GOP is Still Putnam’s Party

The Republican party is Putnam’s strongest political faction. GOP candidates have made up the majorities on town boards and in the county legislature for decades.

In some towns, the lopsided imbalance has meant that Putnam Democrats haven’t been fielding candidates. Carmel went 15 years without a Democratic candidate for supervisor.

When it comes to national races, Putnam remains the one Republican stronghold in the Hudson Valley, a region that has increasingly turned to Democratic candidates. Even as Republicans continued to be routed in the Northeast in the 2008 election, John McCain and Sarah Palin won Putnam County by nearly 10 percent.

“We don’t have any urban areas,” explained Tony Scannapieco, the chairman of the Republican party. “People have their homes here and sleep here, and they work in New York City or Westchester. So you get voters who are more conservative than they might have been in their 20s.”

Today we think of the Republican party as one of the nation’s two major parties. But its history is that of a plucky, radical, and idealistic third party. It was founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, and it quickly surpassed the exhausted Whig Party in national politics, coming to power in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president.

The GOP’s base was in the Yankee Northeast, where anti-slavery sentiment was strongest. By the early 20th century the GOP had two distinct wings, one conservative and represented by the Taft political dynasty in Ohio, and another progressive and represented by Theodore Roosevelt and later by New York’s own Nelson Rockefeller.

In the early part of the century, the party was united by its desire to see the growth of industry and the Americanization of the great wave of immigration. It was only after the Great Depression, and the great expansion of the federal government during the New Deal and World War II, that the GOP gradually became the home of conservatism as an ideology.

Hamilton Fish III, Putnam’s most famous Republican congressman, embodied the conservative strain in the Republican party. During his 25 years in Congress, he was a foe of FDR’s New Deal, and his ardent anti-communism led him to initially oppose America’s entry alongside the Soviet Union in World War II. After Pearl Harbor, Fish joined America’s cause in the fight, though he lost his seat in Congress.

Times may be changing for Putnam Republicans. Westchester used to be as Republican-friendly as Putnam. But an influx of upwardly-mobile, liberal voters from New York has turned Putnam’s southern neighbor into safe ground for Democratic candidates. The same is beginning to happen in Putnam, as Democratic registration climbs each year.

“As more people move north, it’s definitely a trend,” Scannapieco admitted, “but I still think we’re a Republican county for a long time to come. And I feel the next few years there will be a resurgence of Republicans with what’s happening nationally and statewide.”

Scannapieco brushes aside concerns that his party’s continued dominance leads to lethargic government. “That’s not a problem,” he said. “The problem we have is infighting and backbiting. We start to attack each other. Some people don’t want to wait their turn.” The evidence of infighting has been abundant in 2009, as Republicans endured contentious primaries in the Sheriff’s race and town board races in Carmel, Southeast, and Kent.

There are challenges ahead for the GOP, beyond changing demographics. Scannapieco said that the issue state representatives must tackle is school taxes. “We have to stop killing the homeowner and the property owner,” he said. Further, he affirmed that illegal immigration has been a continuing problem for Putnam that both parties are reluctant to address. “As soon as you say something about it, the press does the easiest thing,” Scannapieco said. “They call you a racist.”

One challenge that Scannapieco believes his party can address is the challenge of growing Putnam’s tax base through commercial development. “You can’t just say you want to leave it green, and leave it beautiful, then complain when taxes are raised,” he said. “We can’t have it both ways, and Republicans know that.”