After last week’s panoply of organizational meetings, we need one of those compilation videos.
You know the internet sensations I’m talking about? The kind with spliced clips of people saying the same thing again and again to the point that it all sounds a little absurd?
Those oft-viral videos have a way of emphasizing when rhetoric is only that. They also make the hypocrisy all the juicier when the words said over and over … and over … in a compilation inevitably fail to align with reality.
Which returns us to last week, when local governments up through the state legislature held the pomp of organizational meetings and the mere ceremony of simply hammering the gavel.
A compilation video of such official gatherings would home in on ideas of unity or collaboration.
In Marion Porterfield’s speech accepting a second term as Schenectady City Council President, she discussed the council’s commitment to setting aside differences.
“We resolved that we would work together for the benefit of our community,” Porterfield said.
State leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, also stressed collaboration.
“I’m reaching my hand out and saying, ‘Work with us during this session,’” Hochul said Jan. 2, as she unveiled the first of her legislative priorities ahead of this week’s State of the State address.
And in Saratoga Springs, new Republican Mayor John Safford spoke of “harmony” during his inauguration.
“I urge today to the council, and to all of you, that we work together, that we sing our songs, we sing in harmony.”
This time of year, there tends to be an abundance of togetherness talk.
Give it some time, though, and local and state politicians are — unfortunately — likely to be singing a different tune.
After all, if unity is the goal, leaders at all levels have their work cut out for them this year.
In Schenectady, all the humming of “Kumbaya” comes off a year in which the sometimes bitterly and personally divided all-Democratic council could barely pass a 2024 budget before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. And now, the city’s leadership has all but one of the same faces. The top two leaders — Mayor Gary McCarthy and Council President Porterfield — are the same two who campaigned against each other during the 2023 Democratic mayoral primary.
In Saratoga Springs, Safford staked his candidacy on civility and, since taking office, his administration has helped to institute changes to public comment policy that are a direct, unveiled reaction to the way members of Saratoga Black Lives Matter took over some City Council meetings last year.
Unsurprisingly, those changes have already drawn the ire of Saratoga BLM. So you’d be foolish to expect a different tenor to the Spa City discourse this year.
Elsewhere, Niskayuna Supervisor Jaime Puccioni spoke during the town’s organizational meeting about “doing so much more together,” as she was sworn in for her second term.
But Puccioni will be serving once again alongside board members with whom she’s previously had petty disputes, including an eye-roll-worthy controversy last fall about her allegedly menacing glares.
Then there’s Clifton Park, where town Supervisor Phil Barrett, a Republican, and Highway Superintendent Dahn Bull, who ran this fall as a Democrat, have been sparring publicly for years. A recent tussle over a garage seems to signal that any signs of compromise are sure to stall.
At the state level, we’ll get glimpses last week of how Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to govern after contending last year with criticism from her right and left. For instance, a year ago, the Democrat was heading toward a fight over her proposed chief judge appointment that was ultimately doomed by progressives who deemed Hector LaSalle too conservative and hostile to liberal causes. In addition, Hochul’s signature housing plan announced during the 2023 State of the State crumbled in the face of Republican and suburban Democratic opposition over development concerns.
Any hopes that national politics could inspire unity are dashed by the fact that we’re likely slogging toward a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Sadly, it’s a campaign that promises to be even more divisive than the 2020 election during which sides failed to reach consensus over basic facts, none more important than the results themselves being legitimate.
Even internationally we’re about to live through what a recent New Yorker piece dubbed “The Biggest Election Year in History” as “2024 will set a record for the greatest number of people living in countries that are holding nationwide elections.” The piece explains more than 4 billion people — more than “half of humanity” — will head to the polls, saying, “We don’t know what the effect will be — demoralizing, unsettling, or inspiring — of month after month of election news.”
Something tells me that incessant broadcasts and constant streams of news articles devoted to disagreeing candidates won’t exactly compel us toward companionship.
Still, we can hope.
And as fissures undoubtedly re-form and arguments erupt over everything from how to develop local property to who is welcome on national land, let’s remember the start of the year. Let’s recall the ubiquitous and repeated remarks about unity we heard last week from New York’s politicians.
If only we had a video compilation to remind us.