Ithaca City Hall, Green Street
On November 16, the long-delayed results of the election for the four-year Common Council seat from the Fourth Ward was announced with Patrick Kuehl ‘24 winning over Jorge DeFendini ’22, by a vote of 49 to 40. DeFendini campaigned assuming that he was running unopposed, and Kuehl conducted a secretive write-in campaign to unseat the incumbent DeFendini.
Since the margin of victory is less than 20 votes, the outcome is subject to an automatic manual recount.
Ithaca’s Fourth Ward covers Collegetown and West Campus, so it has an overwhelming student population. In 2021, DeFendini won with a total of 70 votes running against Alejandro Santana, an independent, who had 30 votes. Since taking office, DeFendini focused on several social issues instead of addressing his constituent’s concerns. Historically, Common Council members worked to make sure that potholes were filled and streets were plowed, but instead, DeFendini participated in protests against Starbucks that were held on campus seeking a Cornell boycott of the sale of Starbucks-brand coffee.
DeFendini became active in the “Make Cornell Pay” Coalition which sought to have the Common Council reject an agreement negotiated between President Pollack and Ithaca Mayor Lewis to increase the voluntary payment that Cornell makes each year to the City of Ithaca. The Common Council, with DeFendini’s agreement, negotiated and ratified labor agreements with each union representing city workers. With those pay increases in place, Ithaca then tried to negotiate a large increase in Cornell’s voluntary payment. However, because Ithaca must adopt a balanced budget by the end of the year, the Common Council had painted itself into a corner.
DeFendini then led a September 18 protest march down Ho Plaza that ended in an illegal sit-in blocking traffic on College Ave in front of Sheldon Court. After all of that, on October 11, DeFendini voted to ratify the Pollack-Lewis agreement, explaining that Cornell had all of the leverage.
Apparently, DeFendini took his voters for granted and misjudged their interests. Instead of working with a political party that would elect officials at the city, county, state and national levels, he invested his time in forming a Solidarity Slate. In effect, he competed with other activists to see who could take the most extreme left position on the issues. He campaigned to help the other Solidarity Slate members instead of obtaining votes for his own re-election, assuming that he was running unopposed.
His lack of an announced opponent did not stop DeFendini from soliciting and accepting campaign donations. In the 11 days before the November 7 election, DeFendini received $2,877.
However, the low voter turnout in the Fourth Ward made a write-in campaign by an opponent possible, so Kuehl conducted a write-in campaign for DeFendini’s seat. Apparently, the Fourth Ward voters were more concerned with having snow removed from their streets and potholes filled than from having DeFendini blocking traffic with his sit-in. Voters have also been concerned with how Ithaca enforces its noise ordinance to curtail Collegetown parties as well as the high costs imposed on homeowners (including landlords and fraternities) by the Ithaca Green New Deal.
Since the polls closed, DeFendini has shifted to a public relations campaign attacking Kuehl, although such a campaign cannot affect the outcome of the vote. Nine far-left organizations published a joint letter to the editor in the Sun on November 10, attacking Kuehl’s write-in campaign. The organizations were: Climate Justice Cornell, Sunrise Ithaca, Cornell Puerto Rican Student Association, Cornell Progressives, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine, MEChA de Cornell, Starbucks Workers United Ithaca, The People’s Organizing Collective Cornell (United Students Against Sweatshops Local 3), and the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), Cornell University Chapter. It is unclear how many members of these organizations live in the Fourth Ward, but the effort highlights DeFendini’s far-left political focus.
Because DeFendini garnered only 28 votes on election day, the race was undecided until the absentee and affidavit ballots were counted and announced on November 16.
