Eight days until Election Day; if you haven’t voted yet, what are you waiting for? High turnout was everywhere this past Saturday — the first day of early voting in New York State — with lines out the door reported at both the Guilderland Public library and at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church. High volume was also witnessed at both the Albany County Board of Elections and at various Schenectady polling locations. According to NBC News, as of this writing, 373,207 New Yorkers have already cast their ballot, and about 200k of those votes were cast in the past 48 hours. While more than 6 in 10 of those early votes have been cast by registered Democrats, there is still much work to be done, as only about 3% of registered New Yorkers have cast a ballot thus far. We have links to the early voting times and locations in nine Capital Region counties posted on our website and, if you are registered to vote in Albany County specifically, you can early vote at any of the eight locations listed below. New York’s early voting period runs through this coming Sunday, November 1. So get your butt to the polls, there are no excuses anymore.
Albany County early voting times and locations, through Sunday, November 1, 2026
While we are on the subject of Election Day, it looks like our friends in Saratoga, Washington and Warren Counties have a sock puppet to deal with in the race for Assembly District 113. Assembly Member Carrie Woerner is looking to defend her seat against a robust challenge from Republican Allen Caruso but, as has been reported by both the Times Union and NYS Focus, a third candidate, Thomas Kenny, has secured both the Working Families Party line and the independent “No Kings” ballot line. Now, before you conclude that Kenny sounds like our kinda guy, you should probably know that the Working Families Party has disavowed Kenny and alleges that he is actually a Republican plant who is affiliated with the Caruso campaign. As for his No Kings line, our friends in Indivisible ADK/Saratoga have pointed out that No Kings is a movement, not a political party, and Kenny has never been a part of the work of Indivisible ADK/Saratoga. So Thomas Kenny looks to us to be just another Republican dirty trick to try and draw votes away from Woerner; when you have nothing to persuade people to vote for you, you do the next best thing, you trick them into not voting for your opponent. Somewhere in Brunswick, Steve McLaughlin is smiling.
Capital Confidential has 15 State Senate races to watch on Election Day as Democrats look to restore their supermajority. Among them are two Capital District races; the Jim Tedisco/Sarah Rogerson race in SD-44 and the Jake Ashby/Devin Lander race in SD-43.
The New York Times has data on early voting and is showing the early vote turnout up 10%+ in Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and North Carolina.
If you are as addicted to polling data in the lead up to Election Day as we are, we recommend FiftyPlusOne. If you’re a Republican, however, you may wish to just look away.
Need Election Day inspiration and more proof that the right-wing and their tech oligarch friends can be defeated by people power? Try Serbia and Brazil.
The Greater Capital Region Coalition is building a rapid response phone tree in case something goes sideways on Election Day or in the days that follow. Sign up to be turned out on a moment’s notice.
Oh Albany
The City of Albany’s ongoing budget debacle took a particularly embarrassing turn this past week. As we mentioned last episode, the Albany Common Council was set to consider a Resolution this past week to request that the State Legislature authorize the City to impose a “commuter tax” on non-City residents who commute to Albany to work at Albany Med, St. Peter’s Hospital, Albany Law School, the University at Albany, all branches of State Government and countless private businesses in the City. Despite vociferous criticism from labor unions like CSEA and PEF, despite opposition from Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs, despite vehement condemnation from newspaper editorial boards, and despite public statements from state officials — including local Assembly Members Gabriella Romero, John McDonald and Angelo Santabarbara, State Senator Patricia Fahy and Governor Hochul herself — which made it perfectly clear that the commuter tax proposal had a less than zero percent chance of ultimately being enacted, the Common Council was undaunted. Not only did the Council still consider the Resolution and devote nearly 45 minutes of Council time to what 10th Ward Member Owusu Anane praised as an “outside of the box idea,” the Resolution actually passed (!) with 9 of the 14 members present — John Williamson (1st Ward), Derek Johnson (2nd), Arthur Lumpkin (3rd), Lormenzo Jones (4th), Mark Robinson (5th), Sergio Adams (7th), Anane, Alfredo Balarin (11th), and Tom Hoey (15th) — voting in favor. Now, to be clear, the commuter tax is still not going to happen, notwithstanding the Council’s Resolution, so what the Council effectively did here was waste taxpayer time on a performative exercise. Given the condition of the City’s finances, we find it disappointing that the Common Council has spent so much time and energy on an unserious proposal which has no chance of coming to fruition and which, in the salient words of 6th Ward Member Deirdre Brodie, did little more than “piss off the entirety of the rest of the Capital District.”
Brodie, who was one of only two Council Members to affirmatively vote against the commuter-tax Resolution, has, in our view, actually distinguished herself throughout this budget crisis. Brodie is a member of the Council’s Finance Committee and her post-meeting Facebook reels are informative and suggest that the Applyrs Administration is being less than straightforward with the Council and is relying on, shall we say, aspirational revenue projections to fix the City’s budgetary hole. We appreciate Brodie’s willingness to tell it like it is, even when what it is is really, really dire.
As Around Albany has pointed out, much of Albany’s current budget quagmire is owing to decisions made by Corning and Rockefeller more than a half-century ago and is rooted in the disproportionate share of City property that is exempt from property tax. So, ultimately, we believe that the solution to the City’s budget shortfall will lie in a reimagining of the State’s relationship with its Capital City, not in punishing the working class who flow into the City every day for work.
Cartoon by Dennis Goris
The Week in Flock
As expected, the Troy City Council unanimously overrode Mayor Carmella Mantello’s veto of Troy’s ALPR-regulating Local Law #3. So, Flock surveillance cameras remain on Collar City streets, tracking every movement of Trojans as they go about their days, but the Troy police can only access Flock’s data for 72 hours. Flock still has that data forever, of course. The next episode in the Troy Flock saga will be in the courtroom of Acting State Supreme Court Judge Noel Mendez, who gets to decide whether Mantello’s April state of emergency declaration was illegal and whether Troy’s renewal of its contract with Flock should be voided. Meanwhile, Flock has retained the local law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King and has moved to have the City Council’s lawsuit dismissed as against Flock because the Council’s lawyer failed to properly serve the surveillance company, among other reasons. This messy affair isn’t ending anytime soon; meanwhile, the Flocks keep clicking away.
The Flocks won’t be clicking down River in Kingston, however. This past Thursday, Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger issued an Executive Order banning the use of Flock and other AI-assisted surveillance technology. While the Executive Order does not apply to the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Juan Figueroa nonetheless supports the legislation and recently ended that Department’s pilot ALPR program with Axon.
Milwaukee County Executive — and Wisconsin Democratic Gubernatorial nominee — David Crowley is removing all 42 of the Flock cameras from County parks. The surveillance cameras have already been wrapped in plastic until Flock retrieves them.
NBC News has the story of Flock’s proliferation and how, in community after community, Flock got installed without any input from residents or their elected representatives.
The estimable Benn Jordan has produced Flock Fever, a one-hour YouTube video recounting his two-year journey as one of the faces of the anti-Flock movement. It’s also essentially a year in review for the DeFlock movement and its place as one of the biggest and most enduring stories of 2026.
Odds & Ends
Vanity Fair has published an excerpt from the forthcoming book by investigative reporter Matthew Cole, Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. For those of you who can’t get behind the Condé Nast paywall, Nick Muller’s animation will give you the gist of this tale of rampant corruption by Trump’s son-in-law. The story has a little bit of everything; Russian double agents, billion-dollar slush funds, Arab tyrants, Netanyahu and the Dutch intelligence services.
The crime syndicate known as the Trump Regime is strongarming California; either California allows Elon Musk’s Space X to resume its launch activities in the State and permits a Trump donor to move forward with offshore drilling near Santa Barbara, or else the feds will strip California of the right to regulate its own coastline. Nice coastline you got there, be a shame if something happened to it…
Corruption is everywhere in Trumpland. A Venezuelan billionaire needed a pardon for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation, When his $3.5 million donation to a Trump super PAC didn’t do the trick, he funneled $50 million to former Trump lawyer Alina Habba. Presto, pardon granted.
The New Republic confirms what we’ve always suspected; The White House was involved in the FBI’s Epstein files cover-up all along.
Republican Senate candidates — including Maine’s Susan Collins and Mike Rogers in Michigan — are reaping in millions of dollars in campaign donations from from the ICE detention center industry.
The tech oligarchs must be stopped. Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey have launched “Warhound,” a plan to genetically engineer war dogs for the U.S. military and law enforcement and equip them Anduril gear.
Speaking of tech oligarchs and corruption, the Washington Post has reporting on the individual donors who have thus far contributed more than $325 million to an account singularly controlled by Trump, ostensibly to fund the construction of his precious ballroom. Naturally, the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies — Apple, Nvidia, Altria, Comcast, Meta, Amazon, etc. — and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to push Governor Hochul to sign the Responsible Data Center Development Act. Meanwhile, some enterprising data center operators and trying to woo children to their cause with school field trips to their facilities. Finally, a crowd of Capital Region residents met with experts this past Monday to hear more about the potential impacts of the Kenwood Commons data center proposed for Albany’s South End.