By Matthew Hutchison
Twice in a matter of months, the Livingston County Republican Party has inserted itself into local elections that should be decided by voters exercising their own independent judgment.
First came the Brighton Area Schools bond election.
Shortly after voters considered a $156 million bond proposal and defeated it by a mere 348 votes out of the more than 11,000 cast, the LCRP’s executive committee met privately and terminated or rejected the party memberships of four sitting Brighton school board members who had supported placing the proposal before voters: Roger Myers, Jennifer Marks, Katie Tierney and Alicia Urbain.
In my view, the message was unmistakable: Supporting a school bond did not merely constitute a policy judgment with which other Republicans might disagree. It constituted an ideological offense subject to party discipline.
That same impulse is appearing in the Republican primary for Genoa Township clerk, which includes current Clerk Rick Soucy, Trustee Candie Hovarter and resident Debbie McCormick. Soucy was appointed after former Clerk Janene Deaton resigned and is seeking election to the remainder of the term.
Yet when Hovarter appeared on The Right Side, the official LCRP podcast hosted by party Chair Deb Drick, neither Soucy nor McCormick were mentioned by name. Listeners were not told that Soucy had been elected as a township trustee before stepping forward to fill the clerk vacancy. He was reduced to “somebody else” who had been appointed.
That is not a neutral description of a three-candidate race. Instead, it omits relevant facts while giving one candidate an extended platform through a podcast hosted by the county party chair.
What’s more, the narrative advanced by Trustee Bill Reiber is that Hovarter represents fiscal conservatism on the Genoa Township Board.
“Her dedication to reducing wasteful spending is evidence of her keeping her campaign promise to be fiscally conservative,” he wrote. “Despite her frustration at being out-voted again and again, she has never stopped getting up and staying in the fight.”
There is a problem with that portrayal: Hovarter’s own voting record does not support it.
I pulled the formal motions contained in 40 Genoa Township Board meetings from January 2025 through July 6, 2026, constructed a database covering nearly 300 recorded actions and analyzed the outcome.
Among the 219 substantive votes for which Hovarter’s individual position could be established, she voted yes 209 times and no 10 times.
Contrary to Reiber’s claim that she was “out-voted again and again,” Hovarter voted with the prevailing side more than 95% of the time. Her dissent rate was a mere 4.6%.
On identifiable spending actions from January 2025 through July 2026, Hovarter voted to approve 48 and opposed seven. Reiber approved 47 and opposed seven, while Soucy approved 53 and opposed one.
In short, the record depicts three elected officials exercising judgment about particular expenditures – not one fiscal conservative surrounded by habitual spenders.
In fact, Hovarter voted for road projects, special assessments, employee benefits, salary resolutions, technology improvements and public amenities like many of her fellow trustees. In November, she joined the unanimous vote approving an employee health-benefit change involving approximately $35,000 in additional spending.
In December, she personally moved two resolutions advancing an aquatic-weed-control special assessment. Both passed unanimously.
She supported the township’s $15,600 website redesign and accessibility upgrade.
Her most conspicuous recent spending objection involved an oversized Adirondack chair for the township park, costing no more than $1,800. Hovarter cast the lone no vote while Reiber, Soucy and the remainder of the board approved it.
That single vote has apparently become Exhibit A in the case that she is the board’s authentic fiscal conservative.
As a Genoa taxpayer, I reach a different conclusion about the chair and find it to be a de minimis expenditure for a durable park amenity that adds character, drives positive social-media exposure and contributes to our small community’s identity.
The numbers also show that Hovarter and Reiber voted together 96% of the time, and their most significant disagreements with the board majority frequently involved personnel, appointments and internal governance rather than spending.
Fiscal conservatism does not supply an automatic answer to every expenditure. It is a philosophy of governance requiring officials to weigh cost, value, need and long-term benefit.
Under Deb Drick, I believe the LCRP has turned fiscal conservatism into a test of ideological purity under which every “no” vote proves fidelity and every “yes” vote invites suspicion.
Political parties have every right to articulate principles, endorse candidates and persuade voters.
But when duly elected school board members are disciplined for exercising judgment on a bond proposal and when the names, records and current public service of two candidates are omitted from a podcast hosted by the party chair, the proper relationships begin to break down.
Political parties should persuade. Public officials should govern. And voters — not insiders at a private party meeting or party-sponsored podcasts — should decide.
Matthew Hutchison is a Genoa Township resident.
Spot on, Matthew. Seems like the local party is taking the same tack as the President…”don’t confuse us with the facts