Is Greenwich’s nonpartisan RTM a thing of the past? – CT Insider

GREENWICH The Representative Town Meeting has long fashioned itself as a place beyond partisanship where the focus is only on the business of the town. But a contentious municipal election, which reflected the stark partisan divide throughout the country, raised questions about whether Greenwichs legislature, something of a throwback to a more genteel time, can hold out todays harsher political realities.

Candidates for the 230-person body do not run as members of political parties; their affiliations are not listed on the ballot. But this election and the one preceding it saw groups of candidates running on unofficial slates marked by shared beliefs and views.

The 2017 municipal election witnessed the rise of activist groups that formed after the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. That year, many members of those groups, Indivisible Greenwich and March On Greenwich, ran for and won spots on the RTM.

This year, a counter-movement arose, making an issue of the Indivisible-March On presence in town in a campaign that paved the way for those with opposing viewpoints to join the meeting, said Laura Gladstone, a founder of Fiscal Freedom for Connecticut and a new RTM member from District 2.

I think the fact that many of those members of radical left-wing national organizations, and those who aligned themselves with them, didnt get back on the RTM or were very low vote-getters may have been an indirect result in this election, Gladstone said. The feedback we got from people at the polls is that the residents of Greenwich were focused on fiscal responsibility and the local needs of our town, not national politics.

When asked what in her view defined a radical left-wing national organization, Gladstone said she was merely reporting on what she saw on their websites. She said the organizations were not focused on local issues in Greenwich but rather have come into our town and have national money and national platforms that espouse radical left-wing ideas.

Gladstone did not name either Indivisible or March On, but those have been frequent targets of discussion over the past two years, including the recent campaigns.

Kimberly Salib, an RTM member from District 11 who was re-elected last week, also said she believed the election may have been a push back against some of the members of left-wing organizations who were running for political office, including the RTM.

At the end of the day, the residents of Greenwich chose fiscal responsibility and remained focused that this was a local election focused on the local needs of our town, Salib said. The clean sweep on the RTM was also a vote for unity and to bring the RTM back to the congenial, friendly nonpartisan body it was meant to be.

Like Gladstone, Salib did not specifically name any organizations. Neither identified specific votes or debates during the RTMs most recent term that they felt were overly partisan, either.

But to others in town, it is Gladstone and many Republicans who have been pushing partisanship on the RTM, by campaigning for certain candidates and including support for them with the Republican slate in the recent elections. There were multiple reports of deliberate campaigning for certain RTM candidates by Republicans under the theme of fiscal conservatism through mailings sent to voters and material passed out at polling places.

Some of those mailers had the imprint of Fiscal Freedom for Connecticut on them.

Lorelai OHagan Strange, who lost her re-election bid in District 2, said Gladstone and other RTM candidates waged a misinformation campaign in collaboration with other RTM and local candidates that affected the outcome of the elections. District 2 was a particularly competitive district with 22 candidates running for 14 seats.

Fiscal Freedom for Connecticut has been ranking RTM members online based on voting records on such issues as lowering the towns mill rate, putting a sunset clause on the towns plastic bag ban, opposing a new northwest Fire Station, supporting the ban on fracking waste, which the group opposed, and a sense-of-the-meeting resolution against highway tolls, which the group supported.

Strange called the rankings fully bogus and devoid of meaning because they only looked at a few of the votes from the countless ones taken over two years and used methodology designed to benefit those putting the rankings together. She said new members running for RTM from Fiscal Freedom for Connecticut connected with existing RTM members and used those rankings to form candidate slates, particularly in District 2, that were designed to unseat current members like her.

Joanna Swomley, co-founder of Indivisible Greenwich, said it also happened in District 10, where she successfully ran for re-election. Swomley called the mission of Fiscal Freedom for Connecticut extremely far-right and said they were not mainstream Republicans.

The Fiscal Freedom slates hold an anti-regulation, anti-tax, anti-spending ideology that, in my view, is the antithesis of fiscally responsible, she said, calling them a group of ideologues and questioning their views against spending to fix schools that are crumbling and against reducing plastics and banning fracking waste.

Swomley was first elected to the RTM in 2017. She rejected any claim that Indivisible is meant to be a political party of any kind and instead said partisan problems were coming from groups like Fiscal Freedom.

The influx will make it far, far worse, Swomley said. At the polls this November, I heard for the first time RTM candidates actively campaigning as Republicans. I heard several repeatedly tell voters in District 10, We are the Republican RTM candidates. They are the Democrats. You dont want them.

She pointed to emails sent by Board of Estimate and Taxation member William Drake that called for people to vote for fiscally responsible RTM members and put forth a list of candidates in all of the 12 RTM districts.

So now we have slates of candidates identifying and running expressly as partisan Republicans for the RTM, Swomley said. That is a new low for Greenwich. Republican BET candidates were out in force on Election Day with the same message, one sent a list out by email containing certain right-leaning Republicans, and some Democrats who vote the same way. One was at my district greeting voters for hours and going over RTM candidates. The Republican Party is all over the RTM. That cannot be said for the Democrats.

However, Gladstone did not agree with the idea that classifying people as fiscally conservative is, in fact, a partisan designation.

As fiscal conservatives, we are focused solely on the local financial needs of Greenwich residents and not focused on national politics, Gladstone said. Our sole focus is about improving the lives of the residents of Greenwich, which is nonpartisan. We want to preserve and improve the quality of our towns schools, facilities and critical services; encourage prudent borrowing policies to maintain our AAA rating, meaning no long-term borrowing, and provide a cost-effective local government to keep our mill rate low.

Swomley and Indivisible co-founder Nerlyn Pierson, who unsuccessfully ran for the RTM late in the election as a write-in candidate, rejected the idea that Indivisible Greenwich is a left-wing anything.

Regrettably, just as with national politics, some in town scapegoat, fabricate and then perpetuate fringe conspiracy theories so they have a boogeyman to rally against rather than confront the real issues, they said in a joint statement.

RTM Moderator Tom Byrne has long publicly rejected the idea of a partisan RTM as being against the spirit of the legislative body.

I define partisanship as a blind adherence to the policies of a particular faction or party with a corresponding unwillingness to consider alternative views, Byrne said. I strongly believe that the history of the RTM has largely been free of such partisanship, specifically because individuals were elected without being affiliated with, or receiving assistance from, any organized group.

He said he felt that political philosophies like fiscal conservatism would wax and wane over the years on the RTM due to the persuasiveness of arguments made during debate on the body. But he noted there can be an effect by election slates and while he is not critical of the idea, he does have concerns.

We saw incumbents who are universally acknowledged to be excellent, productive RTM members lose out because they were not part of an organized slate, Byrne said.

Ultimately, Byrne said under no circumstances did he envision the RTM becoming a partisan body in which candidates would run with a party label or hold closed door caucuses before votes.

It is my hope that successful members of a slate will not abandon their willingness to listen to all sides of a debate and make a decision based on their common sense and good judgment and instead simply do the bidding of a slate organizer, he said.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com

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Is Greenwich's nonpartisan RTM a thing of the past? - CT Insider