Spurned by GOP, Donohue mounts write-in re-election bid
Councilman says political gamesmanship took away people’s choice
TROY, N.Y. » Like the man he supported for president last year, John Donohue pledged to “drain the swamp” in his first bid for public office in 2015.
Two years later, the incumbent Republican City Council member continues to parrot President Donald Trump’s mantra, only now, he considers that swamp to include members of his own party after losing GOP backing for his reelection bid. Donohue is refusing to go down without a fight, though, mounting a write-in bid to oppose Jeffrey Belschwinder, the Republican Party’s choice to replace Donohue in District 6, and Democratic challenger T.J. Kennedy.
“Being politically naive, I was sideswiped by the Republicans, and I wasn’t prepared for what happened,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of people come up to me, saying ‘Please, please, please,’ telling me, ‘Don’t let this get you down. We still want you to run. We believe in you, and we want to vote for you.’”
Republican officials initially approached Donohue in 2015 to run for the District 6 seat when Democrat Gary Galuski was forced to give up the seat due to mandated term limits.
“When I first was approached to run, I asked them ‘Why me?” because I was very surprised they came to me,” Donohue said. “They said it was because they needed fresh faces, needed people with new ideas, and didn’t want anybody with polit-
ical ties.”
That political independence led to him falling out of favor with the party, though. He and two other Republican council members, Jim Gulli and Dean Bodnar, met with Democratic Mayor Patrick Madden during contentious budget negotiations in 2016, and he later tried with Bodnar and Democrat Robert Doherty — neither of whom are running for re-election, Bodnar due to term limits — to broker a compromise with the council’s Republican majority. As retribution, he claims, Donohue and Bodnar were not included in a new, fourmember Majority Steering Committee created by council President Carmella Mantello shortly after their meeting with Madden.
“I found out very quickly that if I did not follow in lockstep, I was going to be put on the shelf, which I was,” Donohue said. “That was really the beginning of the end of my ability to truly respresent my people.”
Donohue responded by criticizing Mantello and city GOP leaders for encouraging what he calls “politics as usual” at a time when that politics was being blamed for fiscal problems that had brought the city to the brink of insolvency. Mantello and other Republicans responded by critizing Donohue for being too aggressive and combative with them.
Donohue had every intention of running for a second two-year term, gathering twice the needed signatures to assure himself a spot in a Sept. 12 GOP primary against Belschwinder after the party chose to endorse the political newcomer. County elections commissioners Edward McDonough and Larry Bugbee threw out all of Donohue’s signatures, however, because Donohue did not correctly complete required certifications on his petitions. Donohue, though, claims he was set up by Bugbee, the Republican commissioner, whose incomplete instructions he blames for being thrown off the ballot.
Unwilling to reach into his own pockets to pay the estimated $7,000 cost to challenge the disqualification in court, Donohue initially bowed out of the race altogether, but changed his mind and decided to take a stand against the political gamesmanship he believes may not only end his political career after just two years, but, more importantly, will only continue to discourage people who could be of great help to the city from getting involved.
He has no delusions about his chances to win reelection by going up against both major political parties, but said he felt he had to stand up for the people who supported him in 2015 and throughout his two years on the council,
“It’s an uphill climb, I understand that,” Donohue said, “but it’s also a message I’d like to send to the people of Troy: Don’t let the parties take your voice or take your choice. I want to make sure they have that choice, win, lose or draw.”
If he were to somehow pull out a victory, though, he said he would be the same councilman as during his first time.
“I would continue on exactly the way I was,” he said. “If you have a good idea, something that’s really going to be good for the city, I’m going to vote for that, no matter where it comes from.”