Run, Patty, run ... or maybe not
The big news in the north country recently is that Price Chopper is buying several of the stores that Tops had bought from P&C. That means Canton shoppers won't have to leave town to buy an avocado and lots of people will keep their jobs in the revamped grocery stores. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20100305/NEWS05/303059946/-1/news
But the bigger news may be that St. Lawrence County Clerk Patty Ritchie hasn't issued a press release about this development. Mrs. Ritchie for the last several months has become the queen of press releases about things not normally associated with the duties of a county clerk.
I'd have to go back and check my deleted e-mails to get an exact number of these releases, but I think an accurate guesstimate would put the tally at about 7,000 or so since November. We were considering adding megahoozies to our computer storage thingies at the Times just to handle the flow of e-mails coming out of her office.
She has chimed in about the scheduled closing of the Ogdensburg prison. She's against it. She's chirped up about the proposed increase in fees for getting a passport. She's against it. She sent one out about the state possibly using snowmobiler fees to get the budget more in balance. She's against it. I haven't read all her missives, but I would guess she has problems with corn syrup, Toyotas and the newest American Idol judge as well. Things you don't usually hear county clerks beefing about.
The point is, after 10 years of quietly doing her job and only sending out the rare press release about things her office was actually doing, Mrs. Ritchie suddenly started using the information superhighway like it was an Amtrak train on Free Ride Day.
Pretty much everyone took that to mean she had her sights set on bigger things than filing property deeds or making sure people looked inhuman on their passport photos. Pretty much everyone took that to mean that the popular Republican clerk was running for a bigger office and gunning for state Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine's seat.
But her odd silence about the good news that Gouverneur, Massena, Canton, Potsdam and West Carthage are trading up to Price Chopper stores might be a sign that pretty much everyone was wrong. Maybe she was telling the truth when she said a few weeks ago that she hadn't decided whether to make a run at Mr. Aubertine. Maybe now she has decided that running for Senate takes far too much typing and requires her to have opinions on way too many things.
That's the only reasonable conclusion I can come up with. The Price Chopper issue is too big of a deal to ignore if your goal is to live in Albany. She could have put out a press release saying how nice it was that the jobs were staying here. Then she could have followed that up with one saying that she wished, though, that Price Chopper was a union shop that would guarantee all the same people would be working those jobs. Then she could have followed up with one explaining that her last release was not meant to imply that she was pro-union or thinking about becoming a Democrat.
Back when she was running but undecided about running, these kinds of press releases would have been flying out of her office at a furious pace. I am pretty convinced she's no longer undecided. She must have given up all thoughts of leaving her comfortable post in St. Lawrence County. Let me be the first to applaud her for such a wise decision.
Mrs. Ritchie has done a lot of positive things in her role as county clerk. She started a program to register cars from outside the area and bring in big bucks to St. Lawrence County's Department of Motor Vehicles. She's opened DMV satellite bureaus. She led the successful charge to stop the state from forcing people to buy ugly new license plates. She's made it uncharacteristically pleasant to have your driver's license renewed.
People love her here. We have since first electing her in 1999. But that would change dramatically if she moved to Albany. State lawmakers are POLITICIANS by trade. County clerks are politicians by definition. People generally like to beat up on POLITICIANS. Mrs. Ritchie is too nice to take such a beating.
I'll be sure to tell her that when I see her at the Price Chopper. And that I miss her e-mails.
