Disclaimer: Aidan McMillan is a junior at Middletown High. He is the son of Ed McKeon, contributor to the Middletown Eye, and endorsed candidate on Row A for the Common Council. This piece was originally published in the Middletown Press.
A group of five classmates, along with my brother Dermot, and I, all Middletown High School MHS students, set out to create a public forum for the Middletown mayoral democratic primary candidates. It was harder than expected.
We wanted to create a discussion centered around youth and our public school system moderated by students from MHS. We hoped for a way to offer Middletown residents information about their Democratic mayoral candidates. We sent email invitations to the four candidates, Mary Bartolotta, Ben Florsheim, Bill Russo, and Geen Thazhampallath. My schoolmates Ryan, Evan, Jewel, Nora, Ani, Dermot, and I would write questions and organize the event.
My parents support Ben Florsheim, as do parents of two others in our group. One supports Thazhampallath. The other two sets of parents are not committed.
I told my father, Ed McKeon, a Democratic Town Committee-endorsed candidate for common council, not to interfere.
All of us are leaders within our school and community and were trying to offer an opportunity for Middletown residents to hear the candidates, not to prop any up, or criticize them. We invited all four candidates by email. Florsheim and Thazhampallath responded with enthusiasm within hours. They said that they were proud and excited to participate. The other candidate, Bartolotta, and Russo did not give a response.
The next day, we called the Bartolotta and Russo campaigns but still neither responded.
Because we still hadn't received a response, we found Bartolotta at her home and handed the letter to her in her driveway. We soon received a call from the Bartolotta campaign. A campaign staffer said Bartolotta was unable to attend any of the four dates or any date or time leading up to the election.
After three unsuccessful attempts getting a response to our invitation, we found Russo in his office and he too declined to participate in the forum.
We left our encounters with many questions: How are these candidates going to be our leaders if they won’t come out and speak in public? As mayor, conflict is inevitable. Conflict must be dealt with through discussion and resolution. We have learned to be leaders, to organize, to plan and to be on top of current events and issues. But we were stopped by people older than us, accusing us of being manipulated by other adults.
The experience has been disappointing and disheartening, as teens we were trying to be independent and take initiative. We attempted to create a positive political event. Two candidates provided positive affirmation, two ignored then disappointed us. We still want this event to be an improvement to Middletown, not another political drama. And we want it to be one where voters can consider the ideas of all four candidates.
4 comments:
I applaud your efforts. It is wonderful to see young citizens getting involved. I would have very much liked to see your plan come to fruition.
The response that you received or in some cases in particular did not receive should speak volumes to the voters.
Replies to Middletown residents are to be expected from our elected officials. In fact, the same goes for the town employees that the taxpayers support. Sadly, as you well know, this does not always occur.
Kathleen Alderman
I also would like to applaud your efforts to schedule a debate with the four candidates for Mayor. Sadly, two of them cannot find the time to debate the issues prior to September 10th. I remember a time about 40 years when there used to be debates with the candidates for mayor during the primary season and general election cycle. It was co-sponsored by the media organization in town
such as The Middletown Press, The Hartford Courant, WCNX Radio-AM 1150 now WLIS/WMRD & Comcast. It had the "Face The State" format in which the panel was comprised of two reporters from the two newspapers, a news reporter from WCNX would moderate the debate and Comcast would air it live either from their studios or from a location in Middletown. It is a shame that two of the people who are running for Mayor are declining to debate one another and this shows a true lack of discussion of the issues along with a total disregard of why this country was founded in 1776 and why we won the Revolutionary War for independence. I guess candidates for public office cannot be bothered.
From my experience running the Westfield Residents Association's Meet the Candidates Forum for the last 7 years, campaigns make decisions all the time about what forums to attend or not to attend. There are always more requests than any candidate can accept, so an inability to attend shouldn't immediately be viewed as a slight. With only 2 weeks to go until the primary, schedules have been full for some time now, and a last minute request for an event has little hope of coming together, no matter the good intentions of the planners.
The WRA has been ignored or rejected by all kinds of candidates for state, federal and local offices, and so our forum doesn't depend on having everyone. It runs anyway because the event isn't for or about the candidates, it is really about giving the voters one more chance to meet whomever shows up. To conclude that a candidate can't be a leader because he or she already has a fully engaged campaign schedule is an unfair accusation with no real merit. Our State Representative Rosa DeLauro has been to several of the WRA's forums, but she was unable to attend in 2018. No one would accuse her of being an unfit leader because she was already scheduled for multiple events that evening.
I will say that your story seems to be missing some critical details - who was going to moderate the event? How was it going to be advertised? Where was it going to be held? What was the planned format? No campaign with a full schedule would ever consider dropping a confirmed event for a vague suggestion of some debate that wasn't organized down to the smallest detail. That's not an insult, it's just how it works. It takes weeks of coordination and effort to pull that kind of event together, and frankly, there isn't enough time to pull it off well at this point. I was asked on the 8th of August if the WRA would host a "meet the democratic candidates for mayor" forum, and one of my primary reasons for saying no was because I didn't have the time to plan it and pull it together before the 10th of September.
So your enthusiasm and ideology is solid, but the practical details matter too. You had an idea, but just a little late in the game and it didn't work out. You can't take it personally, nor can you accuse any candidate of being unqualified because his or her schedule didn't match yours. You have no chance of being taken seriously in the future as an impartial, legitimate, and independent public forum if you continue to insist that your proposed event should have dominated all others already scheduled.
Don't be discouraged, though! The WRA's Meet the Candidates Forum is Monday, October 28th at 7pm. All of you are invited to work with me to put on the event. I'd be delighted for your youthful energy and the opportunity to pass along what I've learned.
Sorry - Rosa DeLauro is our Congresswoman, not State Representative.
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