Banned Web Site

It didn’t take long for County Democratic Chairman Thomas Wade to react to an act of defiance of the vote of the full county committee last June declaring the purge efforts of North Greenbush Reform Democrats Chair Jeff Spain invalid. The county committee maintains a web site at renssdems.org. which traditionally offers local Democratic committees a link so people can quickly locate the local party committee. While there are few town committees with web pages, there is one less now which is linked to the county page. That's the “new” site of the Reform North Greenbush Democratic Committee of 9 with 7 maintaining their distance from the GOP leaning majority.We say GOP leaning because they appear to be endorsing the county GOP town board slate including Mark Evers and Louis Desso.

Wade had permitted the new town site to be linked to the county web site until he learned that Spain had defied the county committee by refusing to list Dan Ashley and C.B.Smith as members of the committee. That refusal has cut Spain’s group off from the county site except to list fundraisers, (which may soon end as well since they are supporting the GOP slate.)

Prior to Spain’s infamous “Purge Trial” of Smith and Ashley, the County Chairman had warned them by letter such an action was both illegal and would not be tolerated. Spain did it anyway. As promised the Executive Committee met and voted unanimously to order Spain to recognize all 16 members and had the County Chairman send a letter to the entire 16 members committee informing them of same. Spain ignored the action. Then at a meeting of the full county committee in June, the entire committee endorsed the decision and resolve of the Executive Committee and Chairman and publicly rebuking Spain with Spain sitting in the room and meekly casting the only no vote. Spain ignored the resolution and put up a web site defying the county committee by omitting Smith and Ashley.

Now he turns around and sues the county committee which is sure to further isolate him and his 8 supporters from the mainstream. (On a side note, the so called Democratic Chairman was so busy suing his fellow Democrats that he couldn’t be bothered doing the critical job of helping Democratic candidates with minimal effort gathering signatures for designating petitions. Chairman Spain got 6 signatures, that’s three less than his 9 member “majority” on the town committee!)

The minority Democrats on the town committee maintained control to the keys of the party’s prior web site at ngbdems.blogspot.com. It continues to function and holds much information from the past several years. Just one more battle in the blogosphere that won’t end any time soon.