Dig if you will, a picture. It’s a domino, standing upright, perfectly still. It cannot move on its own; it needs outside intervention. But once that intervention comes, in the form of a finger nudging it ever so gently, it falls onto a nearby domino. That domino then falls as well and from there begins a fast-moving chain reaction, hurtling towards the place where there are no dominoes left to fall.

What nudged the domino in Kingston politics was the announcement by Mayor Steve Noble last Thursday that he isn’t going to seek a fourth term as mayor. Before the day was out, Common Council Majority Leader Michele Hirsch announced her campaign. Today, Common Council President Andrea Shaut announced a campaign of her own. As both are Democrats, a primary showdown next June looks, at this point at least, inevitable.

Kingston mayoral politics haven’t been very suspenseful for over 10 years now. The last contest where who’d win was not obvious very far in advance was in 2015, when Noble beat incumbent Shayne Gallo in the Democratic primary. In 2019 and 2023, no even theoretically serious threat to his job emerged, making him the longest-tenured mayor in City of Kingston history. And it is history which will judge Noble’s time in office. Your Editorial Team thinks he’s been hands down the best city mayor in the Mid-Hudson Valley during the past almost 11 years and one of the most, if not the most, impactful in Kingston history. But one of the things an official accumulates in public office after a decade in office is a long list of people that got “no” for an answer and didn’t get over it. Trying to get elected to a fourth consecutive term in office has been for many a perilous place where political careers get wrecked on the shoals of voter discontent. Mario Cuomo learned this 30 years ago at the hands of George Pataki. It’s better to go out on top, your Editorial Team thinks, but we aren’t the type of people who set out to build and maintain political dynasties.

For a while now, it’s been widely suspected by some and assumed by others that Noble will leave office in the coming weeks to take a job, which we have no way of knowing even exists, with the Hochul administration. He’s stumped for her policies up in Albany, most notably the widely opposed move to loosen environmental review rules for some housing projects. We hear tell that instead of joining the election night Dem victory lovefest at Assembly, he went to Albany to watch the results come in with the governor. We think he’s a natural for state parks commissioner. If it does happen, we hope Noble has a better time of it than did Mike Hein, who was summoned to Albany in 2019 by Andrew Cuomo to head up the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and whose political career also fell victim to the pandemic.

If Noble does leave, it will have a big impact on the campaign. As per the City Charter, when the mayor leaves office mid-term, the Common Council president takes over. Since that person is Andrea Shaut, if Noble does leave, Shaut will have the advantage of a brief incumbency.

That’s an advantage she may well need to get the job on a permanent basis. Hirsch, along with Ward 2 Alderman Michael Tierney, are in effect the Democratic Socialists of America caucus within the Common Council, and she’s already been supported by both the influential progressive group For the Many and the current rockstar of local politics, Assemblywoman Sarahana Shrestha. Both the DSA and For the Many have showed themselves to be able to mobilize a lot of campaign boots on the ground; we’ll see if Shaut can match that effort.

We’ve said in this space before that Ulster County is a good microcosm of American politics as a whole. A Shaut-Hirsch showdown mirrors the larger struggle for control of the national Democratic Party between moderates and socialists. While the Dems were brought together by the victories of last week, this debate has been by no means resolved. Locally we expect a lot of overlap of the two candidates’ platforms, so it will be the differences that will be the most telling.

If you missed Kingston Wire Senior Correspondent Jesse Smith’s appearance on Radio Kingston this morning, he brought up the twist of this year’s race: City Charter reform. The Charter Commission has been seated and is digging into their work; whatever changes they come up with will also be on the 2027 ballot. In the past, there’s been a push for a radical change in city government — switching to a city manager system. This was actually proposed by a commission in the early 1990s and passed at the polls, but Mayor T.R. Gallo led a campaign to have it reversed, making the “strong mayor” system we have today. In such a system, the city manager, usually a trained professional in running a municipality, would be in charge of day-to-day city government functions. The mayor would be a largely ceremonial position as the manager would answer to the Common Council. T.R. Gallo in no way wanted to be a figurehead. If the current charter commission goes that far in retooling city government and the voters of Kingston agree, Hirsch and Shaut will also have to ask themselves if they want to be a figurehead.

One thing is almost certain to happen: In 2027, a woman will be sworn in as city mayor. Some observers trace the beginning of city Republicans’ decline to political irrelevance to their 2011 primary, where Ward 6 alderman Ron Polacco beat by a very slim margin Andi Turco-Levin, then representing Ward 1 on the Common Council. At the time, it seemed to us that Turco-Levin was a lot more qualified for the job than Polacco, but Republican voters went another way. Polacco ended up being buried by Shayne Gallo in the general election and it was all downhill from there for the city GOP. Had things gone another way, Kingston would have had its first woman mayor 14 years ago.

This will be the first competitive mayoral race since 2015, when Noble won the Democratic Party against his own boss, Shayne Gallo. Whatever it does or does not become, the election offers a rare chance for a citywide conversation about a number of things: where the city is now, what it should or shouldn’t be doing and how it will face an uncertain future. We can’t wait for it to get started