Full court press

The politicking front-stoop litter bugs from the Democrats for Change are up to their old tricks again. Voters were greeted with some fresh propaganda fliers ludicrously claiming their candidates would help “end the fighting” and “help rebuild” the deeply fragmented party. Meanwhile, they’ve dusted off an old tried-and-true tactic from their 2007 election playbook: Blame it on Tom McTygue.

Ever wonder who was responsible for the politics of destruction? Blame it on McTygue. Would you care to guess whose fault it is that property taxes are so high? It’s McTygue’s fault. And if you’re searching for a culprit for global warming, the Kennedy assassination, the bird flu pandemic, and the disappearance of Natalie Holloway, you can stop your hunt at the city’s Election District 5. And the name just happens to be McTygue.

Amazingly, the same splinter cell that made a practice of abandoning city committee meetings when they didn’t get their way is now accusing the former Public Works commissioner of tainting the party’s life blood with his brash brand of politics. These accusations come in the form of recent media interviews and a veritable stream of photocopies dumped off at the doorstep of any registered Democrat in the city.

“Tom McTygue wants to keep pulling the strings in the City Democratic Party,” boasts one flier paid for by the Democrats for Change. “He has candidates running in every district…to take full control of the City Committee.

Members of the splinter also distributed a reproduction of a full-length article chronicling the schism they happened to pilfer from Schenectady’s Daily Gazette. Though the article itself is quite balanced, the Change-o-crats decided to give it their own bias by emboldening various parts of the text outlining McTygue’s affiliation with the so-called United Democrats. They claim McTygue has resurfaced with a crew of allies in an attempt to quash the popular uprising of Keehniacs in their bid to restore order to the party.

“Behind all these machinations is Tom McTygue,” quoted Allan Turkenheimer, a DFC candidate vying for one of two Election District 1 seats.

DFC leader Shawn Thompson –the one who hand-picked failed Democratic Mayor Valerie Keehn –also couldn’t resist a McTygue reference in his ruminations to the Saratogian this week. He claims the voters will have to choose between two distinct groups, one of which embraces “McTygue’s machine-like politics.”

“The other side is trying to keep an open and transparent committee,” he said.

Of course, by “open and transparent committee,” he must mean on that sees it fit to hold their own fundraisers and meetings outside of the collective. He must also mean a committee that openly gathers an opponent’s list and makes no qualms about furtively lambasting anyone whose name appears on it.

This is not to say McTygue isn’t working behind the scenes to ensure his political longevity, or the longevity of his former voter base. But at least he’s not doing it as openly or brazenly as Thompson and his Keehniac flunkies, a group that has waged a carefully calculated propaganda campaign aimed at smearing anyone affiliated with the United Democrats. In contrast, the so-called United Democrats –a group that didn’t even formally organize until the DFC launched their final solution –have limited their politicking to simply getting their candidates’ names out in the public.

In fact, McTygue has been all but silent during the run up to the primaries, even though his name is again being tossed around as if he were the Spa City’s answer to the boogieman. It’s a tactic that is very reminiscent of the full court press the same DFC suspects waged against him in 2007, when they colluded to convince a gullible Metroland reporter of a federal investigation that allegedly swirled around the former 16-term politician.

This is not to say that McTygue doesn’t have his skeletons. In fact, he’s got bones enough around his political past to rival those interred at Saratoga National Cemetery. But these weren’t enough for the DFC campaign machine, which apparently fabricated a bogus story about FBI investigators squirreling through city records and interviewing DPW workers. Even though the story was weak and the sources were highly dubious –one connected with Kamp Keehn and another being a garage worker McTygue rightfully tried to fire –the FBI allegation grew legs in all three mainstream dailies thereby making it gospel in the eyes of many voters.

The move turned out to be McTygue’s proverbial swift boat, sounding the death knell for his campaign. To date, the Metroland hasn’t revisited their notion that an FBI investigation was ongoing, nor have the checked the whereabouts of their alleged sources in the ranks of the DPW. For that matter, they haven’t even bothered with the other big knock against McTygue in 2007 –the ongoing state Department of Environmental Conservation investigation into spill hydraulic oil at the Division Street Garage –despite a member of the opposition party recently claiming the whole debacle was “city politics at its worst.”

History is riddled with political candidates taken down by spurious allegations. Often times, it’s the candidate’s inability to feverishly attack this innuendo that has caused them to take a dive. McTygue was never able to clear his decks of the mud flung by the Thompson-driven Keehn campaign last year. And these are the same folks now pointing to McTygue as the ringleader of some faux coup to regain control over the committee, when in fact they are the root of the plot.

So Democratic voters, ponder deep before pulling the lever today. Think to yourselves: Are those bleating DFC sheep really pointing at the big bad wolf, or are they really the slavering yellow-fanged beast that has tucked itself under a freshly killed fleece?