SHAWANGUNK – This November, the elections for town supervisor, two seats on the town board, the highway superintendent, and the town clerk will be over before they begin. Only the incumbents will be running, and only the incumbents can be voted on.

All the incumbents are Republicans. No Democrats have held office in the town for many years.

Talk to Vic Work, Democratic Party stalwart in Shawangunk and Ulster County, and you soon understand why.

"The Republicans outnumber the Democrats in town by about three to one."

If that sounds daunting, talk to Work about the old days.

"Oh, it was five to one, 20 years ago. So there's been a considerable change."

Work understands the problem facing the Democrats, who haven't run any candidates for town offices in the last few elections.

"The threshold is around 1,300 votes," says Work. "In a normal election, the Republicans are going to get 1,300 votes, so that's what you need to beat them.

"There was a time in the early '90s, when we had several people who wanted to run for office. But it gets discouraging, when you lose five or six times in a row."

Vic Work has seen for himself how difficult it is to break the GOP lock on things in Shawangunk.

"I ran several times, myself, with Conservative Party endorsement, and it didn't make any difference."

Looking at the town and its recent history, Vic Work notes that the townspeople have gotten pretty much what they wanted.

"The Town of Shawangunk has made decisions over the years that have wound up keeping it as a bedroom community. We sent out a survey in the mid-'90s, and we found that 85 percent of the people who responded wanted the town to stay just as it was. They didn't want to see any change. What they liked was the rural character of the town, and they didn't want a lot of development. They didn't want to be like Middletown."

Work remembers how those attitudes played out when businesses tried to move into the town.

"Amthor [a tank truck manufacturer] had wanted to come to the Town of Shawangunk, but because a few people wrote negative letters, they didn't come."

Another aspect of the problem for the Democrats is that the Town of Shawangunk has what Work describes as an "interesting approach to the budget."

"They would look at the income they expected and they would use zero-based budgeting. So I have to say, they've been very careful with the budget."

That fiscal conservatism has paid off for the residents of the town.

"Town taxes haven't gone up anywhere near as much as county taxes," says Work. "Over the last 24 years, I'd say it's probably about a 100 percent increase, while the county taxes went up 590 percent. And the county was run by Republicans too. Since the Democrats took over four years ago, the county taxes have gone up 15 percent."

The end result is a town where it is going to be hard to find those 1,300 voters who want things to change. Given that, it's never going to be easy to find Democratic candidates to challenge the Republican incumbents.