Lives on the line from the top to the bottom of the ticket
By Will Collette
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| Norman Rockwell's 1944 depiction of the undecided voter |
If democracy still works and sanity still prevails, Donald Trump will be defeated, and Democrats will control both the House and the Senate.
If that’s the outcome, we have many years of healing to do, perhaps the biggest challenge since the end of the Civil War.
If Trump and his fascist hordes win, well that’s another matter
altogether. Then, it will be about survival strategies.
I don’t know whether there are many more “undecided” voters
out there or people who haven’t yet voted, but if you’re one of those still
trying to decide, let’s cover the bases.
I have already proudly cast my ballot for Kamala Harris and
Tim Walz. I think she’ll be a great president and hopefully, she will have a
successful term in office. Trump should be in prison, not the White House.
I am also proud of our Congressional delegation and have cast
my votes for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and District 2 US Rep. Seth Magaziner
who work hard for us in the bruising arena of a bitterly divided Congress.
Statewide, we have several excellent state ballot questions
that would fund important job-creating infrastructure to benefit education, environment
and the arts.
We have a clunker in Question 1, whether to convene a state Constitutional Convention.
Do we need it? No. Is it worth the money? No. Is it
simply an opportunity for far-right wingnuts to cause chaos and mischief with
our rights? Yes, and if you want proof of that, just look at the cast of
characters supporting it.
Local General Assembly races offer some clear-cut choices
except in House District 36 where Rep. Tina Spears (D) is unopposed as our state Representative making her
the automatic winner. If she had had an opponent, I would have backed her unreservedly.
In Senate District 34 which includes the northern half of
Charlestown, Sen. Elaine Morgan (R-MAGA) seeks re-election. Morgan is a
gun nut, anti-immigrant
racist and adjudicated
thief who was caught stealing money from her campaign fund to pay for
personal items.
Morgan has held herself out as a champion of morality and
children’s welfare, but somehow couldn’t instill those beliefs at home. On
September 25, her 22-year-old son Ian took a plea deal to plead no contest to third-degree
sexual assault of a child. According
to WJAR, “Prosecutors said he had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old
girl he had met online. Morgan was 18 at the time.”
Elaine Morgan has been an
embarrassment since first elected in 2014. It’s time for her to go and for
voters to send Hopkinton
Democrat Steve Moffitt to the State House.
Megan narrowly beat Price in 2022 and has since done an exemplary job on behalf of her district. In two years, she’s far more to help her district and the state than Price did in the 8 years he held the office.
She promises more of the same, while
it’s still an open question whether Price will face charges for breeching
security lines at the US Capitol on January 6. Pretty clear choice.
Our town election is a complex matter that confronts the
Election Day voter with some complicated choices.
Actual power in Charlestown comes down to a contest between
two political action committees (PACs) who present you with an almost equal number
of candidates more or less split roughly the same between labelled Democrats
and Republicans, mixed together on the ballot.
Half of them are endorsed by Charlestown Residents United
(CRU) that won the majority in the 2022 election on a platform of honest, sound
financial management and reform.
The other half represents the discredited Charlestown
Citizens Alliance (CCA) that seized control of Charlestown politics in 2008 and
held power until beaten in 2022.
I have already voted for the CRU slate and have posted a
series of articles here on Progressive Charlestown to make the case that the
CRU has done a great job compared to the dark decade of total CCA dominion.
Even when the CCA promotes good things like conservation,
dark skies and tourism, they do so in such twisted, radical ways that they
usually turn consensus into controversy.
If you need to see the arguments and supporting evidence for
the reasons to support the CRU and reject the CCA, please read:
CCA
tries to distract Charlestown voters with shiny things
The
politics of Charlestown open space
Should
Charlestown voters amend the town’s “constitution?”
Early
voting, mail-in ballots start this week amid confusing ballots for Charlestown
voters
Fear
and loathing in Charlestown politics
RI
Auditor General finds new CRU leadership in Charlestown improved town finances
The last article on the RI Auditor General’s report
establishes how the CRU majority has largely cleaned up the financial mess the
CCA left behind when they slunk off in defeat in 2022.
CCA President Leo Mainelli wrote the CCA closer in a piece he entitled "Indisputable Truths. No spin." Unfortunately, Leo then proceeds to offer no facts and lotsa spin about how this race has been about Dark Skies and Open Space but should really be about whether the town government listens to the CCA.
He glosses over the issues that have been raised about the CCA's decade of financial mismanagement:
Today, we live in a world where any position can be validated as “the truth” by simply turning to the source of information that agrees with an individual’s relative “truth”. Polar opposite opinions can each be substantiated, depending on which source of information is deemed a trustworthy authority.
I agree: when it comes to the management of Charlestown's finances, there is the state Auditor General whose data show the marked improvement in Charlestown's finances under the CRU, while the CCA has Bonnie Van Slyke who claims the CCA handled Charlestown finances flawlessly.
Even before the Auditor General's report, we knew Charlestown was being mismanaged by the CCA when the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council found that Charlestown had the worst record in the state for excessive administrative costs, at $566 per capita, the highest in the state. By contrast, the CCA has Bonnie Van Slyke who says there are no problems.
Bonnie, who is trying to return to the Town Council after two years off, claims a BA in economics from Wellesley College, but there's no sign in her employment history she actually used that degree. Hey, if Leo wants to believe Bonnie over the RI Auditor General or the RI Public Expenditures Council, then so be it. As Harry S Truman famously said:
“Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say 'on ONE hand...', then 'but on the other...”
Elections are a regular reminder that despite how divided we can get, we all have to live with each other. Hopefully, we’ll make it through this one with our fundamental principles and institutions intact.
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| Madame President, I hope with all my heart |