The Greenburgh Town Democratic Party held its its nominating convention for candidates for town offices this past Thursday, February 23, 2023. Greenburgh has 81 electoral districts (EDs) with two district leaders (DLs) for each ED. 119 of the 156 DLs (there are currently 6 vacancies) gathered and (with two party officials not voting) 117 DLs (75%) voted to endorse candidates for town supervisor, town judge, town clerk, town board and county legislators.
Paul Feiner for Town Supervisor and Dolores Braithwaite for Town Judge were each unopposed in their re-election bids and were accordingly endorsed by the town party. David Imamura (running for the county seat vacated by recently elected Assemblymember Mary Jane Shimsky) and Jewel Williams (running for reelection) were unanimously endorsed to represent their respective county legislative districts. Town party leadership has turned decisively against longtime incumbent town clerk Judith Beville, as reflected in a vote of 101 DLs for challenger Lisa Marie Nero to only 14 DL votes for Beville. Beville lost the Town Democratic Party endorsement for town clerk by a narrower margin 4 years ago and still ran and won re-election. Beville was first elected town clerk in Nov. 2007 when she beat then incumbent Alfreda Williams. Beville also won contested Democratic primaries for town clerk in 2013 and 2011. It is assumed that she will run again this year.
The main event came last: the four way race for endorsement for two Greenburgh town council seats. This bout did not disappoint. First came the surprise withdrawal from the race of Bishop Wilburt Preston. Preston, a Feiner ally and longtime head of the Greenburgh Housing Authority, was clearly a distant fourth in the predicted voting among DLs. He preserved his dignity by pulling out instead of risking the ignominy of receiving just a handful of votes. The next surprise came with the nomination from the floor of Manni Areces, head of the Juniper Hills Civil Association, to the bemusement of the audience. As expected, incumbent Gina Jackson lead the voting comfortably and Areces did about as dismally as might have been expected of Preston. The highly anticipated contest came between Joy Haber of Dobbs Ferry and Jonathan Campozano of Hartsdale for the second of the two town council endorsements. Here are the results as I count them::
Haber pulled off a very narrow victory over Campozano to receive the town party's second endorsement for town council. While each reached the 50% threshold of weighted votes necessary to receive the party endorsement, Gina Jackson had already sewn up one endorsement, leaving the other candidates to vye for the remaining spot.
The performance gap among the incorporated villages DLs and the unincorporated DLs, as indicated above, is significant. Incorporated villagers are almost entirely removed from Greenburgh town government. They pay only nominal amounts of property taxes to the town and receive few services in return. In contrast, DLs representing the unincorporated areas are evaluating candidates for town board who, if elected, will set their town property tax rates and impact their home values and standard of living through planning and zoning decisions. It is revealing that unincorporated DLs favored Haber, a villager, over a fellow unincorporated resident, Campozano, while village DLs reversed that ranking. It is reasonable to conclude that at least a few unincorporated area DLs felt more comfortable entrusting their budget and tax rates with Haber, who has years of county government employment, over Campozano who had more limited local government experience.
