Commentary: Voice of Croton candidates lose the election for two trustee seats but score massive and historic tallies for a Croton write-in campaign.

These impressive results can only be seen as a serious message to Croton Democrats that a substantial segment of the village wants them to slow down development.

Gary Eisinger (left) and Nigel Ravelo (right.)

The teams counting write-in votes from the Croton-on-Hudson trustee election have completed their task this evening, and the Westchester Board of Elections has reported the results. They can now be added to the previous totals already counted for the two Croton Democrat candidates. While these are still considered unofficial until they are certified next week, the tallies are probably very close to the final scores.

Here they are:

MARIA SLIPPEN:

2,708

LEN SIMON:

2,693

GARY EISINGER:

1,388

NIGEL RAVELO:

1,352

The first thing to note, of course, is that Maria Slippen and Len Simon have won the two trustee seats, as the Chronicle projected earlier. This should really come as no surprise: Write-in campaigns are notoriously difficult, especially in a highly contentious presidential election year when “Vote Row A All the Way” makes a lot of sense to Democratic voters in our village.

That makes the achievement of Voice of Croton all the more important and impressive. It would be reasonable to expect everyone in the village, no matter what their views, to acknowledge that. We have researched the subject and find no evidence that any write-in candidate in modern Croton history has come even close to these tallies. The last major write-in campaigns, by the late Ginny Calcutti, were highly visible efforts, and her highest score—nearly 800 votes—has been considered to be very impressive for the past decade.

Both Gary Eisinger and Nigel Ravelo have now managed to score nearly twice that. Their campaigns were run by a small but very dedicated group of volunteers, but they managed to tap into a wellspring of sentiment against what is seen by many Crotonites as runaway development. True, Eisinger and Ravelo essentially ran a one-issue campaign, and were sometimes criticized for that by Croton Dem supporters. But clearly, that one issue is extremely important to a large proportion of villagers.

Moreover, the two candidates had only two months to conduct their campaign, employing an entirely new grassroots organization against a well established Democratic Party apparatus with deep connections to local and state party officials.

Very importantly, statements by a couple of trustees over the past months that opponents of so-called “urbanization” were engaged in “dog whistle” behavior, or did not really represent the community, are effectively refuted by these results. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that neither of the two candidates is a Republican, and that the core campaign volunteer staff was made up almost entirely of registered Democrats.

Voice of Croton did not win this year, but it now has every opportunity to get its candidates on the ballot for next year’s election. (As does anyone else who might like to run.) In the past we have chastised those who complain about “one-party rule” and suggested that they need to actually get off their duffs and run for office. Eisinger and Ravelo did that, and so did their supporters.

Of course, formally speaking, nothing has changed in the political makeup of the Croton Board of Trustees. Croton Democrats continue to have a complete lock on the body. But a lot of decisions are coming up about housing development in the village: The number of units that will be allowed at Lot A, a possible resubmission of plans for 1 Half Moon Bay Drive, and other possible housing developments throughout the village that seem to be looming on the horizon.

We can only hope that the Board of Trustees will take heed of these results, and not dismiss them just because the write-in candidates did not manage to do the nearly impossible.

A message has been sent: Slow down the pace of development. Will it be heard, and will it be heeded?

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