by butabi in Politics
Posted on November 2, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Last Modified on November 3, 2009 at 12:21 am
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School Committee candidate Christine Rafal is making a courageous run against retrograde incumbent James Norton – and she can use all the help she can get on election day! To help out please call: 617-335-6343.
Ken Brociner’s recent column in the Somerville Journal (see the link below) nicely summarizes what is at stake in Christine’s race against Norton.
Also check out the latest issue of the Somerville News (see link below) – where Norton is the editor – be sure the read the first item in Newstalk, the endorsements, and take a look at the cartoon (all under “Commentary” at the top).
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I am not a resident of ward 4 ( for the record). This website does the same thing when pushing a candidate they support – as do other websites and papers in this town. This election has further shown no one in this city is worth electing.
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butabi, what do you mean by calling James Norton “retrograde”?
Janine, what do you mean when you say “This election has further shown no one in this city is worth electing.” ?
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There were only incumbents in my ward and they were not worth voting for. If I was not at the end of this pregnancy, I would have run for school committee.
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Good luck running for School Committee after announcing on this blog that your pulling your kids out of the public schools.
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You didn’t think any of the Alderman-at-Large candidates were worth voting for? I find that difficult to believe.
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I did vote for three of them. And afterwards, while driving into Davis to get my son, I saw three of the candidates shake hands.
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Janine has a point. There are way too many unopposed races in this city, offering too few real choices for voters.
Here were the choices in my ward:
Mayor: unopposed;
School committee: unopposed;
Alderman-at large: choose up to 4 of 5;
Alderman: Rebekah Gewirtz or Jim Campano, whose campaign flyers would have benefited immensely from proof-reading and whose only issues were opposition to liquor licenses and 2am bar closures. Now, I happen to be fine with Gewirtz. But if I weren’t, Campano regrettably did not present himself as a serious candidate.
And people wonder why so few turn out to vote! If there were real races in which each office had more than one candidate, and candidates presented voters with truly interesting and different choices, there might be more people out voting.
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Julia, it would be great if you could scan in one of Campano’s campaign flyers so we could see what you mean about the lack of proof-reading and his stances on issues.
By the way, have you ever thought of running for office?
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Barry, sure I’ve considered running. But as I said, I like my current Alderman, so the only reason to run against her would to be make the election more fun. That’s tempting, but too frivolous.
I’m neither in the educational field nor the parent of a child in the Somerville school system, so I am not qualified for School Committee. Maybe technically, but I certainly wouldn’t vote for someone who wasn’t one and preferably both.
I’m reasonably satisfied with the Aldermen-at-Large candidates, so again, no real reason to run there.
Which leaves mayor. I’m not a well-known figure in the city, I don’t have deep pockets, and I don’t have a dedicated political organization or a set of cronies with connections to back me, so my chances would be zero there.
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I voted myself for mayor, alderperson and school committee for ward 3. I want to see if the vote is counted.
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That’s an interesting idea, Janine. However, normally the election results do not contain the names of write-in candidates, so I’m afraid you can’t be absolutely certain whether your vote was counted. If you watched the autoscan machine increment the count when you fed your ballot into it, then at least you’d know that your ballot was tallied.
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Barry, if the Campano flyer gets scanned in, I hope people can try an act like adults and not belittle anyone for lack of proofreading. Not everyone running had the giant “PDS machine” behind them.
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The “giant PDS machine”? I thought the PDS was an “extremely small” group that hasn’t “gathered more than 17 people at any meeting”.
You guys need to get on the same page, already.
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I wish I’d saved his campaign literature but yesterday was trash day, so everyone’s flyers went away with the recycling. I actually really liked the way they looked, very spare and elegant and not like regular hackneyed campaign literature. But trying to read through the material was difficult. It read like he’d just dashed off some notes off the top of his head and then printed it up as a flyer.
Janine, I do not say that to poke fun at Campano. I credit him for caring enough to run at all and I know that he is a self-taught and highly respected national expert on eminent domain. He’s not ignorant, but he did himself no service with his campaign material.
His literature struck me (and my husband and a neighbor) as if he wasn’t taking his own campaign seriously. For a candidate to be taken seriously, he or she has to respect the voters and his own campaign enough to either run campaign materials through word-processing software that has a spellng and grammar-checker or get a couple of friends to proof-read it before sending it out to hundreds of households. This doesn’t take a machine, just access to a computer (which you can sign up for at the public library) and/or at least one friend fluent in English. If you send out stuff with more than one clear mistake, you are sending the message that you’re either careless or incompetent— not qualities I look for in a candidate for anything.
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Julia, my comment was for Barry and not you. Also, it was meant for other PDSers who wanted to poke fun at Campano. I am glad that he ran too. I wish some ran against my alderman. Seems no one will ever run against him. I am 8 1/2 months pregnant and really wnted to run against the incumbent school committee member. I am tired of that committee being so one sided. This only proves nothing will get done this term.
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Congrats to Christine – she earned a hard-fought race today. I wish her the best of luck and I am sure she will do a tremendous job.
Jamie Norton
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Submitted for the record, a postcard from Campano, received Saturday, posted verbatim:
WHY DOES REBEKAH GEWIRTZ REFUSE TO DEBATE JIM
CAMPANO.
Is it because she is scared to defend her stand on liquor licenses and raising
parking meter rates and extending their hours to 10 O’clock. She favors certain
businesses and ignores others if they are not members of DARBI.
Jim Campano will do what you the voter wants, not what he wants, he will be
your voice not his.
Jim Campano will be everybody’s alderman not just an alderman for a special
few. He will be a full time alderman.
VOTE FOR CHANGE, VOTE JIM CAMPANO on Nov.3
The Committee to elect Jim Camano
617- xxx-xxxx
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Last line should read “The Committee to elect Jim Campano”. I second the suggestion for a grammar checker.
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Tricky, obviously those 17 people banded together to cart other supporters to the polls (which I have always had a problem with).
Julia, I agree 100% that anyone on the school committee should have a child or children in school. You should have a vested interest. Also, I am a firm believer in term limits. If I ran and won, I would serve one term and would refuse to be paid.
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Greg, I have a son who just turned 2 and another child due in about 4 weeks. There will be another election prior to them going to any school because of their birthdates and plenty of time for the school committee to change.
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And after looking at the city’s unofficial results, it is kind of sad to see the low number of people who voted as well as the somewhat high number of blanks people left on the ballot. No candidate who won should be proud. And those residents who did not vote have no reason to complain.
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Janine – I think the high number of blanks in the alderman-at-large race is somewhat misleading; there’s the possibility of a “bullet” vote for one candidate (leaving three blanks).
I don’t think 8759 blanks coming from 7652 voters is out of hand for that sort of vote (pick up to four); that’s about one blank per voter. You said you voted for three, I’m assuming one of those blanks was yours, then. That’s fine, no one is required to use all four selections.
As far as the three contested ward races, about 4% of ballots were left blank. We could talk about that, I guess…I don’t know why anyone would have blanked the Ward 4 SC race, given there were two reasonable candidates running, and it was the closest race in the city yesterday.
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I voted for myself for mayor, alderperson and school committee. I feel there are far more registered voters out there in Somerville and am shocked at how few voted. But, I think I am more shocked at what few choices we had. How many years is a school committee term? Honestly, I would have run against Sweeting but am due in 4 weeks and could not see myself campaigning like crazy.
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