Paul Feiner won again. He started his first two-year term as Greenburgh Supervisor in Jan. 1992 - you do the math. This was Feiner's 5th contested primary this century. While Feiner won comfortably, McGoey gave Feiner the toughest challenge the incumbent has faced since Bill Greenawalt in 2005, more than twenty years ago. Feiner's margin of victory has slipped in each of his four most recent primaries.
This map visualizes the comparative performances of Feiner and McGoey in each of Greenburgh's 79 electoral districts;
Turnout was unprecedented: in Feiner's four previous 21st century primaries, the highest total turnout was 6,507 back in 2007. This 2026 primary exceeded that 2007 primary's turnout by more than 1/3 with 2,314 additional voters. This record turn out came in both the villages and unincorporated Greenburgh, but not proportionately: the villagers' voting total of 4,335 was 58% higher than in 2021 - the previous high number. The record turnout in unincorporated Greenburgh, however, was just 17% higher than the previous peak in 2013. This balance between village and unincorporated voters was much closer than ever before. In 2026, village voters comprised 49% of the primary electorate while in 2021 it had been 43%. As villagers comprise 50.4% of Greenburgh's registered Democrats, villagers are, for the first time, voting for town supervisor in numbers nearly proportionate to their actual population.
Turnout by electoral district:
This balance in voting numbers between villagers and unincorporated resident also extended to turnout percentages. In a surprising development, turnout among village Democrats at 23% nearly equaled turned out among unincorporated Democrats at 24%.
Turnout by % of registered Democrats in each electoral district
Low-stakes but enthusiastically voting village residents have their own mayors and village government toward which they pay the bulk of their municipal taxes. The Greenburgh Town Board administers a few services for the village residents. The Town Board, however, administers all municipal services for unincorporated residents. While the villages contain approximately 50% of the town's population and 50% of its tax assessable property, villagers pay less than 8% of all the property taxes collected by the town. The other 92% of collected property tax revenue is paid by the town's unincorporated residents. We are approaching the troubling scenario where village voters - who individually pay 1/13th of the property tax rate paid by unincorporated residents to the town (0.4628/1000 v. 5.5038/1000)- threaten to determine the supervisor and composition of the town board contrary to the intentions of the majority of unincorporated residents (this concern is heightened when realizing that about 80% of the town's Black population lives in the unincorporated area.)
Although Feiner won four of the six villages in Greenburgh, he lost the village vote for the first time this century, driven by McGoey's success in Dobbs Ferry (63%) and Hastings-on-Hudson (57%). In the previous four primaries this century, Feiner had always won both the villages and unincorporated Greenburgh.
Is Feiner beatable? By winning the villages, McGoey is the first Feiner opponent to win one of the town's two sections. McGoey's achievement in the villages is evidence of the concerted efforts of the Greenburgh and Westchester County Democratic committees, which managed and financially supported this campaign. Whether a candidate can be found to also appeal to voters in Hartsdale, Fairview and the unincorporated areas of the Ardsley and Valhalla school districts is the remaining challenge.
The Greenburgh Democratic Committee had one job — find a challenger who could beat a 34-year incumbent — and instead handed voters a village trustee with no record on a single town issue, no history in unincorporated Greenburgh, and no answer for why residents who fund 92% of the town's budget should hand the keys to a man who, as an Ardsley resident has never paid more than a few cents on the dollar toward it himself. Villagers pay less than 8% of all town property tax collected, at a rate roughly a twelfth of what unincorporated residents pay — and McGoey wanted unincorporated Greenburgh to believe that's the man to run their budget.
ReplyDeleteLayer on the health insurance buyout scandal still hanging over Town Hall, and McGoey wasn't running away from "Greedburgh" — he was running with the same committee machinery that produced it, endorsed by over 80% of a party apparatus that is hollowing out locally exactly as it is nationally. Add McGoey's own Yonkers-rooted baggage, and you have a candidate built entirely by insiders, for insiders, tested nowhere near the voters who'd actually have to live under him.
Feiner, whatever else you think of thirty-four years in office, has spent those years running a concierge operation — showing up, answering the phone, fixing the pothole — and unincorporated Greenburgh rewarded that at record turnout and record margins everywhere except Edgemont. McGoey offered a resume. Feiner offered three decades of actually picking up the phone. That's not a hard choice for the people who pay the bills.
So no — this isn't a comeback story for the Greenburgh Democratic Committee. It's an indictment of it. And as the man who assembled this candidate (Steve Bass) is stepping down in disgrace, the lesson should be obvious to whoever's left running that executive committee: you cannot beat a retail politician with a resume, and you cannot ask the people who pay 92% of the tax bill to hand the keys to someone with no record of ever having to answer to them. I'll add that the party pile-on from Latimer to Paulin backfired. Shame on them both for interfering in a local race where neither lives