2024 Election: Hinchey, Barrett win; Pulver edges out challenger

Campaign signs adorned yards across Dutchess County, like this collection outside NBT Bank on Main Street in Millerton.

Photo by John Coston

2024 Election: Hinchey, Barrett win; Pulver edges out challenger

Town Board races close; Library support propositions pass

MILLERTON — Democratic incumbents State Senator Michelle Hinchey and Assemblymember Didi Barrett won reelection on Tuesday, Nov. 5., according to unofficial results of the Dutchess County Board of Elections.

State Sen. Hinchey, D-41, outpaced Republican challenger Patrick Sheehan with 55% of the vote compared to Sheehan’s 44%. Assemblymember Barrett, D-106, defeated Republican challenger Stephan Krakower by 54% to 45%.

Dutchess County Comptroller A. Gregg Pulver, a Republican, edged out Democrat Dan Aymar-Blair in the race for County Comptroller with 50.1% of the vote, compared to Aymar-Blair’s 49.78%, or a difference of 475 votes.

Municipal elections were held in North East, Amenia, Millbrook and Stanford.

In North East, Republican Christopher L. Mayville, a current Town Board member, defeated Democrat Rachele Grieco Cole by a margin of 53% to 47%. The election was for an unexpired term on the Board.

In Amenia, Nicole Ahearn, a Republican, defeated Charlie Miller, a Democrat challenging her for her seat. Ahearn had 54.5% of the vote, compared to Miller's 44.6%

In Millbrook, Peter Doro was elected Mayor with 95% of the vote in an uncontested race. In a race for two seats as Millbrook Village Trustees, Democrat Julia Bucklin received 27% of the vote and Republican Elizabeth Molella Socci won 24.95%. Democrat Shannon Mawson trailed with 24.75%. Republican Kay Vanderlyn Ulrich won 23% of the vote.

In Stanford, Adrienne Zetterberg, a Republican, won election for an unexpired term on the Town Board by 50% to 49%, defeating Democrat Theodore Eagleson Secor.

Amenia voters also approved a proposal on the ballot to increase the town’s contribution to the operating budget of the Amenia Free Library by a 60% to 40% margin.

Similarly, voters in North East voted 72% to 28% to increase the level of support for the NorthEast-Millerton Libary in Millerton.

A third proposition, which was before voters in the Town of Washington to increase the contribution of the town to the Millbrook Library, also passed by a 56% to 44% vote.

A New York State proposal, called Prop One, also passed by a 57% to 43% margin in Dutchess County. The proposal protects against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex.

All results are unofficial.

Latest News

Revisiting ‘The Killing Fields’ with Sam Waterston

Sam Waterston

Jennifer Almquist

On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.

The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.

Keep ReadingShow less
The art of place: maps by Scott Reinhard

Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).

obin Roraback

Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.

Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Love letters from Goshen

The marquee at Goshen Players for “A Goodnight Kiss.”

Cinzi Lavin

"A Goodnight Kiss,” premiering June 6 at Goshen Players Playhouse, is a dramatization of real Civil War-era love letters. Written by award-winning playwright Cinzi Lavin and directed by regional theater veteran Kathleen Kelly — both Litchfield County residents — it serves to reminds us that while wars are waged by nations, it is the people who live through them, their lives forever changed.

At the center of “A Goodnight Kiss” is the relationship between Sarah Jane “Jennie” Wadhams, a college student in New Britain, and Sergeant Major Frederick Lucas, a young soldier stationed in Alexandria. Lavin discovered the story of the letters by the couple in a 2002 book by Ernest B. Barker called “Fred and Jennie: A Civil War Story.” Lavin, who holds a certificate in applied history from the University of London and has performed at the White House, read all 90 letters the couple exchanged between 1863 and 1867. “It was like falling into another time,” she recalled. “You hear the dialect, the moral concerns, the humor. Jennie once said someone ‘must think she’s some pumpkins.’ I had to keep that.”

Keep ReadingShow less