September Newsletter

Hi Democrats of Schoharie County!

You care. You care about other humans, our democracy and the earth. You don’t want to be denied abortion care, watch our country fall to MAGA-waving, election-denying bigots, or fry to a crisp. We had better get busy.

We are at a moment where your participation is critical.

In the next nine weeks, we need to talk to 189,317 voters across District 19 to defeat Elise Stefanik and get Matt Castelli into office.  When broken down to a county level, we need to speak to 7,569 voters. 

Phone Banking

We need twelve volunteers from Schoharie County every week to reach that goal. Will you be one of the twelve?

The Schoharie County Mid-Term team

I am going to lead an orientation session on Sunday, Sept.11 at 4:30 p.m. about how to effectively connect with and inspire voters to come out and vote Democratic. Then, for the next eight Sunday nights, we will hop on a Zoom from 5-8:30 p.m. and reach out to voters with information that they need.

Door Knocking

Maybe you don’t like the phone and prefer to talk to people in person. You can still come to an orientation on Sunday, September 11, at 4:30 and we will give you a walk list in your neighborhood. You can talk to voters on your own schedule! You can also sign up for this “Knock your neighbor” program, here:

The Schoharie County Mid-Term team

Let’s do this.

You came out to meet Matt. You showed up for the County Fair. We can do this, too.

Sign up here!

In solidarity,

Theresa

Chair of the Schoharie County Democratic Committee

VICTORY!

Greg Bucking

Our new Congressman Pat Ryan and our Democratic nominee Matt Castelli

Photo courtesy of Theresa Heary

On Tuesday, August 23rd, voters in Schoharie County went to the polls for an Election Day like no other in recent memory.  We had TWO important elections happening on the same day: a special election to fill the seat in Congress that Antonio Delgado left to become Lt. Governor, and a primary election to decide who will be the Democratic nominee for the November election in our new 21st Congressional District. 

Since it was a special election deciding who goes to Congress immediately, the race between Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Marc Molinaro garnered national media attention, and rightly so. Our district for the past decade has been highly competitive and many observers believed this to be a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans. Though Molinaro, a former gubernatorial candidate, is a well-known name in the area, Pat Ryan, of Ulster County, ran a spirited campaign focused on protecting our hard-fought freedoms, especially the right to abortion care which was recently gutted by the Supreme Court Dobbs decision. Ryan signs across the county reading “Choice is on the Ballot” made the stakes clear. In the end, Ryan proved victorious with a surprisingly high turnout for a special election in the middle of August. Schoharie County voters did their part giving Ryan over 1600 votes.

Due to redistricting, next year Schoharie County will be in the 21st Congressional District, currently represented by Elise Stefanik. The Democratic primary between Matt Castelli and Matt Putorti decided who would be our nominee for the November general election. Both candidates made multiple appearances in the county in the past couple of months, including at the SCDC’s bi-monthly meeting in March and at meet-ups at the Green Wolf Brewing Company in Middleburgh. When all the votes were counted, Matt Castelli wound up with a resounding win and is now our Democratic nominee to take on Stefanik in the November 8th general election. Being a former CIA official and counterintelligence head in two administrations, Castelli has focused intently on extremist threats to our democracy and freedoms. He was first motivated to run for Congress after witnessing the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, including Congresswoman Stefanik’s vote in favor of overturning the election results. He has stressed a message of “Country over Party'', going so far as to get 6,000 signatures for a separate “Moderate Party” line on the November ballot. Clearly, Castelli has elicited strong support of Democrats, and is reaching out to Independents and moderate Republicans across the district.

Sunshine Fair: Fun, Civic Leadership & Voter Information
Sarah Meredith

A total of twenty-two of us showed up for the three shifts a day at the Schoharie County Democratic Committee booth at the Cobleskill Fair. Each one of us has our own stories to tell, but all of us enjoyed the interactions we had with each other and the folks who passed by the booth each day from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

BIG THANKS TO SCOTT BENNETT (Richmondville)  AND JOE BOZICEVICH (Schoharie) who not only put us all up to it, but made sure the materials never ran out and that there were teams of old and new friends to ease the pressures of so much public contact after the long COVID hesitancy. A shout out to THERESA HEARY (Wright)  who cheered us on and helped create the sign up process encouraging everyone to take a turn.

Ready for the crowds at the Fair.

Our friendly volunteers!

Of course, it was always uplifting to have a Democrat come by who knew the score, but many people did not understand why there was an election in August. There were people from other districts, out of state and other countries who found our process fascinating! The task was predominantly informing people who were in District 19 that, as Ben Fox (Esperance) wrote in our pre-election handout, we had “one big day, two big votes.” Many voters registered as independents did not know they could vote in the Special Election thinking it was just a primary. Several Republicans did not know anything about their primary in the State Senate either. In the spirit of voter information, we showed sample ballots to people who were not even registered to vote and explained the process. Continued....

CONNECT & FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

SCDC Website - to get involved, with links to all our social media

Schoharie County Democratic Committee on FB - for issues, events, inspiration

@SchoharieDems on Twitter for breaking news and commentary

schohariecountydems on Instagram

Your likes and comments are inspiring!

New Neighbors in the North Country: Phone Banking is One-on-One Voter Outreach 

Sarah Meredith

I really didn’t want to do it. I don’t love talking on the phone, my evenings are precious to me, and I worry that I will say the wrong thing. In the past, I called voters in Georgia, and wrote hundreds of postcards and letters to voters all over in previous elections, but when Theresa asked if we could join the phone banks that the Castelli campaign was running, I just didn’t want to do it!  

But I did. 

My first evening I got used to the computer interface. The dialer is on the computer, voters are screened to be Democrats in District 21. Their names appear, and a script is there to follow if you need one, along with boxes to check off so the campaign can see what happened (right person, wrong number etc.) After you find out if you’re talking to the right person, you ask if they plan to vote and you’re off from there. We were authorized to talk about Pat Ryan to anyone who was in District 19 but most of my calls were to places deep in “the North Country” like Erie County, Clinton County, Washington County, St. Lawrence County. In some cases, you end up clarifying for them where their poll site is (all of that is on your screen), since nobody has much familiarity with a primary in August!

I learned that East, South and North Greenbush have been cut up between District 21 and District 20. I discovered that there are some very committed Democrats struggling to find like minds, who cherished the conversation where they didn’t have to hide their true feelings. Let’s just say that Elise Stefanik is not a popular figure, even to the couple of former Republicans I spoke with that night. Out of about 35 calls, 10 people hung up on me after the automatic click of the dialer. No chance to even say hello. I’ve done that myself to auto-callers, though, so I know it isn’t personal. In one conversation the first thing I had to do was clear up why my area code was 315 and I was not a spam call. My longest conversations were with the two Republicans who were on my list by mistake. One of them said, before hanging up, that he would consider Castelli before making up his mind in November.  That felt great. Much better than the other guy who said all kinds of awful things about Democrats before I got a word in edgewise and asked him to please put people before partisanship. Continued....

Are you curious about phone banking? Sign up here for this no-pressure training on Sunday, September 11 at 4:30. Theresa (our chairperson) will be training volunteers how to use the phonebank and reach out to voters. This is the most important work we can be doing, right now.

Filling in the Blanks and Building the Ranks!

SCDC is on a mission to register voters and recruit an army of volunteers ready to help Get Out The Vote (GOTV) for the November election! Upcoming activities are being organized as this goes to press. If YOUR TOWN is having a town wide community event — please tell us and we will try to help publicize it and register voters if we can. So far, we are trying to have some kind of a presence in Middleburgh during the final 4th Friday on September 23, and on October 8 at the Fall Festival. We’re working on being in Schoharie for Village Garage Sale Day on September 10 to augment the Town of Schoharie Democrats bake sale. Sign up here to help us register new voters.  We need to explain the stakes in the upcoming election and emphasize Castelli’s Democratic principles and Moderate policies. Keep an eye on FB, Twitter and Instagram to keep track of where we are!