By Fred Snowflack, Editorial Page Editor
A surprise for a new candidate
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Politics is all-consuming these days, but to those older than 30, Labor Day remains the official start of the fall campaign. With that in mind, Susan Elbin, one of three Democrats seeking township council seats in Parsippany, says she recently went door-to- door. It was there, she says, that she encountered "several disturbing urban legends."
One voter told her that he wasn't permitted to vote for her because he's a registered Republican. Another feared that Republicans "would know" if he crossed party lines.
Welcome to the world of the uninformed. As politics is constantly discussed on a multitude of forums, public knowledge of it seems to be going in the opposite direction. Maybe it's a backlash to the overkill of political stories.
Whatever the reason, Elbin is not the first to notice that voters do not pay attention. Republicans are still debating whether some GOP primary voters thought they were casting ballots for incumbent Freeholder John Murphy last June when, in fact, they were voting for James Murray.
There's an interesting story I have written about before that bears repeating. Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Mendham Twp., once said that he was introduced as an assemblyman at a non-political gathering and that one of the first questions was, "What do you assemble?"
Yes, that's funny, but it's also discouraging to people who are running for office. Candidates should expect voters to understand the basics of democracy. Referring to the examples cited by Elbin, voters should know that their votes are secret and that in a general election, party registration means nothing.
• • •
Bucking the two-party system is not easy. That's why credit should go to Mike Spector of Parsippany and Matt Norton of Cedar Knolls for seeking two Assembly seats this fall in the 26th District as members of the Green Party. The candidates are inviting those interested to meet them 7 p.m. Monday at the Morris County Library in Whippany.
"We're trying to make our presence felt," Spector said. "We have to do it incrementally."
The Greens dream about becoming a party in New Jersey on equal footing with the Democrats and Republicans. That would allow the party, for instance, to hold primaries ala the Republicans and Democrats. For that to happen, Green Assembly candidates would need to garner 10 percent of the vote statewide. That's not only a tall order, it's impossible. The Greens are running candidates in only seven of the state's 40 legislative districts,
Spector says New Jersey is one of the worst states in the union for a third party to win acceptance. That's not a real surprise, is it? After all, the Democrats and Republicans make the rules.
• • •
It's tough to get things past Stuart Sendell, a retired banker from Morris Township who has seemingly made a study of Morris County government a second career. Sendell recently took exception to the AAA bond rating just awarded to the freeholders by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. He said the rating firms overlooked massive losses at the county-owned Morris View Nursing Home. To that end, Sendell recently informed me that the president of Standard & Poor's just quit in the face of critics who said the firm misjudged the risk of securities backed by subprime mortgages. Do you think those who forced out the president also know about Morris County?
