Heathens abandon Halloran

From the Village Voice:

Disappointment in Halloran by the members of his tribe, some say now, was instant: They’d already had their doubts while he was running for office.

“If you’re a Republican, and you’re a heathen, you’re shooting yourself in the foot!” says Valadia Kasandria Kristoffersen, an early member of New Normandy who goes by the name Kasidy. “I mean, if you’re a Republican, and you’re not a Christian, they don’t like you.” (Kristoffersen, who swore her oath to Halloran’s “Luck” as a member of his “Reich,” says she “defended him to death” for years. Now, she is more likely to call him “that slimy son of a bitch.”)

On the campaign trail, Halloran seemed to go back and forth about his beliefs. During a Tea Party speech from Bowne Park in Flushing right before the election, he said, “My gods!” (plural) at one point. At the end, though, he wound up screaming about “programs that never worked, never will, and ultimately come back to bite us in the ass,” and then slipped back into the singular deity as he yelled, “It’s our nation, one nation, under God, and indivisible with liberty and justice for all!”

If Halloran were ambivalent on the campaign trail, as an elected official, he seems to have abandoned his love of the Germanic deities altogether.

Kristoffersen expressed disdain that, as a councilmember, Halloran has been “giving his money to all of these religious charities, but he’s never given, one time, as far as I know, to any pagan groups,” a sentiment echoed by other former followers. In an interview with the website Pagan+Politics, Halloran said that he had “funded Orthodox Jewish, Catholic, mainstream Jewish, Lutheran, Protestant, Buddhist, and Hindu” organizations. He mentioned nothing about pagan groups and said nothing about his own New Normandy.

Kristoffersen describes the meetings of New Normandy in the Camelot days as being “the most amazing thing. It was like being family. It was like coming home.” With Halloran as their Atheling, for several years, Kristoffersen and others were excited to have a leader serious about the historical accuracy of heathenry. Under his leadership, this wasn’t lightweight fairy stuff like Wicca: This was the real deal, re-creating the life of their heathen ancestors.

Now, she says, “not a single person from that era is still there.” No one the Voice spoke to in 2009 about New Normandy is still in the group.

“There is not a man who knows him well, not a one, who doesn’t hate his guts now,” another former follower says.