By Holly Crocco
About 60 people gathered July 20 to celebrate the grand opening of the Putnam County Democratic Committee’s new headquarters in Carmel.
“Our job here is to get out the vote,” said Chairwoman Jennifer Colamonico. “Putnam will not be an afterthought this year… We are going to organize in all six towns… We are going to talk to voters.”
She said that over the summer months, Putnam Democrats intend to contact thousands of voters, carrying the message of why it is so critical to vote blue/Row A all across the ballot this November.
“Putnam County has not seen this level of commitment in many years, which is a testament to the changing tide and the realization that Putnam matters,” according to the committee. “Voter registration is on the upswing, (and) our party is growing.”
County Legislature candidate Randall Mulkins of Patterson said it would be an honor to join long Democrat Nancy Montgomery of Philipstown on the county board.
“As a younger Democrat, I am so excited to see all of this,” he said at the gathering. “I thought I was the only Democrat in town for a very long time.”
Montgomery, who is unopposed in her re-election bid, said it’s important for Democrats to support each other across districts.
“We have great candidates on every level, and I’m so excited because the issues we deal with, they don’t know borders,” she said. “The funding that these folks are going to bring to the Hudson Valley is going to help all of us.”
Assembly candidate Zack Couzens is another young Democrat running for office.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would be on this stage with a slate of candidates, I would have asked you: Whose campaign am I working for?” he said. “Because I did not expect to be here, at age 21, running for State Assembly.”
He said the caliber of experience and passion of the other members of the Democratic ticket gives him hope.
“Our slate of candidates represents the strength and the power of the Democratic Party,” he said. “We are multigenerational, multiracial, we come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, but it’s not just these identities that make us strong – it’s the fact that we have a vision we put forth that invests in our students, that invests in our most vulnerable, that funds our programs, and services that we need to actually uplift our community and support everyone.”
State Senate candidate Yvette Valdes Smith said New York Democrats are uniting like never before.
“This kind of investment that we’re seeing throughout the state – we have three offices open so far from just my Senate district alone,” she said. “That’s incredible. This has not happened before.”
Smith said she’s proud to be a Democrat. “We are all ages. We are all races. We are all genders,” she said. “I will be the first Latina north of Westchester to ever be a State senator.”
State Sen. Pete Harckham of Ossining encouraged all in attendance to work to not only get local candidates elected, but to put Democrats in power at all levels of government.
“It took (former Congressman) Mondaire Jones and Joe Biden to provide the resources we needed during COVID,” he said. “They saved our health care system, they saved many of our businesses, they save our education system… This is incredible – I have never seen so many Democrats at one event in Putnam County.”
Jones said he wants to get back into Congress to fight for climate change, health care reform and common-sense gun legislation, among other initiatives he says will keep residents safe.
“Isn’t it ironic that the weapon of choice for a 20-something-year-old conservative Republican who attempted to take the life of a former president is the same AR-15 that Republicans refused to ban?” he asked, referring to the recent assassination attempt on Trump. “We will actually do something about that as Democrats. We will keep our community safe.”
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