head hauncho Jasper Nolan was shouting at students with almost uncontrolled vigor; not exactly ideal voting conditions.

Though Nolan and the Republicans voraciously disputed this claim, the end results suggested otherwise. Skidmore’s own Ken Klotz was shown to the door and the city Democrats fired an angry 43-page letter to the state Attorney General contesting the bare-knuckles politics of their partisan counterparts.

Things quieted down on the campus during both the 2004 and 2005 elections. During the later, students helped power Mayor Valerie Keehn into office with more than 100 votes in her favor. Ironically, they also tossed more than 80 votes toward challenging Democratic supervisors Joanne Yepsen and Keyrouze, who unseated none other than Scirocco, himself.

So the recent endorsement of Scirocco by two left-leaning campus groups seems a bit queer, especially when taken into context of the history the candidate is supposedly making. It’s valid to mention the transient nature of these students, many of whom leaved the area after four years or so. But surely there is someone still vibrant on the campus who can recall these events, with which the Volkswagen was tacitly involved, at the very least.