Election results: Dead heat in Woodbury; Team Monroe blasts off into oblivion
Prepare for trouble, and make it double: The Woodbury mayoral race comes down to a coin flip; Joel Stern’s pal is re-elected to the Blooming Grove town board — and more.
Pictured above: As a child of the ’90s, the concept of “Team Monroe” being like the criminal syndicate known as “Team Rocket” in the old Pokémon cartoon was too funny to pass up. From left to right, that’s Tony Cardone, Dorey Ghoul… sorry — Dorey Houle, Yvette Rosario and Steven Thau “blasting off” after seeing the 2025 election results.
Yesterday, Nov. 4, 2025, “Team Monroe” was defeated by Supervisor-elect Maureen Richardson and fellow Preserve Monroe candidates Beth Stephens, Luis Rivera and Audra Schwartz. Whether or not “Team Monroe” knew it was aping the name of two adored bisexual drag artists, and their Pokémon, is something only the person who came up with the Team Monroe name would know.
Maureen Richardson defeated Tony Cardone, 2,475 to 1,868 (55%–41%). I’m sure Jean Straus at The Photo‑News is already standing on a desk and loudly demanding they spin this by saying Maureen “narrowly” defeated their boy Tony. Look out for a Photo‑News headline this weekend that will probably say something like, “Dear Leader Prepares For Extended Maui Vacation.”
Beth Stephens and Luis Rivera defeated Steven Thau and Dorey Houle, 2,520 and 2,464 to 1,803 and 1,802 (29% and 28% to 20%), respectively.
This is now the second consecutive town-board race that Steven Thau has lost, and the third consecutive electoral campaign Dorey Houle has lost.
If we’re lucky, both of them will take the hint and never run for office again. But, going back to our Team Rocket analogy, the bad guys keep coming back — episode after episode after episode.
We pray to Hashem that it’s the last time Dorey Houle is ever on any ballot.
Just in case it is the last time Dorey Houle is on a ballot, here is her TV advertisement for her state Senate campaign, in which Houle papered over her lack of experience or qualifications for the job by using racist dog whistles.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Dorey.
Now, before we move on from Monroe, I have something important to share: there is a Town Board meeting TOMORROW (Thursday) at 7 p.m. The agenda, as usual, has not been made available to the public as of this writing. We do know the public hearing concerning the sheriff’s contract will continue at this meeting.
Between now and January, Houle, Scancarello and Cardone could still do substantial damage to taxpayers.
And as a reminder: We are stuck with the Walking Phallus, Sal Scancarello until next November.
(Unless he resigns. I, personally, think he’s going to resign because the woman he physically assaulted is now his boss; and at the last Town Board meeting held on Oct. 20, he refused to apologize to her for that incident.
Councilman Scancarello also refused to apologize to the Jewish community for his son Anthony’s actions in threatening to murder two Haredi men at the Monroe Target. That appears to have been done to get views for Anthony’s TikTok account. When Monroe residents raised concerns, the TikTok account was deleted, but Mr. Scancarello offered no apology to them. At the Oct. 20 meeting, Mr. Scancarello again refused to apologize to the Jewish community.
So, it’s incumbent on all of us to show up for this public hearing and demand that the contract with the ICE-friendly Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Town of Monroe be shelved until the new administration takes office.
It’s also important to demand that all financial documents and administrative records from the Cardone era be preserved. Because you better believe that as of 9 a.m. this morning, Tony Cardone is firing up a big ol’ paper shredder to hide any potential evidence of alleged malfeasance before there’s an opportunity to properly investigate him and turn that information over to the attorney general.
I know it’s a Thursday night and short notice, but if you can be there, I encourage you to come out. Even if only to tell people like former NYS Trooper Rub Furbeck that the “props” he was calling out on Facebook have voted, and those “props” want the village police department to protect the people of Monroe, not the MAGA-funded sheriff’s department.
(And as always, when we say “MAGA” at the Monroe Gazette, we don’t mean “people who voted for Donald Trump.” We are specifically referring to the 30% of Americans who would carry out another insurrection if he asked them to.)
State & New York City Election Results
1. Prop 1, which the Monroe Gazette covered here, passed 51% to 48%. It seemed there was a lot of confusion about Prop 1, with people not understanding that ORDA (the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority) had already been using the land in question. Some thought Prop 1 was “giving” new land that had been designated forever-wild to ORDA, which was not the case. ORDA and previous owners had used those roughly 300 acres for nearly 100 years. The measure formalized that use in exchange for adding 2,500 acres of new forever-wild land to the Adirondack Park.
A big problem is that we have a shrinking media ecosystem, so coverage of Prop 1 was limited, which I believe contributed to the confusion that we were losing forever-wild land that hadn’t already been altered for nearly a century.
There was also confusion over whether land designated forever-wild can remain so within the Adirondack Park. If you read the Monroe Gazette’s coverage of Prop 1, you’d know this situation in Lake Placid is a temporary arrangement with ORDA and others. ORDA is forbidden from building or altering the land beyond using existing ski trails; if they stop using the trails, the land would revert to forever-wild status. The New York State Constitution guarantees that forever-wild land within the Adirondack Park must remain forever wild.
Now if only we can get that kind of protection elsewhere in the state…
2. I have a lot to say about the New York City mayoral race, but I’ll save that for another time because this article is already long and I’m trying to cut down the length of these things.
What I will tell you is this: in my desk drawer I have a prayer card. I never met him; he’s the brother of someone I thought I’d marry. Things didn’t work out between me and her — my fault — and that’s fine. But every morning before I start work I look at the card and think about the 1.1 million people (that we know of) who died during the pandemic. I think about the refrigerator trucks parked outside Columbia‑Presbyterian, filled with bodies. I think about the man my sister‑in‑law witnessed enter the hospital where she worked, sign his name, then fall over dead. I think about the nearly 300,000 Americans who might have lived if former President Trump, Fox News and others had urged people to take the virus seriously and get vaccinated. I think about all the pandemic deaths we’ll never know about because some states undercounted or stopped tracking them.
I also think about the nursing home deaths associated with Andrew Cuomo’s policy decisions and the subsequent efforts to minimize those numbers.
I view Andrew Cuomo the same way I view Tom Lapolla and other anti‑vax figures: dangerous actors who should be prevented from holding positions that allow them to harm others through negligence or misinformation.
So, if you’re asking whether I’m glad Andrew Cuomo lost, the answer is a loud yes. The fact that this man ran a campaign, in part based on promises to be a good administrator in the face of an emergency in New York City, is a slap in the face to every person who was indirectly killed during the pandemic by his decisions.
We owe our first responders and frontline workers — not to mention the 17–43 million Americans suffering from long COVID — more than we ever gave them.
Orange County Results: Sussman, Joseph, May, and Powell
Disappointingly, both Orange County executive candidate Michael Sussman and District Attorney candidate Alan Joseph lost their races decisively. The latter result is bad news for people seeking justice in South Blooming Grove. David M. Hoovler has been aware of criminal activity in the village since the beginning of Joel Stern’s and Isaac Ekstein’s tenure and has done nothing about it.
For those living in Orange County Sewer District 1, Neuhaus’s re-election means that, while the county brags about having a surplus, you could be stuck with up to a $1,200 bill each year for the next 30 years to pay for an upgraded — and eventually new — sewage treatment plant that primarily benefits South Blooming Grove, Palm Tree and Woodbury Common. The latter is owned by a multibillion‑dollar corporation that last year executed a $2 billion stock buyback. Neuhaus’s county attorney, Rick Golden, has refused to demand that Woodbury Common reinvest some of the money it used to artificially inflate its share price back into its host community. Instead, Steve Neuhaus and others are likely to place the cost on every OCSD‑1 resident while claiming they’re lowering your taxes.
Nationally, we saw a blue wave, fueled by the majority of Americans who dislike what they see from the Trump regime. So if there were ever a year when a Democrat could beat a Republican for county executive in a county where Democrats far outnumber registered Republicans, you would think this would be it, right?
Well…
No.
Who’s to blame here?
Don’t blame Palm Tree.
Orange County has about 411,000 residents; a large share are of voting age given the county’s median age of 36.9. For argument’s sake, assume about 205,500 potential voters in the county.
Three thousand eight hundred twenty‑six votes for Neuhaus came from the Town of Palm Tree/Village of Kiryas Joel. In Blooming Grove’s Ward 4 (South Blooming Grove), Neuhaus carried an additional 293 votes.
If you subtract the KJ votes, that still leaves about 201,381 potential voters. Even subtracting the three Satmar‑majority districts in Woodbury, that’s roughly 200,381 potential voters beyond “the bloc vote.”
So please do not single out our Haredi brothers and sisters.
First, it’s inaccurate to assume all Haredi voters cast the same ballot.
Second, while some Satmar voters may follow leadership’s guidance in places where turnout is monitored — such as Palm Tree — consider the totals:
Neuhaus: 43,555 votes
Sussman: 28,855 votes
That’s 72,410 votes cast for those two candidates, meaning about 127,971 potential voters in Orange County did not vote.
Two other close races: Maria May vs. Peter Tuohy for the new 10th Legislative District — Tuohy won by 137 votes (2,167 to 2,030). Tuohy has been accused of mishandling a poisonous‑gas concern at a Monroe playground and of shielding Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein at OCSD‑1 meetings over their responsibility for causing it; he also reportedly shrugged and said he “wouldn’t be around to deal with it” when Monroe residents started to get their new sewer bills.
Stephanie Powell lost to Michael Essig in the new 5th Legislative District by 94 votes (1,801 to 1,895).
Blame Zak Constantine
The math suggests that if Orange County Democratic Chair Zak Constantine had not feuded with Alan Joseph, followed his alleged booty call’s request to interfere with Councilwoman Richardson’s race, or half‑ass his support for Michael Sussman because he preferred someone else to run against Neuhaus, all of these races would likely have had very different results. (And as we saw, Supervisor-elect Richardson did not need the help or support of the Orange County Democrats to win. I sure hope aspiring Democrats looking ahead to 2026 reach out to her for notes.)
In a year of a blue wave, in a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 19,000 registered voters, you would not expect election results in which your candidates lost narrowly in races such as Blake, Scott, Hunter, May and Powell, or were defeated decisively in contests like Best, Post, Leahy, Sussman and Joseph. It indicates a lack of leadership and organizational capacity within the Orange County Democratic Party to implement and follow through on the ground game needed to win for all candidates — not just those favored by State Sen. James G. Skoufis like Matthew Fascaldi.
You can see this in how people voted across the county for Michael Sussman. Voters in Monroe, for example, supported Councilwoman Richardson but did not vote for Sussman in most districts. The same was true in Woodbury, where in nearly every district, regardless of mayoral choice, voters selected Neuhaus for county executive instead of Michael Sussman.
In a functional organization, Constantine would be relieved of his duties. But since many Orange County Democrats resemble their Monroe and Woodbury committee counterparts — acting on the direction of State Sen. James G. Skoufis — that is unlikely to happen.
Instead, Mr. Constantine will give his precious a bogus award to make him feel better from suffering from Little Dick Energy; and about to be sued in nine business days by your second favorite local news reporter.
Pictured above: Orange County Legislator Genesis Ramos (right), Zak Constantine (left), chairman of the Orange County Democratic Committee, presents an award to State Sen. James G. Skoufis (center) as “Elected Leader of the Year.”
Think about this for a second. Mr. Skoufis received this award during a year when…
-He said little to nothing about I.C.E. rounding up our latino brothers and sisters.
-He said little to nothing about passing the New York Health act in a year where millions of residents across New York were told they would lose their health insurance.
-He said little to nothing about passing the New York Privacy Act in a year where Elon Musk and his weird groyper friends stole everyone’s data, and the government announces it’ll be accessing everyone it want’s cell phone data using foreign spyware. (Yes. Really.)
-Tried to force through an anti-protestor mask ban as part of this year’s New York State budget in the same year where America saw two of its largest national days of protest in its history (Hands Off and No Kings.) Adding insult to injury, Skoufis attends the Warwick Hands Off rally, despite the fact that he was actively making it harder for those people to protest.
-Spent at least $100,000 running to be chair of the national Democratic Committee.
-Spends $19,600 on supporting a Far-Right, bigoted, MAGA candidate in order to help move along a real estate deal for his donors.
-Taken tens of thousands in corporate contributions
-And has still not attended a single meeting in South Blooming Grove, despite a multi million dollar water infrastructure emergency and three (and counting) stolen elections.
Despite all that, Mr. Zak Constantine gave his booty call an award. If that doesn’t perfectly personify why these candidates lost last night, nothing will.
But wait. That’s not the only dumb thing Zak Constantine did …
Simon Schwartz Wins, But Joel Stern Didn’t
Here’s a fun fact: if Zak Constantine and the Orange County Democrats wanted to demonstrate that they stand up to corruption, they could have done so easily.
How?
Over in Blooming Grove’s Ward 4 was Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove associate, Simon Schwartz. We’ve written about Schwartz previously and reported on conflicts of interest tied to his roles on the South Blooming Grove planning board and the Blooming Grove town board.
As you know, the South Blooming Grove planning board has been engaged in what can generously be described as “potential illegal activity.”
If you’re Satmar, the odds are good you’re angry at South Blooming Grove because the planning board and Joel Stern have allegedly been giving permits and approvals only to projects associated with Avrum Bur Jakobowitz (also reported as Avrohom Ber Jakobovitch). Mr. Jakobowitz, as we’ve reported, is connected to Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove. That organization had its IRS tax‑exempt status revoked in 2022 for failing to file required financial disclosures; it has continued to solicit donations, according to public records
There is also reported to be a feud between Jakobowtiz and Yusfa Landa, that’s resulted in Landa’s permits also being denied. This action,taken by Simon Schwartz on the planning board and Joel Stern as “Village Executive”, led to the situation in South Blooming Grove right now.
You know, the one where a blatantly illegal election was held in order to keep Joel Stern in power. All because Landa and others, such as the Mahara sect, who were experiencing the same discrimination, wanted to run Stern out of town.
I asked Joel Stern at the Monday, Nov. 3, 2025, South Blooming Grove Board of Trustees meeting whether he had “squashed the beef” between Mr. Landa and Mr. Jakobowitz. He did not answer.
I asked him if he held the election because Mr. Landa and others were preparing to overthrow him. He didn’t answer.
I also asked Mr. Stern if he would comment on the allegations that the people he summoned to vote during the illegal election were all his businesses associates. None of whom were aware that they were even voting until they arrived at Village Hall that day. (Note: The Monroe Gazette has put in a FOIL request for the security camera footage from Village Hall during the alleged election.)
Mr. Stern only said to The Monroe Gazette, that if you get a South Blooming Grove mailing address and pay taxes, he’ll answer our questions.
Pictured Above: Mr. Joel Stern smiled until The Monroe Gazette reporters began asking him questions. Then he, Mr. Ugell and George Kalaj went into an office and did not return while we waited on the Village Hall porch to continue speaking with him.
If you did not see the Village of South Blooming Grove meeting this week, which includes some of our questions concerning the election, you can, and should, watch it here:
Had Mr. Zak Constantine put literally any effort into South Blooming Grove, I have no doubt he could have scurried up more than 272 votes. The total number of votes Mr. Schwartz received. Assuming those votes were collected and counted legitimately. During the 2024 General Election, Joel Stern was accused of bringing people into his Rapid Care office (across the way from Village Hall in what is now a Blooming Realty office) and filling out ballots on behalf of members of the community. These allegations were brought to the attention of the Orange County Board of Elections. David M. Hoovler, the now re-elected District Attorney. Mr Hoovler was aware of previous allegations of voter fraud by Stern and Ekstein. Guess who did nothing?
So, if I was Orange County’s Board of Elections? I’d look real hard at Schwartz’s votes this year.
Now, there WAS a form of protest against Mr. Schwartz and Joel Stern. 49 write-in votes, some alleged to have been under the name “Dov Perl,” a fake name, to demonstrate the anger in the community at Joel Stern. But had there been any sort of effort here, Mr. Joel Stern would have been handed an electoral defeat just days after he literally stole South Blooming Grove’s municipal election.
That could have been a powerful message sent by the Orange County Democrats: We will not put up with this kind of MAGA-level corruption in our backyard.
But they let everyone down instead.
Next year in 2026, we’re going to have the most consequential election cycle in our nation’s history. Given all this, does it sound to you like Zak Constantine is the man for the job in Orange County? I sure as hell don’t think so.
This is a good-news, bad-news situation for Woodbury
The good news is that, barring any drastic changes due to absentee and affidavit ballots, the We the People of Woodbury candidates all won: incumbent Mayor Andrew Giacomazza, Tara Burek and Kwijibo on the village side; and, on the town side, new Supervisor Jacqueline Hernandez alongside Vernick Alvarez and Martha Lopez. Vernick, by the way, was not endorsed by State Sen. James G. Skoufis, who instead supported the losing candidates: David Yoffee on the town side, and Brandon Calore, Matthew and Rhonda Fabbro, and James Freiband on the village side. As of this writing, Brandon Calore, James Freiband and Rhonda Fabbro’s Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats has not reported its campaign contributions, meaning they are still in the middle of breaking New York state election law.
Town Clerk Nicole Young and Town Tax Assessor Karin Poggio were also re-elected.
So, all around, it was a bad night for State Sen. James G. Skoufis in the towns of Monroe and Woodbury.
My only requests of the candidates taking over the town board are that they pass a resolution authorizing the town supervisor and town attorney to write a letter to the New York state comptroller to investigate the finances of the Woodbury Public Library — since the library refuses to cooperate with FOIL requests concerning its finances — undo the illegal FOIL policy the town entered into with the library (so the Monroe Gazette doesn’t have to sue the town of Woodbury) — and pass a resolution asking the town supervisor and town attorney to request that Dr. Betty A. Rosa, commissioner of the New York State Department of Education, investigate the numerous instances of abuse and harassment by Woodbury Public Library Board President Cathy Schmidt, since the library board has refused to do so despite overwhelming factual evidence of wrongdoing.
If they can do that, I very much look forward to never having to write about another Woodbury town board meeting for the rest of my life. (I’m half-kidding. I still cover the news. But it would be nice to cover it without the psychotic drama that’s been the Luciani-Calore regime.)
For the Woodbury village board candidates: if they can publicly commit to getting the ethics board operational and fully empowered to investigate and act — something that would have removed Freiband and Fabbro sooner — that they will conduct their business in public (which Kwijibo alluded may mot have always been the case last time), and that they’ll commit to serving their full terms, I, too, look forward to never having to think about another Woodbury village board meeting unless there’s news to report, like the ACE Farm situation. (Note: Kwijibo has a history of threatening to quit boards he’s been elected to, so I want to hear him publicly commit to serving his whole term before I turn my attention elsewhere.)
This is all great news. The candidates backed by the wealthy real estate developers all lost.
Here’s the bad news.
The Mayoral race came down to 8 votes.
Yes. 8.
9 people decided to be funny and write-in someone other than Calore and Giacomazza for mayor. Those 9 people could have helped avert a recount. They did not.
So, the Woodbury mayoral race is not quite over. First, the absentee and affidavit ballots need to be counted. With an 8 vote difference, they will absolutely decide who the next mayor is.
Second, because of the slim margin of victory, there’s already going to be a recount.
Now, if it were me on the ballot, I’d be getting ready to challenge ballots filed in Country Crossing, WP3 and Highland Lake Estates. We can’t rule out that “Yeshiva Boys” were used to vote, because Mordechai Kellner of the United Jewish Community of Woodbury is buddies with Isaac Ekstein — and since Ekstein has been alleged to use “Yeshiva Boys” to vote on behalf of people who aren’t even aware they are voting in South Blooming Grove— it’s very possible that the same tactic was used in these neighborhoods. Remember, too, that South Blooming Grove’s village attorney, Scott Ugell, also donated to Calore’s campaign, and Calore works for CIOFFI, which is the company Joel Stern was alleged to have used to clear a road through Gonzaga Park without permission. Wayne Corts, who may have contributed to Calore’s campaign, shares an attorney with Joel Stern’s friends at RSBM Excavating and RSBM Management, the company also being sued by Orange County over the illegal road clearing in Gonzaga Park. There is a lot of overlap between South Blooming Grove and Brandon Calore, so it’s fair to question the tactics Calore used to get votes given what happened in South Blooming Grove with Stern and Ekstein allegedly stealing an election. Also recall that the FBI says their investigation into allegations of voter fraud which Ekstein was at the center at, also remains open.
But that’s just me. I can’t tell you what Mayor Giacomazza will do, because — unlike Skoufis, Cathy Schmidt and the Woodbury Democrats like to insist — I don’t work for him.
The margins of victory across Woodbury were all incredibly slim. The We the People of Woodbury candidates on the town side should be fine, but you’ll have to keep your fingers crossed for another week or so. We spoke with the Orange County Board of Elections, which said it will take a few weeks to sort everything out in Woodbury and then certify the results. Nothing is final until the votes are certified.
Last but not least …
Tara Burek scored 1,564 votes. Kwijibo (CJ Graziano) scored 1,526 votes, making them the winners of the two seats on the Village Board. Replacing the schmucks (Mother and Son Fabbro, James Freiband) who unseated them nearly two years ago.
The schmucks received 1,421 votes (James Freiband) and 1,411 votes (Rhonda Fabbro and Matthew Fabbro.)
This is also a pretty slim margin. It shouldn’t change, but again, nothing is final until the votes are certified.
I’m going to have more to say about this situation in Woodbury in a future post. For now, I just want to share the following:
Everyone in Woodbury is hopefully taking a well deserved break, but I gotta tell you something:
The good news is that this was the last “off year” election. So going forward, more people will be voting. (Pending any legal shenanigans.)
The bad news is, all of the Woodbury races were tight. And people don’t understand that the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats is basically an evil enterprise working on behalf of real estate developers like Wayne Corts.
If I was a betting man, I bet you see Freiband and The Fabbros again, running against Susan Ciriello and Mrs. Motolla next year because of how close it was.
With both men, and one mom, assuming that people will just vote Democrat because they’re angry at Trump and want to take back Congress in 2026.
That means, if I was a civically minded Woodbury resident, I’d start preparing to educate my friends and neighbors who did not vote, and work to register those who aren’t.
Otherwise, you’re going to see those schmucks — or whatever other villainous pokemon Mr. Skoufis is carrying around in his probably blue right now pokeballs — on your Village Board.
That is a future nobody wants.