To the Editor:

Thank you to all my family, friends and supporters. There are far too many individuals that did hours of work and who gave financial support to the campaign to be able to name them all in this letter.

I do want to extend a special word of appreciation to the folks on my committee, Anne Monck, who I should have listened to on all things political, and did on most. She put in thousands of hours of intensive work organizing the campaign and designing ads.

Also, thank you Nan Clingman for your elegant writing and John Dietrich for being there at parades, endless meetings and much more.

I want to thank Labor as well. I went to hundreds of homes and hundreds of meetings. I continuously heard the people in the trenches say, “we will not get out of this opioid crisis without jobs that can support a family.”

The unions in Northern, New York are fighting for their workers every day. The unions are active and fired up and I think it is because they know what is at stake. A rising tide lifts all boats, but; ‘trickle down’ is the opposite of a rising tide.

Often, in cases like this, there is plenty of blame to go around. In this case, the blame falls entirely at my feet.

I am moving forward knowing that I have made many friends and have many loyal supporters and that I can stay here and work for the good of this county as I always have. On most days, I will remember all the parades and the good feelings people in St. Lawrence County have for each other. On others, I will just say, “welcome to politics.”

Jim Monroe

Canton