GOP Kingpin

Casale Resigns

Chairmanship

With Oberacker, Burns, Getman

In Place, My Job Done, He Says

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www. AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – Saying his work is done, Vince Casale of Cooperstown is stepping down as chairman of the Otsego County Republican Committee, he confirmed this evening.

Committee chairman since 2015, Casale has recommended Lori Lehenbauer of Worcester, the GOP county elections commissioner, as his successor.

In the past year, he’s been focused on ensuring two key retirements – those of state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, and state Supreme Court Judge Michael V. Coccoma, Cooperstown – would result in those positions remaining in Republican hands.

“My work is done,” he said in an interview this evening.  “It’s time for a change.”

State Sen.-elect Peter Oberacker’s Nov. 3 election to succeed Seward, and county Judge Brian Burns’ Aug. 11 selection by a Sixth District Judicial Convention in Binghamton to succeed Coccoma, ensured those two top jobs would remain in Republican hands.

And in Otsego County ones:  Oberacker was a county board representative from Schenevus; Burns, an Oneonta resident.

Casale also assured consensus support for  Oneonta attorney Michael Getman’s smooth elevation to succeed Burns as county judge.

The outgoing chairman said he proposed Lehenbauer as his successor because her expertise as elections commission is particularly important, given the tight deadlines resulting from the Cuomo Administration moving the state’s primary from September to June.

Potentially, though, there are other players.  For instance, Seward’s chief of staff, Duncan Davie, formerly the longtime Oneonta town supervisor, might now be available, given the senator’s retirement.

Clark Oliver, the 20-something county rep from the City of Oneonta, being elevated to Democratic chairman, may cause the GOP to look for a more youthful successor to Casale, (who is only in his 40s): perhaps Bobby Walker, formerly of Fly Creek, president of the statewide College Republicans.

Casale also operates The Casale Group, a Cooperstown-based political consultancy, with his wife, Lynn Krogh, which had been retained by such high-profile campaigns as Mark Molinaro’s run for government in 2019.

A Herkimer native and Ithaca College graduate, now living in Fly Creek, Vince is the son of Tony Casale, the former assemblyman who now lives Cooperstown.