The man who would be chairman
Ten years ago, no one thought Spencer McLaughlin had a chance to grab Orange County's top
job. Now that it's within his reach, he can't have it.
Story By Brendan Scott
The oak door behind the dais swings open. Eleven exhausted Republicans file into the dim,
yellow chambers of the Orange County Legislature in Goshen. Among them is Spencer
McLaughlin, his feet in a slow shuffle, his dark jacket swinging from his thin shoulders.
Since beginning his fight with cancer 18 months ago, the 61-year-old lawmaker has divided
his weeks into up days and down days. This is clearly a down day.
Over 16 years, McLaughlin has risen from political curiosity to heir apparent, a renegade
poised to seize the county's second-most powerful position: Legislature chairman. But, in
an unprecedented political struggle that captivated the Government Center for weeks this
winter, he watched that dream - and nearly everything else - crumble.
Members of his own party turned against him. His old rival, the influential Hasidic
community of Kiryas Joel, rose up to thwart his ascension. Even his body betrayed him,
forcing him to face mortality at what was supposed to be his greatest hour.
McLaughlin flashes a tired smile as Republican lawmakers enter the chamber and join
Democrats to select a chairman. He musters a dose of literary flare, the same flare that
has so often set him apart from the other legislators.
"Well, I was chairman for about a minute," he says. "It's like 'Camelot.' 'Once there was
a spot for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.'"
A DECADE AGO, it would have been inconceivable to envision McLaughlin as a contender for
the job that sets the Legislature's agenda and controls its leadership posts. From the
start, he was a misfit among the assemblage of teachers, salesmen and lawyers.
McLaughlin had dropped out of law school. He had nearly been expelled from his Catholic
university for publishing a literary magazine with a crucifix made of dead Vietnamese
babies on the cover.
He had, at various times, been registered as a Conservative, Liberal and Democrat. He had
even held a high-level political appointment on the Human Rights Commission in
Democrat-dominated New York City.
Once elected to the Legislature as a Republican in 1989, McLaughlin was no more
predictable. He became known as much for his impish wit - he once wore a Santa suit, beard
and all, through an entire meeting - as for the highfalutin' orations that betrayed his
master's degree in 17th-century English literature.
He took no issue more seriously than the environment. It was a concern forged while
watching development overtake his hometown of Monroe. But it was an outlook that often put
him at odds with the county's pro-growth leadership.
Throughout the 1990s, McLaughlin cast numerous protest votes against Republican pet
projects, like the county's ill-fated garbage dump expansion and the massive project known
as the "water loop," a mammoth pipeline that would have brought water to many communities.
He often launched seemingly foolhardy clashes with Kiryas Joel, whose leaders can, and
often do, direct thousands of votes for or against local politicians.
His fellow Republicans came to view him with a mixture of respect, amusement and
frustration. After one protest vote, then-Chairman Albert Favoino dubbed McLaughlin a
"Caucus of One." A member of the business community later had the phrase stenciled onto a
T-shirt for him.
"There have been plenty of times that Spencer and I have disagreed with each other," says
Legislator Alan Seidman, who joined the Legislature in the same year as McLaughlin. "His
independence through the years shows he's got the backbone to do what's right."
However, McLaughlin's votes and sometimes-biblical rhetoric also established him as Public
Enemy No. 1 to Kiryas Joel. It was a role he gladly embraced in the summer of 2004, as he
set about to block the Hasidic village's now-infamous pipeline plan.
The village's proposal was bold: First, build a 13-mile pipeline to tap the New York City
aqueduct. Draw millions of gallons of water each day to quench KJ's thirst. Then, annex
enough land to house its booming populace for the foreseeable future.
Kiryas Joel saw the pipeline as a matter of life and death. McLaughlin, on the other hand,
saw a manifestation of his greatest fear: an engine to advance unbridled growth.
"I will throw any monkey wrench I can into this," he declared, adding later in a letter to
the editor: "If the aqueduct spur gets built - a pipeline delivering an endless supply of
water to Kiryas Joel - the conflagration will begin anew, consuming our region to feed
Goliath."
When the pipeline battle began, McLaughlin was no longer just an anomaly of the Republican
caucus.
He was one of the Legislature's longest-serving members and chairman of its far-reaching
Rules Committee. So, when his friend, Seidman, announced plans to step down from the
chairman's post at the end of his term, McLaughlin seemed like the natural successor.
With his influence growing, McLaughlin and a few like-minded lawmakers led the Legislature
toward a once-unthinkable act of defiance. Over cries of anti-Semitism from Kiryas Joel
and its sole representative on the Legislature, Republican Michael Amo, lawmakers
condemned the pipeline plan.
Then, a new threat emerged in McLaughlin's life: throat cancer.
This new foe would prove formidable. Weeks of radiation therapy left McLaughlin frail. He
lost 40 pounds. He lost his strength. He lost his voice at the moment he needed it most.
Fortunately, McLaughlin's cancer was among the most curable. The disease left his voice
gritty and low. But he was back in time to join fellow legislators in voting to sue Kiryas
Joel that fall.
McLaughlin underestimated the contempt he had inspired among Kiryas Joel's leaders. They
would never let him rise to the pinnacle of Orange County politics.
He had also underestimated the cancer.
Late in 2004, McLaughlin began to complain of nagging heartburn. Doctors expected to find
an overactive gallbladder. Instead, they found a pea-sized mass nested in a web of vital
ducts and arteries. This time it was pancreatic cancer.
While medicine has found new ways to treat the disease, doctors told McLaughlin cases like
his are 85 percent fatal in the first year.
He immediately started weekly cancer treatments in Manhattan. After almost a year, the
tumor actually shrunk.
With his health holding, McLaughlin easily won a fifth term in November. He prepared to
run for chairman. But the November elections had ominous results for Republicans. The
party lost two seats and it saw its majority in the Legislature sink to a historic
one-seat low.
With the party balance so close, every legislator was a power broker.
Days after the elections, another Republican stepped up to challenge McLaughlin for the
chairmanship.
Frank Fornario was a maverick in McLaughlin's model. He, too, had led the pipeline fight.
The village's legislator, Amo, declared he would never support McLaughlin for chairman,
and threw his vote behind Fornario, leaving the Republicans hopelessly deadlocked.
"It was really a payback," says Ward Brower III, a dissident Republican from Monroe and
longtime supporter of McLaughlin's. "Most politicians would run away from (Kiryas Joel).
He didn't. And he paid the price."
In the midst of the scramble for chairman, McLaughlin tripped while carrying some logs to
his fireplace. He bruised his belly. Within a few days, a tennis ball-sized clot had
formed. The doctors feared the cancer had metastasized.
"They said, 'Goodbye,' basically," McLaughlin recalls.
It was just a scare, but the experience took its toll. By the time the Legislature
gathered to select a chairman Jan. 5, McLaughlin seemed almost ghostly.
Despite weeks of politicking, little had been resolved.
Fornario was still in the race. Amo was still refusing to support McLaughlin. With at
least two Democrats in his corner, McLaughlin figured he had the 11 votes needed to become
chairman. Republicans retreated to the privacy of a committee room to hash out the final vote.
As tensions rose in that closed-door caucus, McLaughlin realized the price of his dream.
Winning Camelot would leave the kingdom divided.
Fornario and Amo might be ostracized, or worse, switch parties and leave the Republicans
in shambles. Democrats would demand their own leadership posts, which they might then use
to take over the agenda.
McLaughlin withdrew his name from the chairman's race.
He chose the greater good, even though the disease inside him meant he would probably not
get another chance at his dream.
"I second-guess it every day," McLaughlin says. "It breaks my heart. It really does. I
miss it even though I never had it."
Stricken with cancer, weakened by politics, McLaughlin shuffled onto the Legislature floor
and cast his vote to make another man chairman.
The victory went to William Lahey of New Windsor.
Thus fell Camelot.
Brendan Scott is a reporter for the Times Herald-Record. Reach him at
[email protected].
