The ’24 elections in New York were causing a lot of anxiety for the Democratic governor. With a presidential race at the top of the ticket, there was concern about how Democratic candidates would fare in the down-ballot contests in the state.
We are not talking about Kathy Hochul’s worries about some congressional elections in the suburbs this November that could determine control of the House, one of the reasons she recklessly and illegally is trying to delay congestion pricing.
No, we are referring to the 1924 elections, with Gov. Al Smith running for reelection in Albany and trying to stave off a Republican landslide led by wildly popular President Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge would trounce Democrat John W. Davis for the White House by a margin of 2-1 nationally and in New York, and the entire Democrat statewide ticket but for Smith went down to defeat.
Losing were the other six statewide elected officials, all Democratic incumbents. Goodbye to the lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state comptroller, state treasurer, state attorney general, and state engineer and surveyor, who all had won for the first time in 1922.
It was the final election for secretary of state, state treasurer and state engineer and surveyor, as the next year, in 1925, the voters would approve an amendment to the state Constitution to abolish those jobs as being elected. In this final contest, incumbent Democrat state Engineer and Surveyor Dwight B. La Du would be ousted by GOP challenger Roy G. Finch for the job that paid $8,000 and which the Constitution required to be “a practical engineer.”
Finch would be New York’s last elected state engineer and surveyor, a post that began after the Revolution as surveyor general in 1781 and was first held by Philip Schuyler, father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton.
The engineer’s position was moved to the state Department of Public Works and later to the state Department of Transportation. The current state’s chief engineer is Stephanie Winkelhake, who has a salary of $180,000.
Winkelhake is the representative of New York State on all the federal documents necessary for congestion pricing. And Hochul is trying to block Winkelhake and her boss, DOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, from signing the final piece of paper to green light the tolls. The call is not up to Hochul or Winkelhake or Dominguez. State law mandates the tolls. The form must be signed.
Even if Winkelhake was elected like her predecessors a century ago, the decision is not hers. Unless it is repealed by the Legislature, congestion pricing must happen on June 30.
