(Editor's note: Due to a production error, we posted the wrong column before. This is the right one. Kingston Wire apologizes for the inconvenience.)

It didn’t take all that long for local Democrats to put soon-to-be-former Assemblyman Kevin Cahill in the rearview mirror.

Less than a month after Cahill lost his seat to newcomer Sarahana Shrestha, she’s been added to a Democratic door-knocker road show that will debut this weekend. Organized by County Executive Pat Ryan, who will face voters at the polls on Aug. 23, the first team features state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, always grateful for public exposure, Shrestha, off a brief vacation and, of course, Ryan. They’ll be working doorsteps in Kingston this weekend. Call ’em The Kingston Trio.

Out of common decency, local Democrats could have kept Shrestha at arm’s length for at least awhile for Cahill to lick his wounds. But no. After more than two decades in office, he’s history, a mere blip. On to the next election and losers begone! As former assemblyman Clark Bell of Woodstock might have said, “That’s poly-biz, baby!” (Bell coined the phrase the night he lost to Maurice Hinchey.)

Actually, Ryan has been running this dog and pony show past voters, and too often editors, for most of this year. Why go with just one candidate at an announcement — Ryan — when there’s plenty others out there dying to bask in the flow of good news? Ryan’s press conferences and press releases have featured Hinchey, Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, County Comptroller March Gallagher and any state official who happens to wander into Ulster.

Not so much Cahill, who was excused owing to Assembly rules that require members to actually be in attendance for votes. Apparently, state senators suffer no such restraints. “Their rules are different than ours,” Cahill said.

Cahill had said before the June 28 primary that he would “support” the winner, though he was probably thinking of one Kevin Andrew Cahill. With Shrestha now on the tag team, will Cahill, still in office until Dec. 31, join the circus?

Hughie Hemingway

My wife, among others, is forever prodding me about when am I going to write “the book,” meaning my 50 years of covering local politics. Having written it once, I’m not all that inclined to do it again. The subject took a somewhat different turn the other day when I mentioned discovering in a book I’m reading called Lincoln’s Mentors that Honest Abe almost never read fiction.

“Me neither,” I said.

“Why not?” she said.

“Because I hear fiction all the time from the politicians I write about,” I told her.

Actually, I have neither the imagination nor the talent to just invent plots and characters as do real fiction writers. Just getting it straight for the column is hard enough, but I did come up with

one plot years ago which I shared with her. And now, my readers.

This would be the first time I put it to “paper.”

An old-time police reporter, let’s call him Walt, gets laid off in one of his paper’s periodical youth movements. At first, he’s happy to be done with the grind, but after completing a few of his wife’s “honey-do” lists, he gets bored and annoying.

By coincidence, Walt’s former paper finds itself in the market for an obituary writer a few months after he leaves. With nothing to do, he applied and was welcomed back for what would be a part-time job.

As not that many people die in in his small town, Walt decides to write up the obits of some of the town’s prominent figures for file, just like they do at the big papers. When Bill Clinton dies, the only things The New York Times will have to run is the date and the cause of his death, plus a few quotes from mournful Democrats.

Walt doesn’t notice it at first, but as soon as he files an obit, the subject suddenly dies. At first, he writes it off to age. But then, he begins to wonder.

He writes up a young, healthy ex-athlete. Rick had been a star baseball player in high school.

Bingo. He’s gone. Walt tries a few others. Same thing.

He’s got the power!

Now, he gets serious. The editor who laid him off? Bye-bye. His first wife, who got the house, the car and half his pension? See ya. His nasty neighbor gets the treatment. The possibilities are endless.

Walt doesn’t abuse The Power. He picks his spots. After all, he was a police reporter and knows there’s nothing like predictable patterns to attract the cops. As former Kingston police chief Gerry Keller used to say, “In police work, we call these clues.”

Fortunately, for the local populace, this doesn’t last too long. One of Walt’s regular routines was to drop by the paper for a final check on the obits he’d filed the night before. A final read, as it were.

One afternoon he strolls across the composing room to find placed at the top of the obituary page, with a recent photo, ready to go to press … his own obituary.

Rod Serling must be rolling over in his grave by now.