The Truthiness of Trustworthiness
Lately, the Norwalk Democratic Town Committee has been making news for its rather unorthodox way of putting together a slate of candidates. The Hour has been publishing the internal salvos, chiefly Bobby Burgess whining about District B, yet there’s been a glaring absence of any sign of life amongst Democratic candidates for Mayor let alone council candidates. You’d think that some would be out there pimping themselves, and that fellow Dems would be out there rallying enthusiasm or something. But here’s what DTC chair has to say about the 35 select few that populate the DTC:
Many NDTC members do absolutely nothing and they know who they are – leaving other members to carry to the entire load.
This line came from an email that Gail Wall sent in response to concerns raised about some internal party issues. The issues are the picayine stuff of campaigns, who is doing what, who isn’t doing what and why isn’t stuff getting done in a timely fashion. Boring really, until we get to this line:
We, collective – Galen, Stu, Walter and others have tried to recruit “trustworthy” individuals to assist – however the response is the same “don’t have time!”
Instead of complaining, where are those that are willing to step forward to assist OR pay for a service ?
Ah well, there’s that sparkling gem of discontent weaved in its cloak of defensiveness. People have time to volunteer for things that they believe in. People have time to donate in causes they believe in. But many Dems have grown disenchanted with the leadership of the DTC, precisely because of their off-putting “trustworthy” litmus tests. But the bigger joke here is that the people in charge of recruitment, are the carpetbaggers to the Norwalk Democratic party, so who are they to decide who is “trustworthy” enough when they can’t even identify who long standing Democrats in Norwalk are. For full irony, Republican Mayor Moccia has a better handle on the who’s who in Democratic politics than they do precisely because he’s been involved in Norwalk for a long long time.
As an example, Galen Wells is busy trying to get a District B Democratic resident, Fay Bowman, to run for an at-large district council seat, out of a District E nomination. The reason? They can’t find any Democrat in E to run. This would be news to the former Dems who ran successfully. Wells probably couldn’t name who they were, staring with Betsy Bain, Mike Coffey and Bill Wrenn. Over in District D, the Democrats aren’t faring any better with reports that they are having trouble finding candidates to run in district. Anna Duleep is planning to run at-large.
Over in Republican town committee, things aren’t much better. Candidates are in short supply in District C, where party leaders desperately want Nick Kydes off the ticket. The issue apparently is that Kydes is boasting that he can knock of Moccia in a Republican primary for Mayor. All the talk is making the grapevine buzz.
Meanwhile, part of the Republican strategy is to pick off disaffected Dems. While they are busy talking to disaffected Dems, the party stalwarts are not at all happy. This is also fueling talk of staging district primaries.
Then there’s the logistical problems by reaching out to more moderate positions. A chief problem for Republicans is what to do about Working Families Party endorsements that the disaffected Dems bring with them. Add to that, some current Republicans would earn the endorsement based on their municipal voting records. Then there’s the whole political philosophy thing, much of the WFP platform is an anathema to Republicans who don’t favor the union-friendly platform positions that the WFP endorses.
The challenge the Republicans are facing, with dwindling registrations, is how to integrate the more liberal moderate people into party politics while maintaining peace within the conservative wing. Nationally, the Republican party has largely failed at that balance. Locally, the Norwalk Republicans have shown more inclusiveness going as far back as integrating the former Independent Party members, but the reality of making it work is proving to be more difficult. But give credit to the Norwalk Republicans, the people wrestling with these issues on the RTC have held elected office because they ran and won races in earlier years. The DTC leadership lacks that perspective. And the unaffiliated voter still outnumber both parties in Norwalk.
