Letter to the Editor: Vote for Florsheim, Vote for Vision and Hope

Dear Editor,

The current election in Middletown offers us a great opportunity to continue and expand our town’s evolution as a diverse, progressive, family-friendly community in the heart of Connecticut. Ben Florsheim is a young man with energy, vision, excellent listening skills, compassion, and good instincts. I can imagine him, in partnership with a strong Democratic majority on the Common Council, guiding us together into an era of strong schools, a vibrant waterfront, progressive environmental policies, community resilience, a rich business environment, exciting arts, and a community that embraces and values all of its members.

That is the Middletown that I have loved for the past 40 plus years. This is the community that I have worked to make stronger, to bring together, to nurture – a community that has a regional reputation as a great place to live for people of all ages and backgrounds.

I want to keep it that way, and that’s why I’m voting for Ben and the democratic team.

I know Seb Giuliano and I like him. He is an educated man and a lover of arts and literature. We have that in common. We differ, however, on just about everything else – I think that Climate Change is a real thing that we owe it to our children to be actively preparing for. I think our schools, starting with pre-school, need to be supported if we want to continue to be a great community. I think that the most under-resourced members of our community deserve a helping hand from those of us who are more fortunate. I recognize the value that immigrants and refugees bring to our community and our country.

It takes a community to build a community. The negative tone that Seb and his proxies have injected into the campaign is really disturbing. The unsubstantiated innuendos, the fake stories dropped by campaign staff and consultants, the fuzzy inferences put out to fester doubt about his opponent and his team – it feels more like the strategy used by the Trump Administration than the way that we are used to being with each other here in Middletown. Seb may have done this job before, as he likes to say, but he was also voted out of office before – the mean spirit of his campaign should probably remind us why we chose not to re-elect him last time.

Let’s vote for Vision and Hope, for an energized and exciting future for Middletown, a future where we all work together in a positive way to make our town, and our world, a better place. Please join me in voting for Ben Florsheim on November 5.

Dic Wheeler