Subsections below:
I. First: Some side
stories, and an important set of limitations
The Charter Study
Commission elections
My work life (as
relevant to the Dem stuff) during fall 1995, and afterward
Some personal
eccentricity imposing on the campaign group from “outside,” and my herewith observing
some limits on revealing this
II. The start of the
“band” doing its thing
[I am trying to avoid lengthy time producing this series,
such as it took to get out a series in the spring, and shove this series out, while election season doesn’t last forever
(though it may seem like it). Any mistakes below, I’m sorry; will try to fix. Edits 9/26/13. More edits 9/27/13, including important ones between asterisks. Another edit 9/28/13. Edit 9/30/13. More edits 10/5/13, including important ones between asterisks. Edit 10/15/13.]
I. First: Some side
stories, and an important set of limitations
The Charter Study
Commission elections
One of the “veins” of activity running through my, and
certain other Dems’, lives in 1995-96—which now almost seems hard to believe,
as to the fact that I even did it or certain others in the Dem group did it—was
our participation in the Charter Study process that went on in Vernon Township
from 1995 to 1997. With this, the township government slowly, through a
deliberate, careful process, changed from elected township committee (TC) and
township administrator who was on the “weak” side, to a “strong” manager plus
elected township council, with no elected mayor.
In very recent years, Vernon Township had another change of
government when a referendum was put on the ballot (after a petition was
circulated to gather signatures) in 2010, and this was approved by voters in
November 2010. The form of government we changed to was nonpartisan, and
involved initial elections held in (I believe) May 2011. Then the council and
mayor were elected, to start their terms; and terms among the different council
members were staggered (some of the first would serve two years, some would serve
four, to start a process where eventually every individual would serve four
years, but different subsets of the council—two or three at a time—were elected
in alternately biannual elections [2013, 2015, etc.]). After 2011, subsequent
elections, starting this year, would only (I think) be in November (since, as I
definitely know, primary elections—which are inherently for choosing candidates
from each of the standard parties—were now not needed for the new, nonpartisan
form of the township council and mayor).
The new form, as just said, involved directly electing the
mayor, and to some extent the mayor would assume some of the power of what had just-previously
been a “strong” township manager, which had been part of the form the township
had since early 1998. The new form of the manager was reduced to one serving a
little more in deference to the elected mayor, and in concert with a township
council, all of whose members were elected. The general fact of all these
members’ being routinely elected was supposed to support the cause of
accountability to the voting public.
Also, previously, from 1998 through 2010, township council
members were voted on, and a mayor was selected from among them by their vote. And the mayor had not been
quite as strong as the township manager.
This is all to explain what the government was changed to
starting with newly elected members in 1998, following November 1997 elections.
With our current form, only about two years old, people might have forgotten
the immediately preceding form. And *the form prior to 1998*, of course, had been in place
since at least the 1970s. (End note 1.)
When the Charter Study matter came up in 1995, this was a
rather radical undertaking in Vernon
Township politics. And
the process we undertook was actually quite elaborate and deliberate, taking a
few years, which was proper given what serious business was being done.
It isn’t my intention to explain this in great detail, but
to show in general terms what was afoot with the Charter Study matter in the
mid-1990s, and to explain how we newly organized Democrats got involved. Why
the matter started in the first place is hard for me to explain without
research, but it seems to me a Steve Imbarrato, who had previously served on
one of the township boards and maybe had run for township committee (and had
also done news-reporting), spearheaded this, possibly in light of the heavy
controversy between the two factions among the Republicans I’ve alluded to.
Imbarrato eventually ran for the Charter Study Commission, and was elected in
fall 1995.
The way the Charter Study Commission (CSC) was pursued was,
first, petitions were circulated for (1) asking people whether they wanted a
Charter Study to be done, and (2) for
naming individual candidates to serve on the commission if the plan for having one
perform its function was approved. Each petition had to get umpty-ump
signatures. Now, as I’ve explained in Part 1 and Part 2, the Vernon
Democrats were coalescing as a force in town as the party hadn’t been for some
time (at least in so large and concentrated and coordinated a group), and
somehow among us, the idea came up for some of us to run for Charter Study as
well. So what ended up happening is that, on the ballot for the November 1995
election, there were both the question of “Should we do a Charter Study?” and a list of 13 candidates for the commission. At least six of them
were Republicans, and there were five of us Democrats (theoretically able to
fill the five seats of the planned Charter Study). I’m a little sketchy here,
but this is essentially the way five Democrats ended up running. It was almost
a lark on our part, though one or so of us was/were more serious about doing it
than the others were. Democrat Chris Wyman, in particular, was keen on it—as if
(in his view) we would be remiss as Democrats not to try to take part—while the
situation with me and Chris Rohde was almost exactly this: she said she’d run
if I would run. I said OK, so we did.
Another thing that would have been more confusing for the
public than it should have been is that the
Charter Study was not supposed to be a partisan matter—that is, it wasn’t
true that candidates had to be selected on
the basis of party, and there certainly was no good argument to make that
people in Vernon should elect five Democrats over Republicans, for whatever
value the party identity could be supposed to bring (even if it was secondary to
some other qualification). In fact, I remember saying to one or more of the
other Dems that (even though we obviously got our petition filled with signatures,
and accepted by the Board of Elections, as a group [End note 2]) we shouldn’t be campaigning as a group—and I remember saying this to one of the news reporters
who interviewed me (among the other candidates) for the possible CSC. In fact,
I think this point was included in what was published of the interview with me.
And in fact, I purposely did not pursue much of a campaign
for myself, other than allowing two newspaper interviews, and maybe mailing out
a few fliers to people in my voting district. I thought that the whole CSC
matter was serious enough, and was enough not
a thing related to political party, that I deliberately lay very low in terms
of campaigning. (This was a different rationale than how the Kraus & Crotty
campaign in 1996 was handled, which I’ll get to.) And it could be argued, by
such a person as Wyman—who was keen on doing the CSC thing—that he implicitly helped
get signatures for me by the petitions' including all our names together, as was
technically allowed (End note 2). And
I think the top five who ended up winning, who were all Republicans, may have
done the same thing (at least in numbers of maybe two or three).
Meanwhile, Chris Wyman in particular could hypothetically have
felt I was a bit of a fink for not campaigning too vigorously after he had
helped me get signatures to be on the ballot. In any event, he came in sixth in
the election—that is, immediately under the five who won, which was pretty good
for a Democrat (especially as one or more other Republicans, who lost, got
fewer votes than he). (This notion of “finkiness” works both ways: I myself
wanted to run a modest, judiciously-toned race for CSC, to the extent I did.
But I felt that Wyman, who was busier with his campaign, used a tone that was
inappropriate—a sort of “let’s have a revolution” tone, which I was a bit
embarrassed by. Anyway, since he got a few hundred more votes than I did,
perhaps people preferred his tone. Which, to me, proves that my strategy to
assert we Dems for CSC shouldn’t be running, or considered, as a group was
correct and in good taste.)
Of the 13 candidates, I came in 11th. I’ll put it
this way: the top five got, in reverse order, from 1,691 votes down to 1,423
votes; Wyman got 1,242 votes. The person who got the lowest amount of votes of 1,000
or more was Chris Rohde (coming in 10th) at 1,113; I came in
immediately after her, at 760 votes. The guy with the lowest got 506.
In any event, if in our part in this Charter Study race we
Dems (at least, those like Chris Rohde and myself) were biting off more than we
could chew, I think we could well have been. This certainly was true for me (in
retrospect; but I haven’t really regretted not winning; in fact, what I saw of
how the CSC functioned in 1996 was pretty satisfying to me). Having done such a
race once, I don’t really regret having done it; but if I was offered the
chance to run for that sort of thing again, I wouldn’t do it with a slew of other
stuff going on such as was happening in fall 1995, including my helping the
Burrell and Conklin race, and my own full-time editorial job at the time.
Once we Dems ran in 1995 and didn’t get elected to the CSC,
that was it for us regarding the CSC. (I did attend some of its meetings.) However,
the five people elected (four men and one woman), on the mandate of voters’
also saying yes to a study, meant that the new, time-limited CSC had to work
throughout 1996 to come up with recommendations on whether to change the
government, and if so, to what and why. They would present a report in late
summer, and a question would be on the ballot in fall 1996 for changing the
form of government. Then, whatever was decided, new members of the newly
defined township council would have to campaign and be voted for in 1997. They
wouldn’t take their seats in the new form of government until 1998. (The actual
public vote on the CSC proposal was 5,406 to 2,847, according to the November
6, 1996, New Jersey Herald article mentioned in End note 1.)
Incidentally, one last remark on the CSC: when James Kilby,
who also was the top vote-getter for the CSC, became elected mayor *(in a separate election, in 1997, from that for the CSC)*, starting
his work in January 1998, it seemed—from a number of subtle indications—to be
his politically biased idea that Democrats shouldn’t be worked into the fabric
of things in Vernon as much as our Dem group had been (which was mainly in
floating candidates and campaigns, with a certain power and, thank goodness, a
level of public assent). This bias of his, I think, preconditioned—among other
things (such as, I think, Dems’ being appointed, per ordinance, by new TC
members to fewer, or less-sensitive, board and commission seats)—his rather
finky and boob-ish handling of me and the Environmental Commission matter of
early 1998. There were also, as I recall, high-handed moves by him regarding other parts of the government (such as
his acting in a way not advised by the Planning Board’s secretary and/or the
township administrator).
Some of this should be in the blog series for which this entry is Part 1; once opening it on my other blog, search for “Kilby.” But this
whole area, which deserves a more nuanced look (and actually in a narrow sense runs
beyond the 1994-96 Dem story), has to be held off.
My work life (as
relevant to the Dem stuff) during fall 1995, and afterward
I had mentioned an editorial job in fall 1995. This opens
another area of my life that actually changed the texture of how I functioned
in the Dems for a good while, and which will definitely shape my story of fall
1996. When I was with the fall 1994 campaign, and then helped the club get
itself going in the first several months of 1995, I was still working at
MetLife. This temp work ended in May 1995, and then I was without steady work
for the summer. That was an anxiety-provoking time, and I went on unemployment
in about July 1995, which became a highly complicated process in its own right,
due to an initial denial, and my appealing, and associated jazz. My
money-earning life—whether from highly sporadic freelance stuff in mid-1995, or
from unemployment benefits—was inconsistent that year, and my receipt of
unemployment benefits was at risk of needing to be repaid if I lost an appeal;
and the whole mess was anxiety-provoking. Especially in light of the sheer
fumbles of the Sussex County branch of the unemployment office, it actually led
me to be hesitant to seek unemployment benefits again, I think until (as
circumstances inspired it) 2003.
The point is, when you do this sideline political stuff as I
did with the Dems, you had best have a pretty stable work situation going on.
This not only helps your peace of mind regarding bills, but tends to provide a practical
bulwark to limit the way the Dem activity can leach into your life. If that
doesn’t seem entirely clear, people who’ve done this stuff might understand.
The bottom line here is that, by September 1995, when the
fall campaign got underway, I was a bit of a basket case regarding my
money-earning life, so it was just as well that my role in the regular TC 1995
campaign was not quite as full and spontaneous, I suppose, as it was in 1994.
(In fact, as I found recently, I had actually, formally, resigned from my Secretary--officer--post in the club in September 1995, but I would still be tapped to do recording-secretary work for it in its meetings.) But then the CSC thing got going, maybe in September also, and maybe initially
I thought I had the freedom to deal with it. But then I got a temporary
editorial job with Reed Reference Publishing, which started in mid-October, and
this would continue until March 1996. This job became so oddly stressful and
anxiety-provoking in its own right—because of the nature of the heavily
pressing work and certain weird personality issues posed by some fellow temps
there—that this only added to a sense of my having “a lot of things packed into
my schedule” in later fall 1995. That helps explain why I handled the CSC thing
as modestly as I did, and why I was rather satisfied with a limited role during
the Dem campaign for TC.
This all may not seem so remarkable, but it sets up an
important prelude for the 1996 story. Once the Reed Reference job ended in March
1996, I didn’t really have much freelance stuff going for several months. And I
didn’t start unemployment again in 1996. From March until November, I was in a
financially worse condition than anytime since 1989, which means bad. And in fact, having the Dem stuff in
1996 gave me some structure that was “consoling” in a way, while I felt hanging
by a thread money-wise.
In 1996 I got some freelance work, from Montage Media (I was
employed directly, not through an agency, and wasn’t considered a “temp”). But
this was tremendously sporadic. The people there were generally nice, but they
only used me when they needed me, which was fairly rarely through 1996. This,
incidentally, is why I am generally hesitant to say my freelance career started
in 1996; in a very thin way it did, but it only really got going (in a
constellation of different work commitments) where I could earn a sort of
living wage in 1997.
Further, in November 1996, I got an offer to start work as a
part-time copy editor with North Jersey Newspapers. This was a godsend at the
time. The Dem activity in fall 1996, while rewarding in some ways and an
exercise of healthy responsibility to and mutuality with others, reached a
state where I had to cut off from being so involved in the group. This was for
reasons of indignation as well as my own priorities, and, importantly, a sense
of what was happening to the group. The North Jersey
job came along at the right time to give me a “hook” to latch onto to start
minimizing my involvement in, and in a sense my emotional dependence on, the
Dems.
Why the group soured happened in concert with it also
opening up a remarkable opportunity to me: I became the de facto manager of the
Kraus & Crotty campaign of that year. There actually was a named campaign
manager in 1996, Chris M. (I only recently rediscovered her last name), but as
it happened—as was fine by us in the ad hoc campaign group—she did little other
than arrange a couple parties/group events, which she was good at. The
financial/clerical, media-negotiating, and other highly technical campaign
stuff, which I was inevitably more familiar with than Chris M. (who only came
to our group that fall), was done by me, making me that much more the campaign’s
manager.
Not only did I have this role, but my practical work for the
campaign became so voluminous that I was doing it virtually full-time the last
two weeks or so of the campaign. At no pay.
Dick Conklin and Dan Borstad were deliberately absent from
running the campaign. Chris Rohde, on the other hand, was back in as a media
(flier, ad) writer, whom I employed (and paid) as a freelance contractor. Thus,
except for Chris M. (who arranged a “coffee,” a golf-“tournament” fundraiser,
and a equip-the-volunteers party in Pleasant Valley Lake), the essential people
running the campaign were myself, the candidates John Kraus and Ginny Crotty,
and in a sense Chris Rohde. You could say that, after the Dem campaigns
comprised a larger couple of “rock bands” respectively in 1994 and 1995, there
was now a band of “four” members: three regular members, and two alternates for
a fourth member, Chris Rohde and Chris M., the former of whom did more for the
performances on the public-media stage.
By the way, as in 1995, the group had funding largely from
Charlie Cart funneling money in from his role in the county Democratic
committee. The total was less than that spent in 1995 (1996 was $6,000+, but 1995’s
amount was over $11,000; more details to come). Charlie would sense there was a
different tone and consistency to the 1996 effort in Vernon Township
than in 1995, but he couldn’t, as a matter of the circumstances, understand
why. Thank goodness he got us money to work with.
Some personal
eccentricity imposing on the campaign group from “outside,” and my herewith observing
some limits on revealing this
I have to say I am proud of how the 1996 campaign worked
out, and I am quick to admit that I would not have found myself in the role I
did in 1996 if it weren’t for my more subservient role in 1994 and 1995. But
there were a number of problems that dogged the functioning of the 1996 campaign,
which sometimes were related to a serious health issue (not of myself), were sometimes
rather absurd or irritating, and were (at least once) quite comical. These
problems largely emanated from one person who sat on the sidelines (not John
Whiting! or any other non-Dem in town), and I am in a situation where I don’t
want to reveal too much about what this person did (or who it was), but you
can’t hear the story about the 1996 campaign—which is worth telling—without my
saying something about this problematic person.
Another problem we faced is that this was a three-party
race: two seats on the TC were open—one of which was for a full term, and one
of which was for the last year of an unexpired term that had been filled by
Paulette Anderson (elected in 1994), who suddenly tendered her resignation from
her seat on the TC—and these were opted for by three sets of people: two
Republicans, *John Logan* (for the three-year) and *Ira Weiner* (one-year), two Democrats
(Kraus for the three) and Crotty (for the one), and two “Independents” (two
that would otherwise have run as Republicans, *Heinz Sell* for the three-year,
Dennis Miranda for the one). *Especially notable, Heinz Sell was an elderly local
resident who had long written letters to the editor of various papers and had
attended Vernon Township meetings (and videotaped the proceedings!), who in his
running for the three-year seat would probably have wanted to be understood to be a Republican, though he was not affiliated with the other (labeled) Republicans running.* (End note 3) He has since died; he was a rather droll character; I
didn’t mind him so much.
It should be obvious that it’s hard to strategize a message
when three sets of people are running (leaving aside Mr. Sell, who, to my mind, was
definitely a dark horse and one would have thought was not widely popular; he was a sort of affable crank
who inadvertently added some color to the race).
How I approached this issue—what our message was to be—had a
couple of roots/rationales, and I don’t think this approach was unwise at
first. But later, both Dick Conklin and Dan Borstad—speaking to us campaign
group in a club meeting after the election—criticized us for our message,
particularly as it came out over the radio ads, which in typical (previous
years’) frequency and nature had been run so hot and heavy in the last two or
so weeks. Dan in particular said the ads should have focused on specific
issues.
What Dick and Dan didn’t realize—and which made for
something of an absurd situation, particularly with an accusation one of them made
about who had written the ads—is that the people who wrote the ads, with the
assent of at least one of the candidates, were not who D and D thought they were,
and these actual writers decided not to use an idea that I myself had sketched out on
a specific town issue. One ad idea of mine was the “town center,” which has
indeed (since then) been an issue in town (intermittently) through the past decade-plus.
My tone may seem to be bitter here; but when we get to a
more nuanced, and humorous, picture of the 1996 campaign, you’ll see why, I think,
the way it was decided not to use any issue-based content for the radio ads is
worth a post-mortem 17 years after the fact. And it has to do with the way
local campaigns can sometimes be hindered by their own enthusiastic supporters,
not so much my specific idea for an ad.
But this story also touches on the inroads of personal
eccentricity that were made, by one person, on communications within our group,
which is, as I said, an area I want to limit talk on in this blog series. (Update 10/15/13: A statement about this person that is pretty thorough in its general considerations, but limited in important ways, and that gives credit where it's due, will appear within entry 7, subpart A, on my "Jersey Mountain Bear" blog.)
II. The start of the
“band” doing its thing
As I recall offhand, there was something tired and a little
half-hearted about how the Dem club carried on with its regular monthly
meetings in early 1996. As the year went on, the meetings definitely had fewer
attendees; to some extent, we wondered whether we were so much a going concern
for that year, or what was left of the year. For my own part, the year before,
I didn’t mind being a busy support to the
club, which I felt somehow could “keep more honest” than a fall campaign;
but it had still seemed the premise, at least among some, that the club was
really about the fall campaign—according
to this premise, the club in at least some of its activities “anticipated” and
would, in due time, rigorously support the campaign. This premise seemed more
obvious by about spring 1996. So, in a sense, it seemed that we could really
only work up Dem enthusiasm with the group meeting through the year if we had
another campaign for fall 1996.
Of course, the CSC was doing its study, and it was obvious
that if it concluded Vernon should change its form of government, then the fall
1996 elections would somehow seem anticlimactic: a new form of government would
require new elections for the TC to take place in 1997, for the new form of
government to start operating in 1998.
John Kraus came to some of our meetings in about spring,
maybe even earlier in winter, 1996. I remember he talked at some later point
about having helped out the campaign group in 1995, and I couldn’t remember
when this was. Strangely, he got some intriguing/positive impression of the
Dems from the 1995 campaign, but hadn’t really been around when we had done our
regularized stuff earlier in 1995. Therefore, he had little impression of me,
when I was still among the attendees in 1996. Then, in fact, when I became so
key to the 1996 campaign, he seemed skeptical of me, a point I’ll definitely
return to.
But anyway, he readily agreed (at Dick’s suggestion, in good
part) to become one of our candidates for the 1996 election, for a three-year
seat on the TC to start serving in January 1997. As I said, a second seat on
the TC opened up when Republican Paulette Anderson offered her resignation from
the TC, leaving a year on her term to be filled. Ginny Crotty became our
candidate for that slot, I forget exactly when; but she had been an attendee of
some of our meetings, and it wasn’t too hard to get her interested. Also,
interestingly, she had been a registered Republican, but she didn’t like what
the Republicans were doing in town. I think she was still a Republican when she
agreed to be our candidate, then she quickly worked with the Board of Elections
to change her party affiliation, a technically easy (and legal) thing to do, if
done within a certain timeframe. (Clarification: In New Jersey, changing party affiliation is about as simple as registering to vote. For purposes of being in the party of your choice for being listed on a ballot, the deadline is something like 50 or 60 days prior to the election. If interested, check with your local Board of Elections.) Ginny, incidentally, had little or no skepticism
about me during the fall 1996 campaign—in fact, she would be one of the very
most supportive colleagues in what came to be a rather stormy campaign-operating
situation in October-November 1996.
So we ended up entering the fall season with a little
“band”—Ginny, John, myself, and as it would happen starting in September, Chris
Rohde. But a sudden twist was put on things: announcing this in about August, Dick
Conklin decidedly would sit out this campaign. I’ll return to that whole issue,
including as it was tied to John Kraus’s attitude toward me, in the next entry
(but I will observe some limits). [Update 9/28/13: One consequence of Dick's not being centrally involved in the campaign was that John would not be as grounded as he could have been in Vernon issues, as would have been apropos to debates and such in the campaign. This will be further looked at in a subsequent part of this series.]
Chris M. was suddenly in the mix, and I never knew how she
joined us, i.e., who invited her. I don’t know if she attended any of our
meetings, before about August 1996. She was a nurse by profession, and her
husband was someone in the administration at Great American Recreation or some closely
related company. Before you say, Aha!,
I have to note, very quickly, that she—as good-natured as she was—turned out
even less effective as a “manager” than John Whiting had been a sort of
organizer in 1994. But Chris M. did prove “key” regarding the GAR complex in
only one trivial way: it was she who, by her connections, could arrange a “golf
tournament” on the golf course associated with the Spa, which was among the
GAR-related properties, for the purposes of a fundraiser for the Dem campaign in, I think, September.
This fundraiser really didn’t net a lot (in fact, if it weren’t for the Sussex
County Democratic Committee's buying tickets, the fundraiser wouldn’t have made any money for us), and in general, she was certainly less important
to our financing than Charlie Cart would be. (She nevertheless donated, in an in-kind
fashion, to the campaign.)
But the weirdness of the “power” situation in the campaign
group largely lay in a pattern of behavior—which was fluid and yet in good part about
attitudes—that involved impressions made on John Kraus. It’s important to
remember that as a dynamic operation that brought results for John and Ginny by
means of quite Spartan resources—notably by the standards of the Dem campaign
of 1995—I think the 1996 campaign was a success; and Chris Rohde and Ginny,
from their very different backgrounds, affirmed this to me. But there are
criticisms to make about how certain things went, and this isn’t merely my
being “crabby” in a surging way in the present year, but it will basically
reflect views (related to a specific sub-area of the campaign) that I’ve had
since 1996, with my tone only maybe a little sharper 17 years later.
Hopefully there will be one more entry (or two) on this blog
that will be the last on the mixed, but generally positive, experience I had
with the Vernon Dems in 1994-96.
##
End note 1.
I am speaking from my general knowledge. An article in The New Jersey Herald, “Vernon votes for
government change[:] Council-manager [proposal] passes by 2-1 margin,” by
Jessica Materna (November 6, 1996), says the Charter Study–based change in 1996
was the “first government change for the county’s largest and most populous
municipality since its move in 1983 to create the post of administrator.” I
can’t vouch for this latter fact, but it is plausible, and certainly it coheres
with the fact that we had a township committee for years before (and after)
then; the only change in the committee that I am aware of is that (per a
presumably rigorous political mechanism) it went from three members to five; I
don’t know when.
End note 2.
Different ones of us in the Dem group—if I recall—had
different copies of the petition, with all our names on it; each one of us got
different numbers of names, with the total allowing us five to be on the
ballot. This was allowed by the rules. I think a number of the Republicans did
the same thing, maybe groups of two or three, or such. If this still sounds a
little unacceptable, it is moot to the extent that when all the names appeared
on the ballot, the public was perfectly free to select whomever they wanted,
for a total of five (or even less than that).
End note 3.
In addition to my being forgetful after 17 years, it shows how weird the 1996 race was that Heinz Sell was the Independent running for the three-year seat. If you knew what a sort of offbeat gadfly he was to TC members in those days, you would have been surprised that he even thought he could win in 1996, much less would seem to the public a viable candidate for TC. And when you know what number of votes he ended up getting, you'd be even more surprised. My apologies to those on the side of Chris Fuehrer, for noting him as the three-year candidate. I think the reason I thought he joined with Dennis Miranda in this race is that the two of them were partners in various endeavors in township politics in those days.
End note 3.
In addition to my being forgetful after 17 years, it shows how weird the 1996 race was that Heinz Sell was the Independent running for the three-year seat. If you knew what a sort of offbeat gadfly he was to TC members in those days, you would have been surprised that he even thought he could win in 1996, much less would seem to the public a viable candidate for TC. And when you know what number of votes he ended up getting, you'd be even more surprised. My apologies to those on the side of Chris Fuehrer, for noting him as the three-year candidate. I think the reason I thought he joined with Dennis Miranda in this race is that the two of them were partners in various endeavors in township politics in those days.
