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Publication Date: June 23rd, 2025
Part 2 of 3 in our 2025 Primary Election Coverage
Dueling visions for Hudson look out from Worth Avenue…
Dueling visions for Hudson look out from Worth Avenue…
The main event is citywide: the battle for Common Council President. Hudson’s political wonks are focused on the 3rd and 4th Wards, the only contested Council seats. Today voters will decide whether to hand the gavel to Tom DePietro again or replace him with head of the legal committee and 1st Ward leader Margaret Morris. The outcome will determine not just who runs meetings, but who sets the agenda, and the tone, in the city’s legislative and deliberative body. Most important of all, the winner will control the City’s finances as the tie-breaking vote on the Board of Estimate and Apportionment (BEA).
The Democratic primary for Mayor is a different beast. It marks the first proper test of Mayor Kamal Johnson’s support since the pandemic began and he was elected shortly after a painful city-wide tax re-assessment. Even if he loses, he will still be on the November ballot as the Working Families Party nominee, facing Future Hudson’s Peter Spear and Republican Party & Harmony Party candidate Lloyd Koedding. But a poor showing tomorrow, even if he wins, would wound his legitimacy and energize rivals.
The stakes are unusually high for what is, technically, a primary, where only half of seats are contested.
🇺🇸 Official Where To Vote information:
https://elections.columbiacountyny.com/
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2425 eligible voters: - 398 voted so far
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Our editors and contributors attended nearly every public campaign event and came away with serious meta concerns. At almost every “meet the candidate” or “get out the vote” gathering, attendees had already made up their minds. We encountered only one undecided voter, a new resident at a Morris event, who left a convert.
That, perhaps, is the most telling result of this election cycle. Half of Hudson’s population remains disengaged and apathetic. The city’s opaque governance makes it difficult to understand how decisions are made, until the Planning Board floods your home (Mill Street) or you receive a baffling tax bill (Welcome Stranger Tax). The other half is fragmented, often along lines of race, localism, and perceived income. And some incumbents and power players with vested interest play up these divisions under the false pretense of nostalgic memories of better days that were actually worse, and non-inclusive and nativist notions of “community”.
The absence of a local Republican Party and the temporary implosion of the national Democratic Party, leaves many pragmatic, centrist voters politically homeless. Into this vacuum has stepped a growing network of professionally backed, ideologically driven groups like For the Many and the *Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition (Collective?)*. Their growing ideological influence, supported by external funding, threatens local accountability, nonpartisan public administration, and effective governance.
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With the Democratic primary approaching, the City of Hudson has become an unintentional gallery of campaign design, good and bad. Lawn signs cluster along intersections like post-parade debris, each one jostling for attention with assertive fonts and earnest slogans. Public park benches and fences now serve as miniature billboards, promising everything from transparency to transcendence. Some candidates clearly benefit from outside funding. Others signal fiscal responsibility; recycle, re-use!
Hudson Common Sense offers a visual survey, or is it a safari, of this year’s campaign aesthetics. Not to mock, but to assess. Design is not decoration. It reveals judgment, priorities, and a candidate’s sense of how persuasion works. It reveals who is in cahoots. And, as always in Hudson, the collection would not be complete without at least one quiet violation of campaign law, this year’s offender would technically be the winner of a Class A Misdemeanor, but this is New York State, we only prosecute American Presidents and mayors who get free upgrades on Turkish Airlines.