Uncommon Sense: At a loss

Written by Jeff Morris
Thursday, 12 November 2009 01:00

The day after the Nov. 3 election, I did the best thing I could possibly have done. I left town.

Though that might seem like a bit of an overreaction, it was in fact a trip to a conference and had been planned well in advance of Election Day. Still, the timing couldn’t have been better, though I can’t say the same for the location: Las Vegas. It was probably not the best place to go after Lewisboro’s Democrats came up snake eyes.

Here was the extent of my gambling: I tried my hand at two slot machines and promptly lost my entire $6 investment. (Regular readers of both sides of this page may be interested to learn that five of those six dollars were lost on a Star Trek-themed machine, though as far as I could tell the differences between slot machines were merely cosmetic; every single machine sucked up money in the same way.) I did not even attempt any more challenging venues, such as roulette, blackjack, poker, sports betting, or bingo. From these gambling exploits you may gather that I am risk-averse. You may also gather that I do not have a great deal of confidence in either my luck or my prognostication skills, and the fact that I thought the Democrats had a chance in the election shows that assessment is no fluke.

As a result of this trip I have been almost completely out of touch since Tuesday the 3rd, but I can’t honestly say I would have any better insight into the results had I been around. (And I’m sure any number of local wags undoubtedly just said, “You’ve been out of touch considerably longer than since Tuesday,” but if you hadn’t thought of saying it, consider it my gift to you.) As I write this, I’m sitting on an airplane that has just hit some turbulence, and I probably know just as much about the cause of that as I do about why the vote turned out the way it did. Sure, I saw the stories about Democrats losing the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, but really, what the heck does that have to do with Lewisboro? The local race with the biggest impact was the defeat of Andy Spano for re-election as Westchester County executive. As the Lewisboro GOP helpfully pointed out on a picture postcard, Mr. Spano once sat atop a fire truck in a local parade with Ed Brancati — no doubt both picking the pockets of the volunteer firefighter sitting between them.

Still, while it would certainly be convenient to blame this local Democratic drubbing on Mr. Spano’s reverse coattails, it’s difficult to say with any certainty, at this point, why voters did what they did — or failed to do. I haven’t yet seen the numbers showing whether Democrats voted Republican or simply didn’t show up (though I did read that in New Jersey, at least, Democrats came out to vote against Jon Corzine). Once I get hold of those figures, you can bet I’ll dig into them until I can come up with some explanation for last week’s outcome that is more complicated than “it’s the taxes, stupid!”

One thing I can say with some certainty is that Bob Goett failed to win election because he wasn’t even on the ballot. As obvious as that may be, I confess to having deluded myself into thinking he actually had a shot. The only way that might have been possible was if Mr. Goett’s candidacy had proved to be so wildly popular that voters felt compelled to flock to the polls and make the extra effort to write him in — or, conversely, voters felt so strongly about the need to defeat the Republicans that they were compelled to write in Mr. Goett’s name to ensure their defeat. Needless to say, the reality was much less compelling.

So what did happen? Why did Lewisboro continue what now borders on tradition, ensuring that the one sure renovation to the Town House is installation of a revolving door? Come January, we will get our fifth supervisor in eight years. At this point, it might be useful to bring in some professional help to determine if the voters of Lewisboro are merely fickle, genuinely schizophrenic, or simply addicted to rolling the dice. We could all go to Vegas for group therapy. Or we could try to get gambling legalized and open a casino near the town pool. I bet it would look great next to the new cabanas.