It’s Regional School Board Election day around Baristaville today. Some races are kind of sleepy, like in Glen Ridge, where there are 3 people running for three positions (unless an unexpected write-in name pops up). In Bloomfield, however, the candidates have been working full tilt and spending big bucks to get votes. Blogger and realtor Geoff Gove wrote this week about the plethora of campaign materials that have shown up in mailboxes over the past few days.
Saturday’s mail gave Bloomfield voters a glimpse into the power of machine politics in our town. Every registered voter received three different color mailing cards and brochures for the three official Democratic Committee endorsed candidates for the Board of Education. Each one was a slick, well designed mailing piece addressed to each prospective voter. Some homes got 12 or more — at an estimated cost of tens of thousands of dollars.
Gove wonders why the herculean mailing effort for a nonpaying position on the town’s “nonpartisan” school board. Read more here.
What’s the BOE election scoop in your town? Do you vote, even if you don’t have kids in the public schools? Most importantly, do you think candidates should be required to release their birth certificates before they get put on the ballot?
One of the pieces that I received was a 4 pager that was entitled BLOOMFIELD NEWS. In it were attacks on Catzel Bumpus and Emily Smith. The portion on Emily Smith blamed her for every action that the BOE took while she was on the board.
This piece also claimed that Catzel Bumpus was responsible for the small article that appeared about her in the Franklin News and claimed that she “directed that her campaign propaganda be published”. It is my understanding that she is not the publisher or the person who wrote the article and that the article did not actually ask people to vote for her.
How can Rosen/Wolf/Castro afford these expensive mailings? 6 were received in my houshold and my neighbors have reported mutliples as well.
Just sitting here reading this… thinking how RIDICULOUS it is that Montclair can’t vote on this!
HUGE VICTORY FOR THE BEST TEAM IN BLOOMFIELD!
YES! YES! YES!
All three independent candidates running as the BEST** Team won over the county Democratic machine candidates by a margin of 2 to 1! This is a victory for everyone who cares about the quality of our schools and about transparency and accountability in our local government.
But this is only the beginning. The next job is to help our current 2nd and 3rd ward councilmen (Nick Joanow and Robert Ruane) win the Democratic primary in which they are running against machine-backed candidates who seem to have materialized from thin air.
**Building Excellent Schools Together.
Oh, boy, Emily Smith is back on the board. It’s been so long since we heard her weekly complaints about her daughter’s school lunches.
The results are in for Montclair. We all lost.
We’re taking back our town, one election at a time. Good job Bloomfield! On to the June primary.