Donal's Dog Whistle to his "Gang of Hate"

Chatham's Town Supervisor uses his surrogates, common-law wife, and tribal politics to intimidate and bully. He is no friend to farmers, democracy or truth.

EDITORIAL

Reporting on Chatham has been an education, mostly heartening. But underneath it runs something genuinely ugly: a campaign of intimidation by Mr. Collins’s surrogates, a bush-league Trumpism with no place in civil society. It isn’t smart. It isn’t democratic. It’s schoolyard bullying dressed up as civic engagement, and in a town where everyone’s car is recognizable in everyone else’s driveway, it doesn’t just coarsen the discourse. It poisons it. Mr. Collins doesn’t get to stand at a polite distance from this. These are his friends. This is his echo chamber. It was built in his name, it operates for his benefit, and his silence isn’t neutrality. It’s endorsement.

Chatham is, journalistically speaking, a news desert with charming views. The Columbia Paper rarely covers local government. The Register Star and Times Union, rarer still. Local TV, practically never. So where do people get their information? The Chatham Community Facebook page, where 18,000-plus people gather like v…