After a thorough investigation by the New York State Police into Saratoga Springs Democratic Chair Pat Tuz’s charge that Republican Public Safety candidate Tracey LaBelle forged signatures on her petitions, the result is in. Tuz’s charges were unfounded. Every one of the people whose petition signatures Tuz claimed were forgeries confirmed to the police that they had signed the document.
Tuz claimed some signatures were fraudulent because some of the people who signed LaBelle’s petitions did so using block letters. These same individuals wrote their name in cursive rather than block letters when they registered to vote. As city Democratic chair, Ms. Tuz has to know that mistakenly using block letters on petitions is a common error and does not necessarily constitute forgery.
Ms. Tuz’s accusation produced embarrassing headlines for LaBelle, and Tuz made a series of harsh comments to the press telling the Gazette that there was “clear evidence” of forgeries on the petitions.
There was a time when people who carelessly hurt others would apologize. Some still do, but Ms. Tuz is apparently not one of those.
Did Pat Tuz Ignore Attempts by the New York State Police to Contact Her?
The police report exonerating Tracey Labelle also documented that the State Police had repeatedly tried to contact Tuz without success.
It is troubling that Pat Tuz did not respond to numerous messages left by the New York State Police asking her to contact them regarding her complaint. I emailed Tuz asking her for an explanation.
Although she has not responded to my emails in the past, this time she sent me this curious reply:
Hi John:
I do admit to having a phone that I often forget to put the ringer on, in which case I don’t hear the call and even miss a voicemail. However, when people want to get a hold of me they usually do.
Thanks!
Pat Tuz
I wrote back to Ms. Tuz asking why she thought the State Police were then never able to get hold of her in spite of leaving numerous messages for her.
Ms. Tuz replied:
As discussed, they may have called, and I am very sorry if I missed the call, but, they have a lot to do, with many things going at once, as I do.
Police Report
Saratoga Springs Politics 
She also owes several residents apologies for taking pictures of their homes and political signs on their own property and carrying on like a crazed woman for their choice of candidates. Tell me that not unnerving!! This woman definitely needs an intervention!
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Seems like a waste of taxpayers’ money, having a highly paid State Police Investigator spend a lot of his time on this political nonsense.
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What I find odd and annoying, especially as Henry 37 notes, given the time and expense that went into this investigation, is that Tuz made this complaint after the election was over and LaBelle had lost. We usually see these kinds of frivolous complaints being leveled before election day to try to damage the candidate. Why would Tuz bother to try to smear LaBelle when she was no longer a political threat particularly since Tuz is apparently so busy that she can’t check her messages and return calls from the State Police?
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What an idiot. They, the police, weren’t too busy to take the report. And now, she “has many things to do” and can’t return a call.
Moron alert.
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It pains me to say this as a democrat, but the city’s local committee continues to be an embarrassment.
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So not only is there a lack of leadership on the council, but clearly in this democratic party as a whole. Ms Tutz thought there was enough merit in this case to bring it forward to the police and the press, but didn’t have the integrity to see it through. Only in the world of politics can a leader (and I use that term loosely) of an organization think ‘I had my ringer off’ is a sufficient answer. What a waste of tax payers dollars. Ms LaBelle is owed an apology. We can do better then this and we must!
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Granted that the charge of “forgery” was frivolous, the fact remains that “signing” a petition in block letters violates the election rules. Whoever circulated those petitions should have been instructed as such and insisted on a proper signature that matched the one on the voter’s registration.
What should have happened is that those names should have been struck from the petitions during the time allotted to challenge them. Instead of involving the state police, it should have been up to the county Board of Elections to investigate or invalidate them in the first place.
While Ms. Tuz is guilty of malicious hysteria, there’s an argument to be made that the candidate’s campaign manager and the Board of Elections were also guilty of negligence in the way that signatures were collected and verified.
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All good points, Mr. Levy, but the Board of Elections in this case cannot be blamed as they do not review petitions for errors unless a challenge is lodged. Signatures can be challenged when petitions are filed, and this is usually done by political opponents to try to invalidate enough signatures to throw the petitions out and keep the candidates they are running against from getting whatever line on the ballot they are seeking. I suspect there weren’t enough questionable signatures to achieve that goal, so the Dems didn’t bother to go through the process you described at that point to challenge LaBelle’s petitions. This makes it even more curious that Ms. Tuz decided to go forward with this challenge not only after it was way too late to do this through the simpler Board of Elections process but even after the election was over and LaBelle had lost. There was no possible political objective to achieve at this point to aide Montagnino, the successful Democratic candidate. One is left with a head scratching moment especially given that Ms. Tuz is too busy to even check her phone messages.
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