By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor
Though rivals to become the new chair of the Democratic Town Committee, Jeffrey Ramer and Howard Richman agree there will be no hard feelings if the other wins the job.
Richman, a magazine advertising representative who has lived in Greenwich since 1992 and has run three times for state and local office, said he has had numerous conversations with Ramer on that very point.
“We’re both good people, both qualified, and both would make an excellent chair,” Richman said. “So people are going to have a choice.”
Ramer, a lawyer and town resident since 1974 who once chaired the town’s Board of Ethics and currently serves on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, says that as far as he knows, “I don’t think we have much of a difference of opinion about anything.”
It presents a studied contrast from the friction that marked the last time the Democratic Town Committee chose a leader in 2014. Then, incumbent Frank Farricker defeated Elizabeth Krumeich by a single vote.
Farricker is not running for chair this year. While both Ramer and Richman spoke positively about Farricker’s leadership, both emphasized unity as a keystone of their approach.
“I think there are still factions now that existed two years ago,” Richman said. “If I’m elected, I will work to cut down barriers and try to get everyone on the same page.”
“In past years, there has been dissension in the ranks,” Ramer noted. “I feel good that won’t be a problem going forward.”
The DTC will elect a new chair on Wednesday, March 23. A week prior to that, on March 16, a candidate forum will be held at the Town Hall Meeting Room at 7 p.m.
While another candidate could emerge at any time right up to the meeting on the 23, neither Ramer nor Richman expect more entrants into the race.
Ramer said he has been active on the DTC for some 20 years. As chair, he said he will work at trying to make town Democrats more competitive in elections, and sees opportunity for that in the current national political climate.
“I think the great majority of voters in town are moderate people,” he said. “I don’t think Donald Trump will be a popular candidate with them. They might be thinking about voting for more Democratic candidates in light of that.”
Ramer has served on the Board of Estimate and Taxation since 2008, where slates of candidates are selected by each party and races are typically not contested. Richman has not won a town race himself, but he has been the party nominee in three key races: for the state Senate, for the 149th District House seat, and last year running for tax collector.
“One of the things I have going for me is I know what it is to run a campaign,” Richman said. “If I am elected chair, when I get a candidate for office, they can be up and running from Day One.”
Richman, who is currently DTC treasurer, ran for tax collector on the platform he would work to make the position appointed rather than elected. Ramer in fact noted his rival’s stance as a noteworthy one, and an example of the new thinking he feels town Democrats have to offer.
Both men say they feel the party can be more competitive in future elections.
“We are getting closer and closer,” Richman said. “Jill Oberlander came very close to beating Mike Bocchino in the last election [for the 150th District.] Registration is 2-to-1 Republican, but we have as many unaffiliated.”
“There comes a time when a minority party needs to run candidates and establish a dialogue,” Ramer said. “It doesn’t have to be a nasty dialogue, but there needs to be a dialogue, what the British call ‘a loyal opposition.’”
