Clay Tiffany: Candidate, Gadfly, Heckler

Eccentric and combative Briarcliff Manor native Clay Tiffany was found dead March 26.

Phil Reisman, in his April column for The Journal News titled “Dirge for a Gadfly,” took a look at Tiffany’s life and death. Read that entire column here.

Tiffany was a perennial candidate for the Briarcliff Manor Board of Education. Also, he was a constant presence at Briarcliff Manor village board meetings. You can get an idea of the range of his concerns in these minutes from 2007. He also applied for jobs in the village’s public works department, and complained of discrimination when he was not hired.

He intimidated and frightened some village staffers in Briarcliff and Ossining—at one point an order of protection was issued preventing him from entering Briarcliff offices but it was overturned.

For many years he swam in the Hudson River on pleasant mornings, from Scarborough Park out to the channel buoy. That’s where the confrontation with police Officer Nick Tartaglione occurred that reverberated for years of lawsuits.

Tiffany reached a height of local notoriety with his cable television show “Dirge for the Charlatans.”