Vote Row C? Are you kidding me?!

Denise Hogan, who got the six petition signatures she needed to run on Tom Golisano's Independence Party line in Nyack's mayoral election on Nov. 3, has endorsed—perhaps inadvertently—the entire Independence Party slate, which includes C. Scott Vanderhoef for County Executive, Paul G. Whalen for Orangetown Supervisor, and Denis Troy and Thomas F. Diviny, for Orangetown Council. Vanderhoef &Co. are also running on the Republican line.

On her Web site, Hogan encourages voters to "Vote Row C - Independence Party," a clear indicator of a line vote. I think it is unfortunate, considering that Thom Kleiner, Suzanne Barclay, Dan Salmon, Marie Manning and other good Democrats are on Row A. Also, the Independence Party is also running a candidate for Village Trustee, Maureen M. Dougher, against Jen Laird-White and Doug Foster.

I'm going to assume the "Vote Row C" on Hogan's Web site is a mistake and I hope Hogan takes it down and clearly informs Nyack, Orangetown, and Rockland voters that she is not endorsing the candidacies of Vanderhoef, Whalen, Diviny, Troy, and Dougher and make it clear who she is endorsing.

This comes at a most unfortunate time for Hogan, as Vanderhoef's slime patrol, The Madden Communications & Marketing, teamed up with Troy, Whalen, and Diviny to misrepresent an innocuous workforce housing plan. They robocalled constituents and insisted that it was instead, "affordable housing." This triggered belligerence at a Town Board meeting where "tea party" types showed up and displayed crude anti-semitic and racially-charged rhetoric. The whole event as staged by Troy et. al as a Karl Rove-style political dirty trick to embarrass Kleiner and the Democratic Orangetown Council members.

I, for one, would not be caught dead with my name on a political slate with the likes of Vanderhoef, Diviny, Troy, and Whalen. I encourage Hogan to publicly denounce them.