Triennial Misogyny Report

We have a misogyny problem in local government (and everywhere)

You know me, I like to dig a hole to bury the lede and fill the hole back up with extraneous information to the point you wonder what the hell the point was in the first place. Here we go. Again.

Years ago I pontificated that at the point opinion columnists start writing about their own column they have run out of stuff to say. Far be it from me to contradict myself.

A friend called me up one recent morning. We had been going back and forth on a topic over email. He opined that it is more efficient to have an argument by phone. I didn’t really consider it an argument, tho technically that’s what it was. But argument seems harsh. I thought of it more as me explaining why he was wrong. In a friendly way.

Anyway, the news about this column, this newsletter, is that I have taken on a sometime paid research assistant, a ghost researcher. I could get into an argument with younger me but it isn’t that I’ve run out of things to say, it’s that I really don’t have the time to write, much less do all the research to undergird my opinions. So today I introduce the first of what I hope are many more newsletters that benefit from actual outside fact determination.

Someday I might bring in a copy editor! Won’t that be great!

For now, let me introduce the first product of my new ghost researcher relationship, a table of the numbers of women currently in elected or appointed office in Warren County and its various municipalities.

Table of elected and appointed women in office 2026. Table does not include town or county clerks, or deputy supervisor position in Queensbury.

Roughly 3 years ago I prepared a similar table for a newsletter I wrote at the time. You can read that here:

There are some important notes about this information. First, the table does not include the elected offices of town or county clerks, highway superintendents, library boards, county treasurer, or coroner.

The list does include alternates on various boards not included in my 2023 version. It is also more comprehensive in adding positions in the Village of Lake George.

The list does not include the appointed deputy supervisor position in the town of Queensbury currently held by Jean Lapper. If I included that position Queensbury’s numbers would look a little better.

With all those caveats in mind, things don’t look good for equality of treatment for women in Warren County with the exception of the Town of Hague.

And good for you Hague!

What we know is that women make up 51% of the overall population. That number varies slightly by community but not much, maybe a few tenths of a percent depending on the region - except in unusual circumstances. You should also understand that in our Supervisor form of government each town elects a supervisor who also serves on the county board. It is a weird system that I don’t believe adequately conforms to various laws including the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. In fairness, it looks like the Supreme Court is trying their darnedest to eliminate the 14th Amendment so my gripe may be moot soon. But not today, (Satan).

My reasoning about the 14th Amendment is that Queensbury has about 45% of county population, and Glens Falls with another 11 or 12% (don’t quote that number, I’m working from memory on that one, but it’s something like that) doesn’t have an elected supervisor at all. The supposed “fix” is that Queensbury gets 4 additional elected county supervisors and Glens Falls gets 5.

If you’re doing the math here, there are 11 towns in the county (village of Lake George is a subset of the Town of Lake George) so there are 11 elected Town Supervisors, plus the additional 9 county supervisors from Queensbury and Glens Falls there are 20. Queensbury and Glens Falls account for roughly 2/3 of the population of the county but they only have 50% of the representatives on the County Board of Supervisors (BOS). In order to meet equal protection clause necessities there is a weighted vote system that gives lip service to equal representation. It’s a bogus argument but not one I’m going to email back and forth about. Please don’t call me on that.

The other weird thing about the supervisor form of government is that town supervisors get elected to a position at the town which pays them. But (bonus) they also get the separate job of County Supervisor with the extra paycheck that is the only check elected County Supervisors (4 from Queensbury and 5 from Glens Falls) get. In fact, only the 9 County Supervisors are directly elected to the BOS. It is unlawful to run for 2 offices and serve in both offices, but it is legal to run for one office and get 2? That seems really weird. And by weird I mean legally questionable. But it’s gone through the courts and they’ve found it legal. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder about our court system.

Of the 11 town supervisors only 1 (the Thurman supervisor) is a woman. 1 of 11 is a small number.

Of the county supervisors 2 Glens Falls Supervisors are women. 2 of 9 is still a small number, but not as small.

I know there are people out there, many of them, who will say “wait a minute, Mike, just because women aren’t getting elected to office in roughly equal numbers to men doesn’t mean that women aren’t treated equally in society. Don’t jump straight to misogyny.”

Well, I am not at all sorry to disagree. When the statistics, year after year, decade after decade, show that a class of people united by gender are consistently underrepresented in elected office the word for that is misogyny. Or more correctly institutional and cultural misogyny. Pervasive misogyny.

Do not argue with me. I will not take your call.

If you want to prove me wrong: go out and vote for women. When more women are elected more women will feel that the hold of misogyny on our culture is losing its grip. More talented and competent women will feel emboldened to compete on a level playing field to represent all the people.

And if you know smart, skilled, talented women who you think would be great representatives for all the people let them know. Maybe we’ll see them on a ballot next year.

[Correction, 5/28/26. Johnsburg planning board has 1 woman of 5 members, not 0. That means Johnsburg has 36% rate of women in service and the full county number of women on planning boards is 25 of 74.]