A reader wrote in to A Little Beacon Blog asking for details about voting in Tuesday’s primary, but there was no primary election for Beacon, as per the Dutchess County Board of Elections.

There has not been a primary in Beacon for City Councilmembers since at least June 2019, when Dan Aymar-Blair and Kelly Ellenwood ran for the spot as Democrats. Kelly lost but went on to run on the Independent line, but Dan won the general election. This year, Dan left his seat as Councilmember and successfully ran for Dutchess County Comptroller, and was replaced by George Mansfield, who came out of retirement with Mayor Lee’s appointment.

The Mayor and City Council ran unopposed last election. The Beacon Democrats usually put up one person they have selected for each Ward. There may not be an active Republican Party group in Beacon.

In 2023, Lastar Gorton tried to run for Ward 1 as a Democrat, but experienced this issue with a postmark problem that ALBB reported on and you can listen to and read here. At that time, all Councilmembers were running unopposed, as was Mayor Lee Kyriacou. Days before the election, Rueben Simmons, longtime employee of the Highway Department and one time Superintendent of that department, entered the Mayoral race as a write-in candidate, and earned 16% of the vote (usually the write-in line gets 1%).

This year, Lastar is the presented Democratic candidate to replace the current ward representative, Molly Rhodes, who is moving on to run for Dutchess County Legislature District 18. Lastar is running to improve livability in Beacon. “My moment of decision came because there were a lot of issues happening in my apartment complex (Tompkins Terrace) and I felt that the management company was doing nothing about it. Friends and neighbors encouraged me to join City Council to see if there was anything that could be done to help with the issues there, even though it is privately owned.”

Carolyn Bennett Glauda is running for Ward 4 (replacing George Mansfield), Sergei Krasikov is running for Ward 3 (replacing Pam Weatherbee), and Zack Smith is running for Ward 2 (replacing Jeff Domanski).