To the Editor,
As a registered Democrat, I am disappointed and even mystified by the recent behavior of the village of Mamaroneck’s Democratic Committee. On Aug. 29, it sent out an email blast with the subject line “Confused about the Village Primary?” that sought, apparently, to add to recipients’ confusion in order to shoo in its handpicked “nominees.”
All three of the candidates the Democratic Committee is promoting are admirable people, but last time I checked, the committee has absolutely no authority to “nominate” the Democratic slate. And unless I’ve missed them every political year, the village doesn’t hold party conventions or caucuses for the purpose of doing so. That’s why there’s a primary on Sept. 13, when local Democrats get to choose from among whomever is able to get him or herself on the ballot.
Yet the language of the Democratic Committee’s email was carefully calculated to suggest that recipients had no choice in the matter: “The Village Democratic Committee has nominated ONLY three candidates to fill ONLY three open spots on the Village Board…. Our official Democratic team… They are the only Democratic team that can win in the general election.” (I realize that the last part is just standard political advertising.)
At best, that’s voter intimidation; at worst, it’s authoritarianism, however local. The email continues more egregiously, though, in saying that a fourth candidate “has called for the upcoming Democratic Primary [sic] in order to challenge the official Democratic slate.” Aside from playing loose with the word “official,” does the Democratic Committee mean that the primary wouldn’t be happening—or would be unnecessary—if this fourth candidate were not insisting on it? In what sense is he “challenging” anything, other than the status quo in Mamaroneck politics, and/or Republican hegemony? All this candidate is doing is pursuing the democratic process that we all claim so fervently to love, and practicing his right, and all of our right, to compete for public office. Yet the Democratic Committee’s email makes him sound positively undemocratic.
This is the sort of political behavior that makes it harder and harder for me to defend our system to libertarians and anarchists. Last week, I somehow ended up on the village of Mamaroneck Republican Committee’s email list, and when I unsubscribed from it, the automated response did everything possible to make it sound as if I had removed myself from the village’s entire voter database—and might therefore be ineligible to vote. The attempt was fairly lame, given the party’s national expertise in voter disenfranchisement, but I’m sure it will make a lot of free-thinking Republicans worry that they won’t be able to cast their ballots. More voter intimidation!
Even the invitation to unsubscribe included the ungrammatical, guilt-tripping admonishment, “If you do NOT like to stay in the loop of what is going on in the Friendly Village, please use the unsubscribe link….” God save us from our political selves, Democratic or Republican.
Russell Hart,
Mamaroneck
