To the editor:

With Hamilton County closing schools for lack of children, local politicians should be grateful to women who stay here and raise a family. Instead, the Republican Party has delivered a sucker punch to every woman from Hardscrabble to Kickerville with its support of the vile Christopher Shambo.

Shambo broadcast his disdain for us on Instagram years before his arrest for domestic assault. (Editor’s note: The letter writer quoted one of Shambo’s Instagram posts, but we have redacted it because it is obscene.) If this statement must be redacted for inclusion in a family newspaper, consider that its author will soon represent the objects of his contempt in Family Court.

I wish I’d known this before the election. Between three jobs and a toddler, I didn’t realize I had to go to the Post Star of Glens Falls, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise of Saranac Lake or NCPR for real news about the local election. Crickets from the newspaper that bears the county’s name.

Like other dissenters in local government, I have kept my mouth shut in the past in order to keep my job. No longer. No job is worth raising my daughter in a county whose district attorney considers her a walking vagina who exists to serve his sexual needs.

The women of Hamilton County sacrifice to live here. Child care, elder care, health care, affordable housing and decent jobs are in short supply. Elected officials are overwhelmingly male. Yet despite these obstacles, Hamilton County women have persevered for two centuries, refusing to be run out of the mountains which belong as much to them as to men.

They are strong enough to hear this truth: Christopher Shambo is not a naughty little boy who didn’t know any better. He is a grown man who refuses to take personal responsibility for his actions. He gives no reason to believe he will defend your rights in court, and every reason to believe he will treat you like a second-class citizen who doesn’t have any.

Shambo has no business in public office and should resign.

Eliza Jane Darling

Benson