Schenectady City Council member Mark Blanchfield—considering a challenge to Assemblyman George Amedore—has Amsterdam roots.
That news came from Sam Zurlo, now my AM 1570 WVTL radio talk show colleague. Zurlo is retired Mohawk Valley reporter and columnist for the Daily Gazette.
Zurlo told me that Mark Blanchfield’s grandfather was the late James Blanchfield, circulation manager of the Recorder, the Amsterdam paper. Mark Blanchfield’s father, William Blanchfield, was a graduate of St. Mary’s Institute in Amsterdam in 1956, where he played basketball. William Blanchfield went on to be an economics professor, a post he still holds at Utica College.
Mark Blanchfield—a Schenectady attorney and former city council president--confirmed these details and said he frequently visited his grandfather’s home on Trinity Place on Amsterdam’s Market Hill as a child, a home where his step-grandmother Adelaide still resides.
A Democrat, Blanchfield is considering a run against Republican Assemblyman Amedore, the Rotterdam builder chosen in a special election last year. The district includes part of Schenectady County and all of Montgomery County. Amedore’s family also has roots in the Amsterdam area and during the special election campaign, Amedore also won Montgomery County support because his firm had built a condo project in the town of Amsterdam.
Blanchfield said his grandfather had been in the circulation business for Schenectady’s Union Star newspaper but moved to Amsterdam to manage circulation at the Recorder. And before that, his grandfather met his grandmother at Russo’s, the popular West Main Street restaurant and tavern in Amsterdam. She was from Long Island but visiting a friend in the Rug City.
James Blanchfield was well known to paperboys in Amsterdam decades ago and used to organize trips to Yankee Stadium. Mark Blanchfield said if he runs, he’s looking forward to campaigning on the streets of his father’s old paper route in Amsterdam with his father—that would be William Blanchfield—by his side.