The following is a statement from the Wilton Republican Town Committee for which the RTC paid GOOD Morning Wilton to publish. More information on paid content during election season is available in GMW‘s guidelines on election coverage and advertising.
The recent statement issued by the Democratic Town Committee is disheartening. Rather than addressing the pressing concerns of the people of Wilton and offering clear solutions, they have chosen once again to fall back on partisan politics.
For our part, our emphasis has always been on the character and integrity of those who have courageously stepped forward to serve our town. To that end, we conducted exhaustive vetting of our endorsed candidates, which included thorough checks with the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) and the Connecticut State Office of Ethics. Our candidates, likewise, diligently reviewed potential conflicts and have addressed the issue in detail.
In short, there is no story here beyond partisan smearing on the part of the Democrats.
Because we are all neighbors in a small town, we opted to overlook the controversy and conflict surrounding the Democratic candidates for the Board of Selectmen. We also refrained from engaging in this level of mudslinging during the last election with the former Democratic Chair of the BOE, who received a pension from the CT State Teacher’s Union.
We made that choice because we believe that negative campaigning has no place in town elections. Our candidates and campaigns are centered on promoting transparency, fostering respectful discourse, and propelling Wilton towards a prosperous and positive future.
For a more comprehensive understanding of our candidates’ positions, we invite you to explore their detailed statements available on our website.
Paid for by the Wilton Republican Town Committee, Carol Lenihan, Treasurer
I strongly urge anyone who is left confused by this shameless gaslighting to refer to Wilton’s Council on Ethics decision published on GMW on 9/29.
One way that a conflict of interest affects board membership is that every time an issue arises which touches on the potential conflict, the member has to recuse him or herself, which depletes the richness and value of participation. Contrary to the statement that two of its candidates have “addressed the [conflict] issue in detail,” in the linked article mentioned in this letter, the candidates there only stated why they would be good in the positions. A way to address the conflict issue before November, which would be objective and helpful to the voters, would be for the candidates to identify each issue addressed by the Board of Education over the past several years, and for each, explain how they would have no potential conflict. A simple side by side chart would do nicely. Such a chart would help residents to avoid partisan politics on any side, and to learn and see for themselves how the candidates’ positions will or will not adversely affect the activity of the board and how the candidates will identify and address potential conflicts and recusals.
Kelly Morron
First off, the fact that you don’t like a piece of criticism doesn’t make it “partisan.” The near-instant condemnation of Bob Menendez a few weeks ago by his fellow Democrats is pretty good evidence that unlike Republicans, Democrats are unwilling to tolerate unethical behavior even from people who are, ostensibly, on their side. I understand that as a Republican you naturally bristle whenever anybody talks about an ethics scandal, because national Republicans engage in so, so many of those, but at least for my own part I can assure you that I dislike Republicans *because* they’re unethical, rather than insisting that they must be unethical because they’re Republicans; that sort of partisan attack is much more of you guys’ thing.
The real question is why the RTC nominated these two candidates despite their glaring ethical conflicts, and why you seem uninterested in talking about the details of them now – do you actually reject the accusations in that letter, or do you just think they don’t matter? Were you perhaps hoping that nominating two people with an obvious animus towards the administration would further your goals of sabotaging the school system? (I’m sure you’re well aware that there’s more to the financial-conflict story, too)
As far as your childish attempts at false equivalency: yes, the former BOE chair received a pension from the CT State Teacher’s Union because she was, y’know, a *retired* school administrator – a former WHS principal, among other things. The difference between a former WPS employee and a current WPS employee is that a former WPS employee is no longer employed by WPS, and hence very unlikely to have the sort of a conflict of interest that a current employee might have. I suspect the DTC would have been absolutely delighted if you guys had run a campaign attacking her for her many years of service as a former WPS administrator.
(I’m not sure why you mentioned her teacher’s union pension specifically anyway, maybe it’s just because you don’t like teacher’s unions very much – a municipal Board of Education has no say over how the state manages teacher pensions)