Welcome to the #WeeklyWonk. This is my weekly blog about statistics, registration data, and election law on my website, dustinczarny.com. This is a rebrand of my #wonkywednesday and #sundaythoughts columns I have been writing since 2020. In merging these two side projects together I am hoping to be a little more regular in my production. I have also not tied myself to a particular day to release these columns, hoping to release them weekly on the weekend. This way I can have more time to gather the statistics and resources that I want to devote to these articles. This week I examine The Town of Pompey.
Like the other towns we examined this year, The Town of Pompey has a vacant board seat caused by a resignation up this year. However in addition to this seat it also has a Town Justice seat up as well. The winner of this year’s Town Board race will have to run again next year. However the winner for the Town Justice race gets a full four year term as judicial seats are never to fill a vacancy but for the full term. Democrats have fielded candidates for both those seats. Part of the reason for that is the recent string of success in Pompey with the unique bi-partisan Team Pompey slate.
Unlike the other towns we examined this year, Democrats do not have a plurality. Democrats only represent 29% of the town registered voters, and the GOP has the plurality at 37%. The non-enrolled at 27% is in third place. The town is wholly contained in a County Legislative district so we will examine the 6 election districts it is made up of. They are pretty evenly split in voter populations with ED 19%-14% of the town’s voter population. The most populous are the north eastern EDs 4&5 that border Manlius.
Though the Town of Pompey is a solidly red town it was not immune to the Trump effect on suburban communities. From 2009 to 2022 the GOP lost just 63 voters staying relatively stable. Democrats in the meantime have added 320 voters. The Non-enrolled have also gained 298 voters. This allowed for the formation of Team Pompey, a collection of Democrats, Independents, and GOP voters that fought back against the attempted trumpification of their town in 2019 by the local GOP party establishment. They were able to piece together a winning coalition to flip the supervisor and a majority of town board races.
The six election districts, though similar in size, do have a slight polarization in terms of voter registration. There is only one Election district, #3, that has a Democratic Plurality. EDs 4 & EDs 6 the Republicans only have a small plurality. These three Election districts happen to border the Town of Manlius in the North East corner. The other more rural EDs that border Lafayette (1 & 5) are typically more GOP leaning. Ed 2 in the North West corner is solid GOP but the Democrats are not in 3rd place there.
In the top five comparative races we see this town while overwhelmingly GOP in enrollment swings on certain races. Joe Boden won this town by 4.01%. However John Katko seen as a moderate GOP won by 18.44% in 2020 and 14.11% in 2018. Molinaro replicated his upstate success here for Governor. However when Renee Rotundo, the Democratic supervisor, ran for re-election in 2021 she dominated her race winning by 22.30 points. She also brought in a town board majority with her as well.
Democrat Diana Carpenter is running for the vacant Town Councilor seat on the Democratic line. She faces David Angello who is running on an independent party line but is a registered GOP. Non-Enrolled Benjamin Rabin is running for Town Justice on the Democratic line. He faces a challenge on the GOP line from Trent Amond. That does it for this edition of the #WeeklyWonk. Next time we check in we will start to look at the data from the General Election on November 8, 2022 starting with Early Voting. Check back each week & subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and elections updates.
Dustin M. Czarny 