“To the Victors Go the Spoils”

CCA packs Chariho School Committee with another acolyte

By Will Collette

First, my thanks to my colleague Tom Ferrio for his live coverage of tonight’s Town Council meeting. My Cox internet connection is having “issues,” so I just didn’t have enough bandwidth to catch it.

Overall, the Council agenda was pretty light compared to last month when the Council needed two full three-hour sessions to complete its business. 

Tonight, they finished up with 15 minutes to spare.

The big item, at least to me, was the Council’s action on who to name as the replacement for recently resigned Chariho School Committee member Andrew McQuaide. There were three contenders but only one person could be named.

Their ultimate decision led to the title of this article, “To the Victors Go the Spoils,” a phrase uttered in 1828 by New York Senator William L. Marcy to explain the right of President Andrew Jackson to appoint anybody he wanted to, no matter how unqualified or sketchy, by right of winning the election. The "spoils system" - today, we also call it "patronage." 

The CCA Town Council majority exercised its patronage right when they selected CCA loyalist and leading CRAC (Charter Revision Advisory Committee) trouble-maker Donna Chambers to fill the Chariho vacancy.

CCA's version of good government

It didn’t matter that she is spectacularly unqualified compared to the other candidates (click here to read the resumes), or that she has been openly hostile to Chariho by grandstanding against Chariho’s position that taxpayers should not have to pay to send students to charter schools if those charter schools are inferior to Chariho.

Nope, Chambers meets the Number One criteria for CCA Councilors Tom Gentz, Dan Slattery and George Tremblay in that she is 100% loyal to the CCA on every subject.

It doesn’t matter that Chambers almost single-handedly turned the town’s Charter Revision process into a rancorous, partisan zoo. It doesn’t matter that Chambers tried to turn the Charter Revision process into a vendetta against people in town who angered her.

Or that the Charter changes that she championed have already caused problems for Charlestown. She’s a CCA partisan and that's all that counts. 

Since the CCA increased its grip on the Town Council to the point where they no longer even need Councilor Lisa DiBello’s support, they can appoint whomever they wish.

Because to the victor goes the spoils.