Chris Churchill at the Albany Times-Union:
Under the alleged leadership of Mayor Ron Kim, Saratoga Springs has felt like a city without an adult in charge, given the obscenity-laced tirades, the disrespect shown to average citizens, the multiple lawsuits and the allegations of a toxic City Hall work environment. Kim seems to have talents and skills, but they are overshadowed by his aggression and incivility.
That goes a long way toward explaining why the mayor, a Democrat in a city where Democrats have a big enrollment advantage, managed to get just 38 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election. Granted, it was a three-way race, and the victor, Republican John Safford, concedes he’d have lost without the presence on the ballot of Christian Mathiesen, running under the One Saratoga label. But if city government hadn’t been a veritable circus of goofy and ugly behavior, there would have been no chance for Safford. Kim earned this loss. He deserved it.
“Civility was the primary driving factor behind my win,” Safford told me early Wednesday.
Democrats claimed that locals’ desire for “a return to civility” prompted their sweeping win of seats on the town’s Boards of Selectmen and Finance on Tuesday, with Democratic challenger Bernie Dennler III beating incumbent Republican Andreas Bisbikos in a nearly 2 to 1 margin.
…
Dennler used an example of an incident in June 2022 where First Selectman Andreas Bisbikos requested the removal of a book from the children’s section of Cragin Memorial Library. “It was really a distraction from a lot of the issues that were going on in town, and people found it was embarrassing for their community,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing that they wanted the First Selectman to be wading into and making a political scene about.”