Registration parity fuels hopes for more offices
Randall Mulkins ticks a lot of boxes: U.S. Army veteran, president of the Patterson Fire Department, third-generation resident of the Town of Patterson.
Mulkins, 29, is also a Democrat and the party’s candidate for the Putnam County Legislature seat held by Ginny Nacerino, who cannot run because of term limits. She has represented District 4, which includes most of Patterson, since 2012.
“He’s a phenomenal candidate who has a lot of support in town from Republicans and Democrats because he grew up there,” said Jennifer Colamonico, chair of the Putnam County Democratic Committee.
If he wins a three-year term in November, Mulkins will relieve Nancy Montgomery, who represents Philipstown and part of Putnam Valley, of being the sole Democrat on the nine-member Legislature.
A win “helps Democrats everywhere in Putnam” because it “shifts the conversation” in the Legislature, said Colamonico. “Nancy could get a second on a motion,” she said. “Having a second would allow a debate, a discussion.”
Mulkins would also hand the party its first major victory under the Purple Putnam Project — a five-year campaign launched by the Democratic Committee to win county offices currently dominated by Republicans.
The campaign’s name reflects the relative parity in major-party registration in Putnam County. Republicans have an edge of just 1,612 active voters, a gap that is nearly half of what it was in 2019.
Colamonico said her priority is “to build a structure, to build resources and to build camaraderie and focus at the county level” after years in which the county committee deferred to the towns “and just didn’t have great results with that.”
Fielding competitive candidates is a must, said Colamonico, who became county chair in February 2023 after years leading Carmel’s Democratic Committee. “We need to be thinking countywide, particularly for some of these races, and then empower the towns to build off that movement,” she said.
“We’ve had a struggle to field candidates the last couple of races,” she added. “Letting [County Executive Kevin] Byrne go uncontested [in 2022] was a colossal mistake.”
According to Colamonico, Putnam is defined by “chunks” of Democrats and Republicans. One of those chunks is District 1, which Montgomery has represented since defeating Republican incumbent Barbara Scuccimarra in 2018. (Montgomery defeated Scuccimarra again in 2021.)
Philipstown is heavily Democratic, mirroring the significant registration advantage Republicans have in Carmel. But active-voter registration tilts Democratic in Putnam Valley and in Kent, giving outsized importance to the Conservative Party, whose members generally vote for Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, who skew conservative, said Colamonico.
Sam Oliverio, a one-time Republican, ran as a Democrat when he won in 1996 the District 2 seat representing most of Putnam Valley. For 18 years, Oliverio stood as the Democrats’ lone representative on the Legislature before he ran unsuccessfully for county executive in 2014.
His successor in District 2, William Gouldman, narrowly defeated Democrat Maggie Ploener in 2023. Gouldman won by 342 votes in a race in wihch just 34 percent of Putnam Valley’s 2,744 active Democrat voters turned out.
In the same election, Democrat Kathy Kahng fell 197 votes short against Republican incumbent Toni Addonizio in District 3, which includes most of Kent. With 46 more Democrats casting ballots than Republicans, Addonizio owed her victory to the 243 votes from Conservative Party members.
In 2021, against Democratic challenger Stacy Dumont, Nacerino won 60 percent of the vote in District 4. While Mulkins will have the Democratic line in November, the Republican candidate will be either former county attorney Jennifer Bumgarner or accountant Laura Russo, based on a June 25 primary.
