Guilderland Councilman Warren Redlich has already announced he won’t be seeking a second term, but now it looks like his time on the Town Board will be ending before the year is out.
Redlich will be moving to Florida as soon as he sells his house, which he hopes will be sometime over the summer, he said. Though he cited a number of reasons for the decision, the most important was one most every New Yorker dealt with recently.
The primary motivation really is winter, he said. `You’re basically trapped in the house for three months unless you’re a skier.`
It’s unclear what the Town Board wold do about the vacant seat should Redlich leave early. The position is already up for election in November, so it’s possible it would just be left empty until 2012.
Redlich said his exit from the state and departure from Guilderland politics are unrelated. He’s serving his first term on the Town Board now, and frequently voices opposition to Supervisor Ken Runion.
Redlich has also staged Congressional runs and in 2010 ran for governor as the Libertarian Party candidate. In that election, he was targeted by mailers that falsely identified him as a sexual predator.
The councilman said his time on the Guilderland Town Board soured him to politics more than that incident, though. He said he won’t run for any office again until his youngest child in out of the house and in college (2024).
`The steady stream of negative attacks really reduced my attachment to my hometown,` he said. `People complain about the nastiness in politics, but they don’t do anything about it.`
He said he hopes the Republican Party puts up local candidates in the coming election that will best Supervisor Runion, who could not immediately be reached for comment.
Redlich has been cleared to practice law in the Sunshine State, but he said he’d continue to operate his New York law practice from afar. He said he’s tired of driving from court to court to represent clients and will contract that work out to other attorneys.
`I think my practice will shrink, we will get fewer cases and there will be things that we won’t be able to do,` he said.
He also won’t have to pay income taxes in Florida.
Redlich said it’s hard to say what his future would look like, especially politically, but indicated he would like to find like-minded Libertarians and Ron Paul supporters once he relocates.
`My plan is to network, meet people, find good candidates and good groups and support them,` he said.“