Winn credits volunteers, hard work

September 23, 2009 | The Granville Sentinel

By Matthew Rice

Granville native and former Washington County District Attorney Robert Winn credits a little help from his friends for an unexpected victory in the Republican primary for the position Sept. 15.

"It was a really encouraging outcome for us," Winn said.  Although the results would not be official until the roughly 190 absentee ballots were counted, Winn said he was assured the win.

Winn's opponent, Kevin Kortright, the incumbent district attorney and his former second in command, trailed by more votes than were absentee ballots.

Winn said he expected to maintain his edge in the count barring a statistically unlikely feat of ballots all breaking for his opponent.

"Particularly because we did some campaigning with absentee ballot people," Winn said.

"Right now I'm ahead 53 percent to 47 percent," Winn said Friday.

As soon as he knew there would be a primary, Winn said, he went to work.

"What we did was after the committee endorsed Kortright - we had a lot of support among the committee people, but this is politics obviously, so a few people can control a committee vote and the county endorsement meeting," Winn said.

When the meeting did not go his way, Winn said, he contacted political adviser Michael Klein from Fort Ann who had worked on the campaigns of Stan Pritzker and Kelly McKeighan to start to develop a strategy for how to approach the primary election.  Having run a primary before, Winn said, he knew he had to target likely voters in the Republican primary.

"One thing that I didn't anticipate - I've run three contested elections in this county - and I received more unsolicited volunteer support in this race then I have ever received for this race even when I had the party endorsement.  I had people calling me from Easton, Greenwich, Cambridge... all over the county helping me with this campaign," Winn said.

Winn said that while party members weren't authorized to help him due to party rules they gave him "off-the-record advice" while the campaign was taking place.  "So I could not get any committee people - well I could have - but I didn't ask anyone to break that rule," he said.  So with no committee members circulating petitions or able to put out yard signs supporting Winn he relied on volunteers.

"A lot of young people helped us on the campaign," Winn said, including his nephew Paul.  A number of people with national experience helped the campaign, including Kelly Eustis who helped with the Web site; local college student Joe Frandino, who had worked on Howard Dean's blog, gave Winn some help as well as law student Mary Ellen Stockwell, Ron Daigle Jr., and Chris Bernstein.

Winn said he thought a number of things factored into Kortright taking the party committee's endorsement other than his being incumbent.  The endorsement meeting was not well attended and many vote by proxy, he said.

Winn said he saw examples of this when during the primary he ran strong in towns such as Salem and Fort Edward,  but received little or no support from those towns towards the party endorsement.