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Publication Date: November 1st, 2025
Image Remixed from The Economist
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Hudson’s future runs through the First Ward, the city’s civic, economic, and intellectual core. Its institutions, from the courthouse to the waterfront, define Hudson’s promise yet expose its mismanagement. With the council divided and progress stalled, the ward’s election will decide whether the city governs or performs. By putting the 1st Ward first, the 1st Ward Common Council members will serve Hudson best.
Hudson Common Sense endorses Donna Streitz, Henry Haddad, and Patti Ramoska: the team most capable of restoring competence, transparency, and growth. Put the First Ward first to grow Hudson. Remove Gary.
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The First Ward is the key to Hudson’s revival. It carries more of the city’s tax burden than any other, with its larger homes and higher assessments. It is also the most educated, geographically extensive, and civically mixed: luxury townhouses beside well maintained subsidized housing, quiet side streets hug merchants and proprietors. Its pluralism and diversity of thought are what keep Hudson dynamic and worth saving.
The Ward contains the institutions that define Hudson’s civic and economic life. It houses the historic United States Post Office, a hub for the entire county, and the Columbia County Courthouse and Court House Square, still one of the few places in the city that feels like a genuine agora. Its skyline is marked by Hudson’s great churches, Ukrainian, Catholic, and Presbyterian, each a monument to the city’s pluralism. It also hosts the Hudson Police Department and City Court. Indeed, most arrests, hearings, and county court appearances, for the lawful and the unlawful alike, pass through the First Ward. The 7th Street Park is for non-resident performative protest, Courthouse Square is for resident reflection and recreation.
Yes, other wards, and especially the 5th Ward, may find the 1st Ward “elitist, special, and superior”. But it is true, so why pretend.
The first ward is also Hudson’s dining and social heart. It is home to the restaurants that helped turn the city around: Farmer & Sons, Feast & Floret, and before them, the storied Fish & Game. Along the waterfront sits the Hudson Power Boat Club, one of Hudson’s most intriguing social bastions and a historic power center. It rests beside the Henry Hudson Riverfront Park, a civic jewel surrounded, and too often threatened, by cement trucks and career politicians.
On its western edge lies the waterfront, once imagined as Hudson’s crown jewel, a place where residents, tourists, and limited industry could coexist. Instead, years of poor management and a weak Planning Board have left it a swamp of lawsuits and squandered potential. Along its northern border runs Warren Street, the city’s commercial spine. Its merchants have kept Hudson solvent through every economic downturn, yet have been treated by City Hall as suspects rather than partners. And to the southeast stretch the Kaz site and the prison grounds, hidden but literally and figuratively fertile land. With imagination and discipline, they could become housing for families and a cornerstone of heritage-driven tourism, extending the civic axis that runs from the Hudson River to Olana and Thomas Cole’s home.
Then there is the Hudson Amtrak Station, one of the fastest-growing in New York State. It is the artery that keeps Hudson connected to the wider world and the reason it has survived so many economic winters. The First Ward is not just another neighborhood. It is the gateway to Columbia County and the key to growing Hudson’s economy, preserving its architectural riches, and building housing on solid ground, free from the floodplain.
Politically, the First Ward is where it all began. Long ago with the fur traders, quakers, whalers, proprietors, and industrialists. More recently it gave Hudson both its first Black mayor and its most infamous benefactor. It is where the Houses of Galvan stand, one the benefactor’s home, later the subject of a tax lawsuit, another now the mayor’s residence, at what appears to be a subsidized or favorable rate. It is where political insider Claire Cousin began her rise as an uncontested county supervisor and now a Fifth Ward council candidate without opposition. It is also where the proud Hudson Boys Club became the beleaguered Hudson Youth Center.
The First Ward is also where most of Hudson’s thinking and writing class resides: the editors of Hudson Common Sense, as well as the august Gossips of Rivertown. Even Malcolm Gladwell and other accomplished writers and thinkers call it home, though the wise ones dare not step into the mud pit that is City Hall. We would do well to make civic life welcoming again to the educated, not just to the professional protesters mass-produced at Kite’s Nest or the performative politicians who failed to launch.
At this moment, in this 2025 election, the First Ward decides whether Hudson will grow or drift for more electoral seasons. Most other wards had uncontested races, and every Working Families Party candidate lost. The result is a weak incoming council with little shared purpose. On every issue that matters to Hudson Common Sense readers, growth, transparency, fiscal discipline, and an end to performative resolutions, the First Ward will determine whether the city advances or stagnates. The first ward is already showing the greatest turnout in early voting according to the Columbia County Board of Elections.
For the past two years, the ward’s voice has been neutralized. Gary Purnhagen, its incumbent, often voted against his then-colleague Margaret Morris, effectively cancelling out the ward’s influence. Now that Morris will serve as Common Council President, her former seat must be filled, and Purnhagen replaced, if progress is to continue. Should Purnhagen win again, the council will resemble Washington, D.C., paralyzed by division, negotiating endlessly to accomplish little. If Purnhagen is replaced by a pragmatic, engaged First Ward representative, Morris will finally have the votes to drive the agenda she was elected by a two-to-one margin to achieve.
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First Ward Voter Momentum Early voting shows the First Ward leading the city in turnout. It should stay that way. The residents of the First Ward carry much of Hudson’s tax base, its history, and its promise. If the ward continues to lead in participation, its council members will have the legitimacy to speak up for reform and transparency. Call your neighbors and head to the polls. Your property value, peace of mind, and Hudson’s future as a progressive and pragmatic city are in your hands.
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Curious for more election coverage? Our must-reads below:
Election ‘25: 1st Ward Council Race Questionnaire
Election ‘25: The Common Sense Voter Guide
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Technical Note: Sharp-eyed readers will note that residents of the First Ward may vote for only two members of the Common Council, yet Hudson Common Sense endorses three. Quite right. Each passes our test of merit: fewer politics, greater efficiency, and equal treatment for all residents. We also enjoy the symmetry of backing a Democrat, a write-in, and a Republican. It proves the point that competence is not partisan.
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The incumbent. No response to the questionnaire [read: Common Sense’s questionnaire sent to all those in the 1st Ward Council Race] no new ideas, no tangible progress in two years. Purnhagen does not own a business; he is paid to promote business. Yet he has done nothing to promote Hudson’s. He supported rent control, undermining property values in the ward that funds much of the city. He collapses under pressure from noisy factions and has no discernible convictions. He is the worst of the Democrats, not the good, partisan without purpose, pliable without principle. The First Ward deserves an advocate, not an echo. Read more about how Purnhagen set out to work with defeated Common Council President Tom DePietro to create a “Midnight Charter Commission.”
A late entrant, but a serious one. Streitz can be fierce in her environmental convictions, particularly about the waterfront, but her record earns that stance. As a volunteer and citizen researcher, she has done more to illuminate city processes than many elected officials. She has shown more persistence and productivity as a private citizen than Gary Purnhagen has as a paid public servant. Imagine what she will do with a vote. She is also an excellent writer, and Hudson desperately needs leaders who can communicate clearly and publicly, not whisper behind closed doors. Transparency begins with writing, and Streitz excels at it.
Haddad is a triple threat to the mirage of Kamal Johnson and his HBR progressives. He is from here, and his family has done more for Hudson than most, through risk-taking, hard work, and service. He knows how the council works, and he is young enough to fight and care, yet old enough to recognize Hudson’s repeating patterns of dysfunction. Henry attended the local high school for some years and has lived in Hudson for more than 20 years, he now uses both his hands and his head to build housing in Hudson. He is what Kamal pretends to be but lacks the work ethic to become, an honest, hard-working housing provider.
If conservatives joke that America’s cities are being undone by progressive white women expanding bureaucracy and treating residents by double standards under DEI orthodoxy, then Henry Haddad is the antidote. He has backbone and brains. The council could use both.
Patti is a newcomer, but not untested. Her grasp of Hudson’s fiscal spiral is immediate, and her instincts are sound: fewer grants, more sponsorships, and a focus on local responsibility. Her direct experience with accessibility challenges and years of permanent caretaking for people in need give her a valuable and often missing perspective in Hudson politics. She knows what real service looks like.
Yes, she carries the scarlet letter R after her name, but context matters. She is a landlord who lives peacefully among neighbors who could populate a modern sitcom, progressive, artistic, and spanning the full LGBTQIA+ spectrum. They get along fine. Patti finds common ground through common sense and practical solutions. She is the sort of moderate Republican that used to populate small-town governments before politics became performance art.
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How They Communicate
(Link forthcoming: “How They Communicate: The Ward, the Words, and the Waterfront.”)
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The First Ward deserves strong, informed, and independent leadership. Gary Purnhagen has provided none. Donna Streitz, Henry Haddad, and Patti Ramoska, in their different ways, embody integrity, competence, and fiscal sobriety, the qualities Hudson most needs.
Hudson Common Sense endorses any combination of Streitz, Haddad, and Ramoska as the team to grow Hudson. They are serious, fair, and grounded in the facts.
Put the First Ward first to grow Hudson. Only then can Margaret Morris deliver on her mandate to fix what is broken and return City Hall to the business of governing, not performing politics.
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Last edited/updated:
November 1st, 2025
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Agreement is welcome. Disagreement is vital. Nuance is rare and therefore prized. Common Sense exists to sharpen arguments, not settle them. Submit your Guest Op-Ed HERE.
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