The political campaign season has turned ugly. How do we know? We received a negative campaign piece in our mailbox. In this case it was a mailer from Trevor Crow making false statements about her opponent state Senator Ryan Fazio. We were not pleased and judging by the 24 letters to the editor we received as of Wednesday that expressed deep concern about the mailing, neither are you.
Political discourse in our country has certainly devolved even more over the past few years. You cannot turn on the national news without being inundated with a new “tweet-storm.” Likewise, you cannot go to an online news site without seeing political stories that are “click-bait,” sensationalized stories and headlines written specifically to manipulate you into clicking on them.
As a result, the political debate has been reduced to sound bites, “gotcha” statements and tearing your opponent down rather than building yourself up. This style of politics has no place in our community.
Greenwich prides itself on its community. It is what makes us unique, diversified and always interesting. However, there is one thing that we are intolerant of, negative campaigning that is false. It should back-fire on those engaging in it.
Perhaps Trevor Crow does not understand this about our community. She has lived here less than four years and may not know that as well-informed residents of a town who care deeply about our community, we know that this kind of negative campaigning does not inform us, it seeks to manipulate us. This is not a new concept. President Theodore Roosevelt once said: “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.” Yes, but we deserve better. We want to know where candidates stand on the issues and what their record is.
When candidates feel the need to purposely misinform voters, it is perhaps because they feel they have no record to run on. We believe every person has a record they can run on. It can be your involvement in town activities, school PTA’s, or even where you have volunteered.
If you are running for re-election, you have your record to run on. If it is your first time running for office, you have your background to run on. In either case, if you are resorting to misleading negative campaigning or intimidation tactics, you are doing yourself a disservice and insulting our intelligence.
In fact, how a person campaigns for office says a lot about how they will perform once in office. From our perspective, candidates who have run on their record and the issues have been more successful once in office in helping our community grow and prosper than those who have not.
Holding office, whether as state Senator, Representative or in our local municipal offices, is at its core a public trust. We, the voters, want to put into those very important positions people we can trust because what they do is important and has real consequences.
When we witness a campaign resorting to these campaign tactics, it erodes the concept of public trust. If a candidate cannot be honest and present his or her record, positions on issues, and platform for improving our community, then how can we trust that they are the right candidate for that position? The candidate must believe in themselves enough to trust that we, the voters, will make the correct decision on whom to elect.
With less than three weeks to go before the election of our state and federal elected officials, we encourage all candidates to run on their record and say “no” to misleading and manipulative negative campaigning. We do not need the rancor of negative campaigning taking away from our ability to examine the best ideas and platforms for moving our state and country forward for the next two years.
