Safety measures
Albany’s mayor addresses public safety issues in annual address.
Shawn Morse is running for reelection. That’s the word from a source close to the embattled Cohoes mayor, who also says Morse’s official announcement, planned for Wednesday, will include an apology.
An apology for what? That isn’t clear.
We can presume Morse will not apologize to the several women who have accused him of physical abuse. The mayor has always insisted, implausibly, that all the women were lying. “I’ve never touched a woman in my life,” he said.
We can presume he won’t say sorry for anything connected to the ongoing FBI investigation into his campaign finances and business dealings, because an apology could imply, you know, guilt.
But Morse has talked, with raw emotion, about the difficulties in
his personal life, so expect his apology to sound something like this: “I am sorry that the trouble in family life has embarrassed the city I love.”
Surprised Morse is running? You shouldn’t be.
When the combative mayor faced demands that he resign from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other Democrats, Morse said he’d leave the decision to the people of Cohoes. The implication was that he would run again.
And back when things were good, before a 911 call from the mayor’s wife in November 2017 led to the discovery of other abuse allegations, Morse had seemed born for the job. It seemed like he could be mayor for a decade or longer.
That was then. Can Morse win now, after all the allegations and the bad publicity, with the FBI sniffing around? Absolutely.
Like it or not, the former firefighter, 51, retains a loyal base of support in Cohoes, consisting of people who either don’t believe the accusations or consider them irrelevant to the running of the city. Some even consider the attacks on “our Shawn” to be unfair and unjust.
This may shock you, but there are people in Cohoes who couldn’t care less what Andrew Cuomo thinks. They don’t care what the Times Union reports or what its columnists blather on about. Cities like Cohoes, blue-collar towns, are often protective of their own, especially when the heat is coming from the outside.
For sure, there is also a sizeable chunk of Cohoes, population 16,000, that is rightly mortified by Morse’s stain on the city and believes that allowing him to continue in City Hall is akin to saying that abuse allegations don’t matter all that much. Some of those folks considered Morse a bully long before he was elected mayor in 2015, and his time in office has only justified their worst fears.
Some in the anti-morse crowd rightly realize that his troubles are hurting the city. They know that Cohoes can’t survive as an island, without help from outside developers and money. They know that so long as the mayor is toxic, the city will suffer.
At the moment, though, the Anybody But Morse contingent has a problem: They have too many mayoral candidates. If the anti-morse vote is divided, it increases the odds of the mayor succeeding.
Steve Napier and Randy Koniowka, both members of the Common Council, are weighing challenges. So is William Keeler, the retired State Police Troop G commander. Other names are also in the mix for the upcoming Democratic primary, which is the election that really matters in one-party Cohoes.
Four years ago, Morse won the primary with about 1,500 votes — 58 percent of the total. This time around, in a four- or five-person field, could Morse still get the 1,000 votes he would need to win? There isn’t much doubt that he could, even if the FBI investigation leads to charges.
Morse will, however, be forced to run a me-against-the-world campaign. He will struggle to raise money. Many other politicians won’t go near him, much less endorse him. He won’t get help from the usual consultants who manage campaigns.
The lift, in other words, will be heavy. But it won’t be impossible. As one Cohoes political observer said Monday, “Shawn is wounded, but he isn’t dead.”
The Wednesday announcement is planned for noon at Veterans Memorial Park. The location is significant.
That same park is where Morse, with a red scratch under his left eye, arrived for his first public event after his wife’s 911 call, a turning point when his private troubles became widely known.
Morse will return hoping that voters will forgive those troubles and give him a second chance, that an apology can sway enough skeptics to keep his political career alive. I wouldn’t bet against him.