BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY NOV. 27, 2019) — Thanksgiving dawns tomorrow, and THE PLANET gives thanks for a Havana boatload of blessings — for loved ones, family, friends, and foes who don’t know they are friends and perhaps never will. Our thanks include gratitude for our readers, who have made THE PLANET the area’s #1 site for news and commentary by producing the most accurate, truthful accounts of local, regional, national, and international happenings — especially local.

They love us, they hate us; it’s all good because controversy becomes coin of the realm when slinging a provocateur’s alphabet like a master builder, millions of words published in a professional lifetime that’s still flying Mach III. The point isn’t what readers or audiences think but that they think, and the verdict’s in: No one get more brain cells in overdrive than We Truly. Which reminds us to extend blessings to the bizarre, dysfunctional politics of the city of Pittsfield, a city that keeps getting in its own way and tripping over the hassock.

Where else to do you see plow jockeys out in force pushing H2O? The city blades plowed and salted water at double-time-and-a-half. No word of the cost, but rumor has it the city has already topped the winter budget by $2.5 million, also known as 3M — the Mayor’s Monopoly Money. Nothing to see at the Department of Public Works, though, a department whose poster girl still is Madame Corruption, a distant-but-disinherited cousin of Lady Willpower.

Where but Pittsfield else could you see the Hatfield and McCoys, Blue and Grey, Montagues and Capulets, Masterpiece Theater and 90-Day Fiancee gathering to break not bread but ballots? THE PLANET refers, of course, to Linda Tyer and Melissa Mazzeo “kumbaya-ing” Monday at city halitosis. One wants to continue as mayor. The other wants to be mayor despite the election being more than two weeks cold. Typically, the last living cells in the clammy body politick, Election Day version, get laid to rest the day after. It follows a respectful graveside service in which all candidates pretend graciousness and feign a sisterly spirit whose soul is made from the dripping spikes of an Iron Maiden. The bloody corpse then gets laid in the vaulted chambers, not to be seen again. Ashes-to-ashes, chad-to-chad, and all the rest of it. Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski walk away grieved, with The Suits once again telling them that they are dust and unto dust they shall return.

This year, however, the corpse didn’t die as expected, and on Monday in city council chambers — that sarcophagus usually containing more “living dead” than a zombie fest — the exhumation began. After the day-long tally shook off the worms and vermin, the mayor picked up two additional votes, bringing her official (we might call it “technical”) win over Mazzeo to 531. THE PLANET had Prof. Fingleheimer crush the numbers. Do you realize that if Pittsfield kept recounting, after the 2,829th re-tally ballot minders would declare that not one person had voted for Mazzeo and that Tyer won every vote cast, “fair and square,” save the write-ins for Dan Valenti. Final tally: Linda Tyer 11,842, Melissa Mazzeo 0. What a city!

As you know from THE PLANET‘s exclusive coverage, Team Mazzeo expected this. They took the recount to preserve their legal options.

After the Monday Madness, Tyer called the process “nonsense.”

“I don’t have any preliminary thoughts about it,” she said, “because I can’t possibly anticipate what those legal actions will be. But I can tell you that I and my team and my campaign will vigorously defend this election as far as it relates to our work, and I know that the city solicitor will work to represent the city clerk’s office and the city of Pittsfield.”

Mazzeo mouthpiece Andrew Hochberg said the recount produced several “irregularities.” Attorney Hochberg said several ballot boxes were not locked and sealed in violation of the law. Lack of seals on multiple boxes could easily affect hundreds of votes. Also, transfer bags that move ballots from polling station to city hall were missing tags and numbers, again, leaving open the possibility of abuse. He also noted the presence of what Mazzeo called “an [unauthorized] individual closely related to the Tyer campaign” being in the allegedly-secure ballot area in the Registrar of Voters office. Sources identified that person as the mayor’s husband, Barry Clairmont. We had earlier asked Clairmont about a specific incident in which sources quoted assistant Registrar of Voters Heather Gregory-Brazeau saying she saw him in the registrar’s office after hours, when she was working late one night. Clairmont told THE PLANET that this particular incident “NEVER” (his caps) happened and that he would take a lie detector test to prove it. The Mazzeo camp says they have eyewitness testimony to the contrary.

Hochberg wouldn’t discuss these anomalies except to say if the challenge goes to court, they would be fully explored, exposed, and exploded.

All this may not allow your turkey to go down easier, but it provides tasty stuffing.

Have a great day tomorrow, brothers and sisters.

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“If somebody got a broken nose, that means they didn’t duck fast enough” — Leo Gorcey

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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