Like many of his constituents, Pat Ryan’s Republican opponent, Alison Esposito, had been wondering just where the congressman stood on the heated controversy about Joe Biden’s fitness to serve as president.

Was Ryan for Joe, against Joe, just waiting for things to develop or the clock to run to Election Day?

All those questions were in the air and Esposito pretty much covered them in challenging Ryan to take a stand.

He chose to pivot, attacking Trump on one hand, advancing some of the important issues facing the nation on the other. But no mention of Biden. This was not, in any meaningful sense of the word, a response to the direct question raised. That everyone else ducks and dodges controversial questions does not matter. This is our congressman. He matters.

Within hours, it seems, Ryan was being quoted by The New York Times calling for Biden to stand down.

Tellingly, the Times identified Ryan as representing a “vulnerable” district.

Was it a case of action and reaction or was the congressman holding fire until the handwriting was writ large on the wall?

Knowing all that, the challenger must have advanced her loaded question with a certain sense of glee. She’ll live or die with Trump but for Ryan it’s not so simple. Ryan could lose half his Democratic supporters whichever way he goes on Biden. Candidates in vulnerable districts can’t afford to lose anyone.

Ryan, with his multi-million campaign budget, has far more resources at his command than say, a backwater blogger. A quickly launched district poll, for instance, might have shown him losing more of his Democratic base by sticking with the president than going rogue.

Was remaining neutral, or evasive, considered cowardly in some quarters, a winning strategy?

Apparently not.

In my mind, Biden, unless he goes totally lala in public, is the Democrats’ best bet to win the next election. After that it gets murky.

Meanwhile, word out of Albany is that state Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado has joined Ryan in showing Biden the exit sign.

Normally, nobody cares what a lieutenant governor says or does, but in this case, Delgado could be going against his former running mate Gov. Kathy Hochul. Or was the clever Hochul sending a signal through Delgado that she too might be thinking of switching?

Pike Plan Gets Another Look

Ignoring the stated positions of the city’s top two Democrats, city aldermen were scheduled this week to hear the mayor’s pitch on why the quasi-iconic Pike Plan canopies in Uptown Kingston should be torn down. Mayor Steve Noble and Common Council President Andrea Shaut support its demolition.

All the players are Democrats, which really doesn’t matter because all the players are Democrats.

The choices come down to more than either tear down or restore the Pike Plan.

No one from what I gather is interested in restoring the original 1970s Pike Plan to its former glory. The first Pike Plan wasn’t all that functional. Its wooden columns rotted out from lack of maintenance in less than 20 years, it was dingy under the canopies. The 2011 rebuild featured skylights and better lighting, among other improvements, but was plagued with shoddy workmanship. The city sued but got only dimes on the dollar.

The best thing about the original Pike Plan, which was financed by the Kingston Urban Renewal Agency, was the installation of underground utilities. Earlier pictures of that area show an ugly forest of utility poles and wires crisscrossing the street. The Pike Plan provided at the least a sense of cohesion in what was Kingston’s version of a highway mall.

Removing the Pike Plan altogether, while it makes a clean break with the past, does present some issues. The damage from canopies attached to brick buildings would be obvious, and somebody has to pay for that.

I’d vote for restoration with a clearly stated maintenance agreement between the city and individual property owners. But I don’t have a vote.

Human Rights Do-Right

The county legislature will hold a public hearing next Tuesday just before its regularly scheduled session in order to make some changes in the county’s controversial Human Rights Commission.

Chief among these proposed charter changes would remove the authority of the county executive to appoint the chairperson of the seven-member commission. In just about every other such commission, the commissioners themselves, all of whom are appointed by either the executive or the legislature, name their own chairperson.

Some might find this a bit perverse, but this feel-good, do-right move on the legislature’s part seems more virtual signaling than advancing human rights in any meaningful way. Recall how the legislature sat on the sidelines when the commission went through its embarrassing contortions in recent months. Now, the legislature can say “we did something about it.”

What they did was move the deck chairs around the Titanic.

The public hearing begins at 7:05 p.m. on the 16th.