Showing that when a political
group’s resources are limited, making careful shots is key; and more generally,
that politics (as today) should be about possibility, not “ignorant armies
clashing at night”
[Prefatory note: This old story is not meant to address the recent
news in Vernon Township about the owners of Mountain Creek’s plan to build a
$120 million (per The New Jersey Herald, Sept. 24, front page) indoor waterpark/hotel, with essential help from a
stipulated “PILOT” (payment in lieu of taxes) local-tax arrangement with the
town (not exactly the type of project to greet, as a TC member, at first blush with a "Good plan!" or the like when you are expected to stand up for voters' interests). However, this entry, whose further relevance will become clear in a
future entry, tries to convey that effective and intelligent public debate on
crucial issues in a town like Vernon Township can be done in professional and
not excessively personally-defending ways, which admit there are a plurality of viewpoints. Also note: I am not taking any stand on the Mountain Creek plan at this time. A few minor edits 9/30/13 p.m. More edits 10/4/13. Edits 10/5/13, including important ones between asterisks. Edits 10/7/13, to second half of entry. Edit 10/9/13. Edit 10/16/13. Edit 10/18/13. Edit 10/20/13.]
Subsections below:
The primaries—in 1995 and 1996
Isolation of our ad hoc campaign group came into play
The division of labor
Involvement with the SCDC
Mass mailings—something useful in principle, and a focus of problems
here
A sharp complaint roils
things—based on a misunderstanding
The true substance of the
complaint was even more objectionable, and unrealistic
Financial facts of the campaign
Campaign staples—signs, debates…
John and I on “going cheap”—and his limited focus on specific issues
Next stop: radio ads
The primaries—in 1995 and 1996
Strangely, I neglected to talk
about the primaries, which had to be relevant to us Dems in each of the 1994-96
election years, because we were among the two standard parties, and primaries
required us to have our candidates be elected during the primary to be the
persons selected for their party on the November ballot. (There could be an
exception, as we’ll see.) So, for example, when Howard Burrell ran in the primary
in spring 1995, he won over any contenders for the available seat (actually,
there were two such seats), and hence was placed on the November ballot.
I know that in 1995 there was an itch to have
two candidates for the two seats, not just one, so a second candidate was
sought and located. I think that maybe Frank Sharkey was also on the ballot in
the spring, and was elected for one of the two TC slots that were open—that is,
elected as one of two Dem candidates that would be on the ballot in the fall.
But then he had to drop out in the summer, as I said in Part 3. Then,
following election law and the Sussex County Democratic Committee’s bylaws,
Dick Conklin was chosen as the second candidate, in a meeting of the Vernon Township
portion of the SCDC. (For 1994, the primary phase took place before I even got
involved with the Democratic group, but Howard and Bill Bravenboer were, I
believe, on the ballot in the primary, and got elected to be on the November
ballot. Few problems there.)
In 1996, I am sure John Kraus
was on the ballot in the spring (he would have had to have a petition signed,
with X number of signatures, to get on the ballot). He agreed to be our
candidate for what at the time was one three-year TC seat to be on the ballot
in November. I don’t think any other Democrats ran against him. When Ginny got
on, I’m not sure; it’s possible the Republican Paulette Anderson tendered her
resignation from the TC early in the
year, hence Ginny was initially chosen (by the Vernon Dems) to run on the June
ballot for her seat (to actually get on the ballot, she had to file a petition,
too [Update 10/18/13: Actually, normally this would have been the case, but...see immediately-next update.]). Hence, Ginny would have been elected in the primary to be on the ballot
in November, as had John. [Update 10/18/13: I had forgotten about this, but actually Ginny had run as a write-in for the primary, according to an article in The New Jersey Herald (May 12, 1996), p. B-6, which includes a sentence on her appearance at a county Democratic fundraiser MC'd by Charlie Cart: "The loudest round of applause came when Ginny Crotty of Vernon was introduced. Crotty recently switched from the GOP to run a write-in campaign for a one-year seat [i.e., the last year on an unexpired term for a three-year seat] on the Township Committee in the June 4 primary."]
This is all fairly routine
stuff; nothing sinister.
Where things started getting
complicated for us in 1996 was when the “Independents” started running. Because
“Independents” don’t run in primaries (under current state law), the two who
eventually ran in 1996 weren’t on the ballot in June (a technical detail:
people in New Jersey can, today, declare in their voting registration that they
are “Independents”; but more often in New Jersey, “independent” when used by
rank-and-file voters means that they are unaffiliated with either major party,
and hence they can’t vote or run in primaries). They had to have circulated and
gotten signatures on petitions to be on the November ballot, and I would
suspect (though I’m not 100 percent sure) that as registered Republicans (which
I know one of them was), they were technically allowed to run as “Independents”
in the fall.
Also, it was easy to see that
the two who ran as Independents in 1996—*Heinz Sell, whose political affiliation was not hard to divine, and the other being someone, Dennis Miranda, whose association with the township's "rebel Republicans" was clear enough (End note 1)*—were really of the “rebel Republican”
school of thought in town, and it wasn’t hard to suspect that they thought they
would have some advantage by virtue of (1) the fact that they were running
outside the category of either the usual Republicans or us Democrats, and (2)
the not-unlikely notion on their part that because they were known names, they
could have an edge. But in a way it was more obvious (to us Dems) that they
made a race for all three groups rather hard, because it’s hard to strategize
messages when you have three groups like that.
They first appeared on the scene
probably in about August—they would have needed to have petitions signed (by
sometime in September, I think) to get on the ballot in November.
It would be interesting to know
the order of some things in mid-1996, but as with a number of other things from
this period, I know the fall stuff
better, partly because it was more dramatic. Anyway, the spring “drama” doesn’t
matter a whole lot.
There was talk in the Dem club
(by maybe late June) about whether to have a fundraiser in the summer, I think.
In 1995, there certainly was a summer fundraiser—a big picnic at Dick’s house,
for which a huge amount of food was made (including Dick working in his kitchen
until about 4 in the morning). To this event, a huge array of people
came—including those supportive of Howard (as from 1994), various friends of
Dick’s from the various corners of his life, and probably an array of Democrats
behind our effort who weren’t in these other two categories. It was quite an
affair.
It was notable that not only was
there no great idea for an equivalent fundraiser in 1996, but it was
realistically seen that no way could you try to get a huge number of people as
had come in mid-1995. (I seem to recall that Chris Rohde spearheaded a
yard-sale-type affair, but I forget what year that was.)
Anyway, by August 1996, Dick
announced, in somewhat somber or “renouncing-mood” tones, in a small meeting (I
forget whether it was an official club meeting) of some of us Dems that he
wouldn’t be helping run the campaign in 1996. “This is your campaign,” he assured John (and maybe Ginny was there too).
There was something a little odd about this announcement, but I didn’t know at
the time about a certain health crisis Dick had had earlier that season. I keep
the nature of this private, but it would prove to be the focus of a rather
unacceptable bit of communication by another during the campaign.
Dick also announced that there
was not enough money in the club account to start the campaign’s bank account
(which latter was required for us to be able to report, as necessary, to the
state). We would simply have to wait for donations.
I forget when people were named
to the various “offices” of the campaign—such as treasurer (which, quickly
enough, I was named to) or manager (which would be Chris M.), but as soon as a
viable campaign group was together, the idea of the fundraiser came back up.
And this time it would be a golf “tournament.” I remember John saw this as a
promising avenue. I myself, not a golfer, wasn’t too keen on it, but I do seem
to recall, as part of the preparation for the event, going to the golf course
at what was called the Spa then, and helping set this up. I believe John was
with me at the time.
Then when it took place (in
September), I wasn’t there. There may have been a good reason why (probably it
tied to my freelance work). As I’ve said elsewhere, Chris M. was instrumental
in getting some special arrangement with the Spa management that would let it
happen.
I would find out later that, if
it wasn’t for the Sussex County Democratic Committee’s buying 10 tickets
(without the putative “buyers” of these attending), the golf tournament would
have made nothing for us after
expenses. A number of people attended, but I guess the golf course took a hefty
enough share as a fee that it basically absorbed all the money that the
attendees donated (i.e., had paid for tickets).
Isolation of our ad hoc campaign group came into play
There was an odd way that the
1996 campaign group was being cut off from the usual pillars of the Dem group.
I remember going to Dan Borstad, maybe looking for some suggestions of where to
get money to start our account, and he indicated that he wasn’t going to help
out so much this year. No money from him yet. (He would donate later, as it
happened [at an arm-the-helpers club meeting in October, I think], and it was
unexpected.)
The fact that Dan seemed to feel
as Dick did, though Dick’s reason seemed more personal, gave some suggestion
that each of them was right, based on some premise they maybe shared. But why
were they hanging back? The club had lingered on earlier in the year, and
candidates were chosen by the spring, and were to be on the November ballot.
Why the standoffishness? Did they somehow not have enough confidence in the
candidates?
I would, after a while, develop
a theory of my own on this, but for now, let me say a couple things about three
key men here:
Dan Borstad has always
struck me as a warm, generous local businessperson who has the will and ideas
to be a solid community leader. He is one of the best examples I have ever met
of the old-time Germanic or Scandinavian burgher who has achieved enough as a
homeowner and/or businessperson and paterfamilias that he is, in later life,
willing to go the extra mile and support some honest local-political endeavor, especially
over a sequence of years. Even in the many years since, when I encounter him in
town, he’s ready with a warm handshake and seems never to have developed a
reason to have a grudge against me. He not only supported Democratic causes in
town, but he was elected to, and served on, the TC by 1992. One year, I think,
he was mayor, when that office was selected by the TC. Whatever extent people
have misunderstood (or assumed) he was in thrall to some interest like Great
American Recreation or Gene Mulvihill, he always occupied a position of wanting
to support an underdog party in town in a sort of ceaselessly idealistic way.
(In fact, as shows he wasn’t a benighted patsy of GAR or of Mulvihill, his son
Sigmund—who died in 2012 at about age 52, and whom I remember a bit from his
time at the Vernon high school in 1976—had had a skiing accident on GAR’s
slopes back in the 1980s, and had been bound to a wheelchair since. The
Borstads had sued GAR over this; I forget what the outcome was.)
Dick Conklin has long
been a friend; he is a lifelong resident of McAfee,
N.J. (a subsection of Vernon Township).
He met my mother in 1982 when she was seeking to buy a new car, then he dated
her for a time. He attended my college graduation in Washington, D.C.,
in 1984. Not that he would deliberately seek recognition for such things, but
he helped financially support the education of the children of a family in Pine Island, N.Y. [or they may be in the small town of Florida, N.Y., which is a little further into Orange County, N.Y.], just
over the state border from Vernon.
He worked at various local jobs such as an eatery in McAfee many years ago, but
as a main support of his adult life, he worked at G&T, an auto parts store, and [important addition 10/20/13] even owned it for a period (after buying it from its original owners), in Warwick,
N.Y.; his total tenure there, as I understand, was about 25 years. He has
been involved with such groups as the Rotary or the like, and has gotten involved
in numerous other community groups or ad hoc projects. He is the sort to have
met many people in all sorts of contexts in the local region, hence his ability
to get a variety of people involved in the Dems in 1994-95 (including ones who
might not normally have been involved with a Democratic group in town).
John Kraus, one of the
1996 candidates, a few years older than I, was a teacher working in, I believe,
Union City, N.J. I don’t remember exactly how long he had lived in
Vernon (it might have been about 13 years), but he lived in the Pleasant Valley Lake subsection, and with a
regional appeal that often has happened with a Vernon TC candidates, he attracted
a lot of support from that community—PVL, for short. He had three young kids, I
think it was, and was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, but of the sort who had
developed his ideas on how such a party worked from the city areas of the
state—which would turn out to be a bit of a problem for us in 1996. He also had
a constellation of buddies with whom he had CB (citizen’s band) communication
during drive time to the city where he worked. He was a busy paterfamilias with
the idealism for certain things as teachers often have.
These sketches show that, when
Dick and Dan seemed to draw back from being as centrally involved in the 1996
race as they had been in 1994 and 1995, it was puzzling. John, for his part,
had committed to being a candidate, as had Ginny Crotty, who had long been
associated with Vernon
Township, first as a
summer resident (see Part 3 and Part 4 for some more facts on her). These two both needed some
campaign support.
(By the way, in about September
1996, I touched base with Bill Bravenboer, stopping by his home; he not only
had been one candidate in 1994 but had helped out the 1995 campaign, and this
time he distinctly didn’t want to get involved. There were one or two other
Dems in town, who had been part of the 1994 and/or 1995 campaigns, and they
were not available this time, either.)
And when the fall campaign
season started in September, running only about two months, it was like the
train leaving the station, and generally speaking, if you had thrown in your
lot as one of the candidates or main helpers, you had better hop on, fast. And the train would start running,
not only fast but on a sort of bumpy track—even becoming a sort of
roller-coaster.
The division of labor
Another baseline fact is that
everyone who gets involved in local politics, as I’ve seen—whether on the
campaign level or in serving in office—brings to that role whatever background
he or she has had as a paid professional. Especially when the political roles
in town are volunteer, you are not apt to do otherwise. So, for example, someone
from the insurance or financial industries will be focused (when serving on the
government) on financial/budget issues; someone from a real estate background
might be more focused on land-development or homeowner-interest issues; and so
on. From the media background myself, I could bring to the mix my knowledge
from how the media worked. And I knew just enough, especially about local
newspapers, that I would navigate getting the candidates’ ads in the
papers—even have them designed ahead of time—so the ads could reasonably be
expected to be most effective and timely. As far as the radio side of things
went, that wasn’t an area of my expertise—but this would be both relevant and
NOT relevant to the 1996 campaign, as we’ll see.
As the eight or nine weeks
between Labor Day and Election Day rolled on, it became clear that I—the
titular treasurer (whose most crucial role was filing reports to the state on
our handling of money and in-kind donations)—was the only one equipped to place
the print ads. Chris M., it would turn out, was key to the golf tournament
(i.e., in arranging it); she would also host a “coffee” at her house—to which
no one came (which wasn’t her fault)! Chris, the two candidates, and I were
there—I don’t think anyone else was! We’d tried to advertise it, but to no
avail, it would turn out.
And Chris would also buy all
sorts of catered food for a get-together at a clubhouse in PVL, to hand out
lawn signs and leaflets, and otherwise prepare whoever came—who all were mostly
from John’s home area of PVL. Chris paid for this food, and thus it was her
in-kind donation to the campaign.
Every other significant
managerial task in the campaign, I did. (I’m not being bitter.)
Perhaps the most controversial
decision I made, aside from the radio-ads issue to be recounted (which latter
was a non-issue on my part), was hiring Chris Rohde to design and write our
print ads (and some fliers and “palm cards,” which latter were her idea). This was controversial only
in terms of Dick later raising an issue over it—he not only seemed to object to
her being so involved, but he made a special point of objecting to my paying
her, on the ludicrous argument that she should not have been paid as a “volunteer”—but he was wrong, because I was
utilizing Chris as a freelance contractor, just as Dick had paid Paul Horuzy
for designing an ad in 1995 (and using, and bowdlerizing, some copy of Chris
Rohde’s, no less).
But having Chris on board was
fun. From the start, I was determined to have a strong hand in how she did the media
materials (a sort of natural tradeoff for her being paid). There was an initial
talk I had with Chris at her house about what I wanted to do. Then there was a
production session: I had Ginny on hand at Chris’s house (I don’t think John
came), where Chris worked on her computer while her two daughters, whom Chris
home-schooled, were busy with their independent studies. For hours one day, we
had one long session of working out the copy and the layout. Chris joked and
made Ginny laugh…this was a somewhat demanding (as well as fun) session, but it
resulted in work that a lot of deliberation went into.
The next step was paying for the
ad space in two newspapers, which I still have paperwork on. With Straus
Newspapers, we dropped off a mechanical (which Chris had made) that Straus
printed from. But with The New Jersey
Herald, the newspaper art department designed—or rather, laid out—the ad on their own equipment
(Quark, I think), following a design that had been hammered out with Chris
Rohde in her home. There were a lot of faxes sent to me (because of errors in
intermediate versions) for approval from the Herald.
For print ads in both papers,
John and Ginny had joined me at a photo studio and retail store (called Camera Haven) in the A&P plaza in Vernon—a place run by the
same man for about 38 years that recently, with some fanfare and public
recognition in the municipal building, closed its doors. John’s and Ginny’s
portrait photos were taken, for a variety of media items we’d have.
This was all good work of a kind
I like.
Involvement with the SCDC
One of the nice things about the
Sussex County Democratic Committee—which, incidentally, I was a member of from
1999 until about 2005 (End note 2)—is
that they got us involved in more statewide
Dem-related affairs, whether events, or a funding structure, or even seats on
the state Democratic committee. (Some members of the SCDC, I believe, would run
for this latter organization; I never considered it.) Charlie Cart, once he was
elected the SCDC chairman in 1995, managed to scout up some fundraiser event,
one of which was fun to go to—a dinner at Nazarro’s [sp?], a restaurant that
used to be in Sparta Township (it was demolished some years ago). It had a
catering loft on its second floor, and we Dems rented that and had a meeting
there, which wasn’t just for our getting together, but for our trying to raise
funds from whomever came and chose to donate (not just SCDC members). Charlie
had the same guy—I forget his name—who served as a “sergeant at arms,” who
signed people in at the door, or such. This man, who had a slight Addams Family
quality, gave the event a kind of slightly puzzling esoteric air.
In 1996, none other than James McGreevey came by, with some campaign operatives; he was running for
governor of the state (for the first time [update 10/16/13: the race he first ran for governor was in 1997, when he lost against Christine Todd Whitman, in a close race, about 47 percent to 46 percent; he was doing some early stumping in fall 1996]; he would run again in about
2000 or so, from which term, after he won, he had his famous scandal concerning
his aide Golan Cipel). McGreevey seemed in 1996 like a man on the move; he had
a way of greeting people with a sharp presence of mind: when he met John Kraus
and his wife—John later voiced being quite impressed by him—McGreevey joked
about how, given the towns the couple had originally come from, John had
“married up.”
There was also some event that
Charlie Cart had at his house, where former governor Jim Florio spoke. I have a
news clipping from that event, which was in mid-October 1996. Just mentioning
it here because it shows how our little Vernon Dem group could get you entré
into seeming to run elbows with political glitterati.
Charlie, of course, was also key
to our (’96 campaign) funding, as I’ll indicate in a subsection below. He
disbursed a few different (hefty) checks. I remember him once coming to us few
Dems who were handing out leaflets in the Vernon A&P parking lot—a rare
time he would visit Vernon.
He drove a dark car (was it a Jaguar?) and, with his dark sunglasses, I thought
he could theoretically strike someone (who didn’t know him as, in Dem contexts,
quite a nice guy) as almost a picture of a Jersey-style eminence gris—not with entirely positive connotations.
Also, when he delivered one of
our big checks (maybe it was at the A&P scene)—which, as the hectic
schedule had it (newspaper-ad bill had or would come up; or something else
needed payment), came not a moment too soon—he commented with light humor,
“Boy, you guys are really spending a lot of money here,” or such. I think it’s
true that Vernon Township had the mostly costly campaigns
in the county, certainly for the Dems. But I had nothing to hide from him—my
state reports would detail just how we spent our money. And in fact, the 1996
campaign would cost almost half what the 1995 one had.
Mass mailings—something useful in principle, and a focus of problems
here
Charlie recommended, for sending out our
mailings, a man who lived next-door to him who did bulk mailings. We took him
up on this—it definitely would save us money. Dick later raised an issue over
this—why didn’t we use the McAfee post office? (Dick apparently—as best as I
could infer—wanted to maintain favor with that P.O., as if he was partnering as
between local businessmen, in utilizing its business for mass mailings. I
thought this was a rather silly idea, when you know how the Postal Service
works.) Dick (at least one time, but I would think habitually) bought for his
mass-mailings first-class-postage envelopes at the P.O., which for mass
mailings is quite expensive. Bulk mailings cost about 66 percent of the
first-rate price, or thereabouts. A key aspect is that we didn’t have to affix
postage stamps—the mass-mailer would stamp them on, once our envelopes were
ready.
We had mailing labels from the
Board of Elections to affix to the envelopes, and fliers to put inside.
Anyway, what was crazy about the
mass mailings is that we had to deliver them all in two big sets, or such.
Somehow, the bigger numbers made the deal more palatable or actionable in a
business sense for the bulk-mailer. So Ginny, John (?), and I stuffed
envelopes—hundreds, maybe thousands. It was crazy.
To wet the adhesive on the envelopes, I used my tongue for a while (!), then
switched to a sponge. It seemed to take forever.
Ginny had fewer than I did, and still probably found the task a bear. I
remember taking the many envelopes in several shopping bags, like so much
garbage.
A sharp complaint roils
things—based on a misunderstanding
The matter of how the mass-mailings
were handled was a particular focus of one of the craziest misunderstandings
within this campaign. A complaint was made to me—first issuing from John (but
not starting with him)—about why we
weren’t using the “old Democrats”—and John’s point in particular seemed to be
regarding the mass mailings.
Sidebar:
Consider this as an immediate lightning-like issue, symbolizing some of the
worst communications going on, but not the very worst there was in that campaign.
Imagine how this occurred in the press of business, when the mass-mailing task
was a crazy bottleneck for a few of us: “Why aren’t we using the old
Democrats?”—conveyed in a relatively snappish manner by John (or if the
snappishness didn’t come from him, then it would certainly be evident as from
Dick). What did he mean? As John would clarify, The elderly people who were stuffing envelopes in the garage (last
year)! At some later point I’d hear (from John and/or Ginny): “Dick wanted
to know why aren’t we using the old Democrats!” (So this had come from Dick.) Only
later would I understand what was meant by “old Democrats”—thus John (and
Ginny) had been misled on what Dick meant by this—and it didn’t mean the
elderly envelope stuffers.
I seem to recall that I was
irked over how much of a tedious, voluminous task it was stuffing and sealing
all those envelopes. This, plus how it ate into my time—while the whole reason
for doing the mailings this way was to save
money—made it especially irksome to me that John seemed to find it a
significant fault that I wasn’t using the “old Democrats” for this. This was
crazy.
When I later looked into what
the “old Democrats” issue was about—the complaint was offered (in a separate
communication, I think) by Ginny, too, surprisingly, though she probably made
hers with less pointedness than did John—John meant a slew of elderly people such
as John could remember seeing in Dick’s garage, like a small cadre of elves,
stuffing envelopes. Well, I didn’t have access to those sorts of people (though
Dick did). And why, in general, couldn’t we be doing some things differently,
anyway? Was everything in a campaign supposed to be done in a cookie-cutter
way?
But the lack of our army of
envelope-stuffers would turn out to be what John assumed was meant by a stark
criticism that Dick Conklin himself made, in an apparent private communication
with him, about why we weren’t using “the old Democrats.” This point of
grievance seemed to go hand in hand (as I would glean over time) with John’s
seeming to have assumed that a Democratic group in Vernon operated as it
classically did in the city areas, with a large group of people, as enthusiastic as
they were conformist and ready to do dog work. But the actual fact was that
this usually didn’t happen in Vernon, certainly not with the Democratic party;
and our particular situation was, if nothing else, bringing this into relief
(as a longtimer as myself would have seen). But this seemed to be something John
was slow to appreciate.
There is a series of illusions
that were at work here, and I want to unfold them carefully, because when you
had such a small group shouldering so much, the layering of misunderstandings
was all the worse, especially as the original complaint here apparently came in
such an irascible, tension-raising form.
As a sort of principle I myself
operated by, this party activity was done—by sheer facts, by circumstance—by a
small number of people enthusiastic enough to shoulder a lot of burdens. (I’d
seen the small Board of Ethics in 1993-94, and seen township government
business hundreds of times in the municipal building.) In all this relatively
small-scale area of affairs, and when the prevailing local party was
Republican, again, there was no “army-style” Democratic organization in Vernon. John seemed to
have gotten the impression that there was
from being in, and seeing, Dick’s 1995 campaign business. (And even if you
granted that old people had gotten involved with the group stuffing envelopes,
it still wasn’t that big a number of volunteers.)
Hence John was rather hot and
heavy, as I recall, with his ratcheted-to-me complaint about “Where are all the
old Democrats?” This initially seemed John’s way of balking at the ludicrously
tedious task of preparing the mass mailings—which I was certainly shouldering
with irritation (I forget whether he did some too; I think perhaps he did). But
this also seemed to reflect (as I would hypothesize) a broader sense of
dissatisfaction he had with how the campaign was proceeding, especially as
stoked—and “validated” to some extent—by a series of remarks from the sidelines by Dick.
(Ginny’s conveying the “old
Democrats” issue might have been her echoing John—I don’t think Dick made the same
blunt remark to her on this issue as he did to John.)
Before I address what Dick’s
real point was, I should add that John, other times, was quite an enthusiastic
fellow traveler, enjoying the fillip you could get from the manic campaign
situation, and being as ready as any candidate to step lively when needing to appear in events, etc. And more of a
demand was on his shoulders as he was working as a teacher at the time. But the
way he tended to give credence to some of Dick’s gripes would be part of a
broader problem, which I’ll touch on more later. And yet ironically, John
definitely would be enough alienated from Dick in a way that, once the campaign
was over, he took the lead in wanting the club meetings to start appearing (in
mid-November or maybe in December 1996) at a location outside Dick’s house for
the first time, hence the first post-election meeting was at a church in the
center of Vernon. (I’ll return to this point later.)
But even later—by maybe a couple
years or so—I would find that he was associating with Dick again, and John had not
been in touch with me in quite some time.
The true substance of the
complaint was even more objectionable, and unrealistic
[My apologies for repetitions of some points through the following, which is a function of how this was drafted. Maybe it actually helps you feel the annoyance I felt as recounted in this story; only, yours won't revisit you 17 years later, I think.]
Eventually I found what the real issue was, I forget from whom: by “old Democrats” Dick was talking about a number of the stalwart-type people (and mostly not elderly) who had helped out in the 1994 and 1995 campaigns. John had misinterpreted this, which was a little annoying in its own right (and Dick’s phrase had been quaint to the extent it had been misleading). Well, Dick’s issue, now clarified, was also annoying, in a different way. The reason some of the “old Democrats” were “not” involved was that they had chosen not to be. Bill Bravenboer consciously opted out. One or two (or more) others did. There definitely was a dropout of some of the enthusiastic 1994 and 1995 “members.” But some of the other “old Democrats” were still involved.
Eventually I found what the real issue was, I forget from whom: by “old Democrats” Dick was talking about a number of the stalwart-type people (and mostly not elderly) who had helped out in the 1994 and 1995 campaigns. John had misinterpreted this, which was a little annoying in its own right (and Dick’s phrase had been quaint to the extent it had been misleading). Well, Dick’s issue, now clarified, was also annoying, in a different way. The reason some of the “old Democrats” were “not” involved was that they had chosen not to be. Bill Bravenboer consciously opted out. One or two (or more) others did. There definitely was a dropout of some of the enthusiastic 1994 and 1995 “members.” But some of the other “old Democrats” were still involved.
Moreover, a set of “fresh blood”
came in, especially people John knew from his own community, Pleasant Valley
Lake. And I eventually
found, when I sat down to write a report, that we had as many people, roughly *25 (End note 3)*, helping the 1996 campaign as we had in the 1995 campaign. It’s just that
some who’d helped in the 1995 campaign dropped out, replaced by some new ones
in the 1996. This was actually what, I’ve generally thought, keeps political
groups healthy, the ability to attract new long-term members or occasional
helpers. I think I argued this in some forum, maybe the post-mortem meeting.
Without further looking at the tangle of “interpersonal oddness” that
was going on, this was how ridiculous it could get, that such a complaint could
both be beside the point and almost downright stupid, yet misleading such
central people as a candidate, and insulting the type of resourceful effort we
were making. Meanwhile, John was forming an opinion of his own along the
lines that he didn’t seem able to fully trust me. Once he observed to me that I
seemed to be organized in what I was doing (well, of course!). (I’ll return to
this point.)
On certain passing issues—such
as quite minor little stratagems to take—he would argue with me out of what seemed
like nothing so much as petty opinionatedness. He really did seem swayed by
Dick’s grumbling as if inclined to agree with Dick that I was somehow taking
the campaign afield of how it normally operated. And this when John’s knowledge
of our group, I found, seemed to be limited mainly to the relatively short
episode of the 1995 campaign—where he had indeed seen a host of “old
Democrats,” actually elderly sitting in Dick’s garage, stuffing envelopes like
good yeomen (they could just as easily have been knitting), which is why he put
stock in Dick’s growl about the “old Democrats” as he had. And John had not
been part of the regular-meeting club scene in much of 1995 (prior to the
campaign), nor had he been part of the 1994 efforts.
The problem on John’s part,
which I’ll look at more closely later, is that he seemed at first to think we
were the standard kind of Democratic party group as in the urban New Jersey
areas, a “party machine” affair, where as a local party leader you could scout
up, like a ready militia, people to hand out leaflets, people to stuff
envelopes—as if a standing army of Dems was always there. John seemed to think
he ascended to the deck of the “Big Ship Democrat” in coming to Dick’s small
country house one evening and beholding what a leader Dick seemed to have been, to
“command” the group that had gotten things swirling in fall 1995.
John seemed, probably modestly
at first, to think he would be a responsible party member to accept the
challenge of being a candidate for TC for the Vernon Democratic group (not to
say just the club, but the members of the party more widely) in 1996. This was
fine, even noble, on John’s part. Then, not least because of Dick and Dan’s
standoffishness, when the campaign group showed that it was definitely much
smaller than a city-style “party machine,” and that it could really be a small
ad hoc group, like a tiny band taxed with producing arena-sized concert
results, he seemed to be of two minds: I think he appreciated how much we few
were doing to keep the “little machine” working, but I think he also felt a bit
cheated. And (sometimes) he seemed to suspect me, as if I was making decisions
to somehow keep things running more modestly than they should have been. This
aspect I’ll definitely return to.
And how this latter could become
more of a “cause for jousting” from his side toward mine will become evident below.
But we will also look at our budgetary restraints, and how “running things
modestly” was quite inevitable in this situation. Given this, the question
became how much not to have a “typical party machine lobbing endless blasts for
its candidates, seeming to try winning via sheer volume,” but instead try to be
smart with what resources we had.
I should note that Ginny did not
feel at all as John did about being disserved, insofar as we didn’t act like a
city Democratic group—Ginny who had been a seasonal resident of the township
for, by her reckoning, about 30 years, and a permanent resident another 10. And
at the end of the campaign, Ginny told me (in a phone message, I think) that it
was because of me that the campaign had operated as well as it had, which was in
line with how she wasn’t sold on Dick’s bluster.
In fact, on the Monday before
Election Day, Dick contacted her and tore into her about something, and she was
so “stressed” already—and had seen enough of his weeks-long attitude—that she
blasted right back at him. That must have really shocked him, because as my
mother has well attested to, Dick gets to points where he has a solid bias
against women (and believe me, this is different from what you might gather
about me). So for Ginny to blast off at him the day before Election Day not
only showed courage on her part, but must have really turned his head around a
few times.
Financial facts of the campaign
I kept very good records of the
1996 campaign, for several reasons: I was responsible
for keeping good records, given the pell-mell nature of the activity; I was
proud of what we were doing; and I was also scared lest someone (as from the
news media, or from a state agency) question what we were doing with the money
passing through our hands.
Somewhere are copies of the
reports I filed with the state election commission [I did find them], which itemize expenses and
income, and were filed (per a legally outlined schedule) three or four times
during the campaign. But I also have a typed list of contributions, of both the
cash and the “in-kind” type (an “in-kind” contribution is some material other
than money—such as signs, buttons, or something else [with a monetary value]).
Below, I will mention only amounts of $100 or more, and I will show different
disbursements from the same entity only as totals (such as from the Sussex
County Democratic Committee [SCDC]). One donor, Chris M., the titular campaign
manager, donated $100 of in-kind material as far as food, etc., for one party;
I won’t give her surname, consistent with keeping it half-hidden elsewhere.
Money contributions:
$4,450 from SCDC (specific donors are named linked to certain
sub-amounts);
$500 from the Vernon Township Democratic Club (intake from the golf
“tournament”; the way this amount came about is ironic: the SCDC donated $500
in buying 10 tickets, but all other money taken in from ticket-buyers apparently
covered expenses of the event);
$250 from D & M Borstad (the company of Dan and Margaret
Borstad, no secret in town)
Total $5,200
(then with tiny amounts from two
people, the grand total of money is $5,250)
In-kind contributions (materials bought and donated to us by
others):
$819 from the SCDC (roadside signs);
$128.86 (from SCDC, mailing labels and printouts);
$118.72 (from Howard Burrell, buttons);
$100 (from Chris M., supplies for party)
Total in-kind contributions: $1,166.58
Campaign staples—signs, debates…
We got a slew of professionally
produced roadside signs from the SCDC. Each of us central people in the
campaign took some to put wherever, such as on our home lawns, and on roadsides.
A good many were eventually given to other people to post somewhere (and,
traditionally, there were always some all too willing to do this). (Once when I
was parked for the moment while putting a sign on Route 517 near Sand Hill
Road, a police car stopped and checked on me, as if he’d never seen someone put
up a campaign sign before. Granted, I was in a location with no shoulder, but
still….)
There were debates, hosted by
various groups. I remember one at the Highland Lakes
clubhouse, which both John and Ginny attended, and maybe all the other
candidates (Republicans and Independents). That was fun to be at. Heinz Sell, *who was running as one of the two Independents* and whom
I mentioned in Part 4, was there.
(Regarding Mr. Sell: I remember
that, at the Highland Lakes clubhouse debate, when the issue of the town center
was discussed, we [John and/or Ginny] voiced, or otherwise referenced, our
idea—which accorded with a notion fully incorporated into town planning business
going back to at least 1989—that there were preliminary plans for two town centers—this merely echoed what
had been in the Planning Board’s plans for years, in relation to Vernon’s
state-required “cross-acceptance” work with the state’s “Development and
Redevelopment” plan—which was conducted with all parts of the state. But, of
course, eventually the actual work in Vernon Township on a town center,
including infrastructure put in place [with controversy that has followed,
since], would only be in one location, in Vernon village. But Heinz Sell at
this 1996 debate weighed in, when he had a half-minute to do it, that there
should be only “one town center!,” as if he’d never heard such an idea as two
town centers—which, apparently, he hadn’t
heard had been in the works.)
As I said earlier, there was a
big party at the Pleasant Valley Lake clubhouse, to arm people with signs,
fliers, etc. That was also billed as our one Vernon Township Democratic Club
meeting for October (which was similar to what was done in October 1995 for that year’s campaign). A lot of people
came to this, mainly from PVL. John had quite a “constituency” in the PVL
voting district; and he would be the focus of one of the biggest percentages,
per voting district—actually the
biggest—of votes for a Dem candidate in town for 1996. This might not have
reflected that everyone in that district loved him so much, as that it’s common for any TC candidate in town (in
any year) usually to get a bigger percentage of votes from his or her own
district.
The candidates were interviewed
for newspaper profiles, both in the Advertiser-News
(a new paper with which Straus Newspapers was serving the town; this replaced The Vernon News) and the Herald. We were touching all the usual bases of a campaign in town,
even with our small number of workers and money. New people came out of the
woodwork to help, including an 18-year-old young woman. And I think it was in
1996 that someone from Cliffwood Lake, which is in one far corner of Vernon
Township, contacted me and said he wanted to help the campaign but couldn’t…so
as “consoling” souvenirs I mailed him a campaign button and (I think) some
other specially made tchotchke or two. (You’d try anything to keep up a
supportive attitude in someone from the public.)
It got to where I was working
full-time at this stuff—yes, about 40 hours a week the last two weeks. John and
Ginny, in their ways, would both admit what a good effort we, or the campaign,
made. In part, this wasn’t due to the “genius” or sheer hard work of any one
person in particular, but it was due in good part to all the usual framework
you had for doing a campaign, such as I’d already seen close-up twice (and had
been witness to from a definitely greater distance and more limited perspective
in years prior to 1994). The main challenge was in keeping your wits about you
and meeting the demands.
As I said earlier, John once
commented on how I seemed so organized. This was almost like commenting on a
bird about how well it stands on two legs. I forget what I answered him, but I
knew from my publishing work that being self-organized and having calmness
under pressure, of course, were central. And even more key in a way, in a situation like
this, was controlling your emotions, just maintaining a sort of balance where
you didn’t let the stress or some untoward imposition distract you from the
task you consistently had to attend to. It was rather like walking a tightrope.
(This was especially a “work of art” for me, since I was desperate due to lack
of income from normal paid work at the time.)
Now we return a bit to the issue
of clashing egos.
It is from the perspective of
how to maintain cool under the pressure of such a campaign that I take no
pleasure in noting how a steady stream of criticisms and an almost threatening-toned
sense of what “risk,” so to speak, that we were perceived to pose to some party
were a repeating “contaminant” of sorts. The result of this is that this
tendency was eventually responded to after, or just before, the campaign was
over, by all three of us principals:
* Ginny told someone one off (as
I already said) in no uncertain terms, just a day before Election Day (she
seemed semi-apologetic or the like when telling about it to me, but I didn’t
blame her, and I think she knew it needed to be done);
* John wanted—for purposes of
future club activity that he felt, reasonably, the campaign had churned up a
broad enthusiasm for—to move the location of the club meetings to somewhere
new, which wasn’t affiliated with anyone’s private home;
* and I decided no longer to be
involved with the Vernon Dems, after December 1996, as deeply as I had been in
1994-96. Which was a decision I’ve never regretted.
Now, why refer to this “dirty
laundry”? Could someone who was involved in the group complain, looking at this
blog entry, that we were ungrateful for what good we got out of the splendid
Democratic “platform” that had been erected by hard work in 1994-96? Actually,
my point is that our small group was under pressure in several ways:
(1) we were in a campaign with
three different competing groups, which made it hard to strategize;
(2) we were campaigning in a
presidential election year, which always brings out more voters in our area,
especially those wanting to vote Republican; and
(3) John and Ginny were
naturally going to be a little “manic,” if not suffering anxiety, in this
situation, given all the practical expectations, and sudden public exposure, that they
were subject to.
When I talk about John’s
unrealistic ideas regarding me, I am not grumping peevishly 17 years after the
fact; I am pointing out how he voiced ideas, partly because of the “mania” of
the campaign, in part because of how small-potatoes a group we were, as he was
slow to appreciate; and to some extent, this was quite forgivable. And in any
event, the real problem in fall 1996 was the darts being thrown at us by a
non-centrally involved person from the sidelines, as I’ve reported several
times (while limiting the story), which were by no means professional to throw
at us.
John and I on “going cheap”—and his limited focus on specific issues
I know one area on which John
and I clashed (not hugely)—and this I can’t entirely blame him for—is the
notion that we were working within
limitations to the campaign, especially financial. He felt this—to the
extent I was apt to emphasize it—was the wrong idea (and as if it had a bad component
regarding morale); he was in this to win,
he conveyed. On the level of how he was new to this whole process (and hence a
bit naïve) in Vernon (an important qualifier), this was
a natural view for him to have.
But I was coming at the issue of
limitations from a couple of perspectives, one being how the Dems had
functioned in 1994 and 1995 (to say nothing of what I knew about local
politics’ metes and bounds more generally), and the other—more crucial—being the issue I faced of what limitations there
were on money I got from the SCDC. In fact, by about the third week in
October or so, I was brushing up against limits, including perhaps of patience,
from Charlie Cart (I don’t blame him for this) in terms of how much I was
looking for, when occasionally touching base with him on seeing “what next was
coming.” (Note, again, that the 1996 campaign cost only a little over half what the 1995 campaign had cost.)
I was trying to be as judicious
as I could in making smart decisions with what we did with the money, while
knowing I also wasn’t the only one to make decisions. I tried on all the important decisions—as I had learned to do in paid
editorial work in those days—to get as much consensus from the other
“principals” of the campaign group (basically, John and Ginny, with maybe
occasional feedback from Chris Rohde) as
I could. But for John to start chafing at my suggestions of limitation—this
was a very real fault line between us.
To some extent, his reason for
his not wanting to hear about limitations was rooted in something else, which I
can fault him for a little more, and this is the idea—that it seemed so many
people who moved to Vernon from the more citified areas of the state (or from
New York City) had—that the local
Democratic party was every bit a machine that would go into a variety of action
for whatever candidates, just as it did in the city areas. John seemed to
have this in mind—as abstract as it was—with the result that, when he didn’t
see such a machine operating, he was apt to start blaming the likes of me. As
if I wasn’t doing enough to get “the machine” into action. This, for example,
seemed to be behind his idea that I wasn’t using the “old Democrats,” as I
discussed above.
This may all seem like small
potatoes for an after-the-fact analysis, which may be good only for assessing
how you would operate a local campaign (“the better to win”) the next year. But
in one way, there is a lesson here that still applies today, even beyond the
narrow confines of this local group. And as a case in point, this lesson
relates to how the radio ads were turned to as another “big resource.” Here,
this lesson from my perspective is simply this: If your resources are highly
limited, the quality of your message
is more important than the quantity
of how you get it out. And in
the case of the 1996 Vernon TC race, this meant in particular that township issues had to be focused on.
One point I should make is that
John was not big on specific issues for the campaign—at all. In a way, he
wasn’t alone in the Dem group; you’d be surprised how many of the more stalwart
Dems within the 1994-96 period were not very conversant—or might even voice a
disdain for—township issues, the same type of issues that roiled the waters in
disputes among the different Republican groups (and which not only could make
newspaper headlines but could decide who won in elections). I’ve mentioned nice
old Mary Harrington (in Part 1), who wanted the group, for her purposes,
to be more a social group. Other Dems in the club also were either not well
versed in township issues, or might have voiced an antagonism toward the idea
of our dealing with them (even some of us Dems who ran for the CSC [see Part 4] were not especially versed in township issues—paradoxically for a
charter study, you might say). Among the Dems regularly involved with the club,
I was the only one who attended township meetings as I did (hundreds by 1996).
And hence I was the only one who had such a front-line understanding of some of
the gritty issues faced by the TC.
I hope I don’t overstate this
when I say that with John, who himself was new to the group as it had been
operating for almost one and a half years before he assented to be our next
candidate, he not only wasn’t well versed in township issues, but he didn’t
really see the need to get more boned up on them, as I recall. (This, I think,
came out in how he appeared in news interviews and debates, which wasn’t
helpful to his image as a viable candidate.)
But, for all his open-mindedness
to seizing on what among us Dems seemed to be “keys to getting somewhere,” he
seemed taken with the people who seemed like stars, who had a je ne sais quoi, and he would follow their advice or lead; but in view of
this, to him I seemed maybe like some kind of goofy “wonk” who was all taken
with clerical “fetishes.”
Dick he seemed taken with, as
I’ve shown indications of, and will show more. Howard he felt was a natural
leader from whom to glean words of wisdom, as so many other people did (even
outside the Dem circle)—and it would be in line with Howard, and not utilizing
my radio-ad idea, that John would agree to a package of not terribly effective
radio ads. And the local radio station’s co-owner Jay Edwards, as we’ll see,
was regarded by various (such as among the Dems) as an expert.
In the last weeks, when John
seemed a bit more desperate, or steely, about getting some solid mechanisms
into place so he could win, he seemed more unapt to heed me, with my trying to
stitch the campaign together with what small resources he had, and he was more
apt—leaving aside, of course, all campaign talking points about local issues
(as the public might expect)—to go with the local “stars” who seemed to have
their hand on the hem of Great Success but whose particular ways of doing
things, in 1996, would ultimately not help the campaign much or at all.
Next stop: radio ads
When it was time to order up
radio ads—and we were running at the last minute, going to record the ads on
Halloween, just a few days before Election Day, in part because what little
money we got for it from the SCDC came that late—Jay Edwards, the principal of
the county radio station, WSUS, with whom we were going to work was regarded, as
I said, as a sort of wizard, a media shaman. I recall it was said that if Mr.
Edwards liked you and your cause, he could be invaluable to you. (I will refine
this portrait in Part 6.)
Jay Edwards, as his “stage” name
was, ran a radio station on such a parsimonious basis that a “self-playing”
jukebox of sorts played the music that went over the airwaves, while the person
serving in a given shift as a DJ was hopping in to the “DJ booth” only now and
then to speak live, while that same person may have other tasks in the broader
office suite, even to deal with blokes like us Dems who walked in off the
street to do business there. This radio station was staffed at a given time
with as few people as possible; but it was always ready to take in a big chunk
of money for such time-sensitive business as fall campaign ads (the “billing”
expectation for which was memorably summed up by Howard Burrell as “cash on the
barrelhead”). Now if you had only $900 to spend for 1996, instead of the
$6,000+ spent in total in 1995, you might end up getting something less than
fully inspired for your “last-ditch effort” radio ads.
The 1996 story to be continued.
##
End note 1.
I was mistaken about Chris Fuehrer's involvement in the 1996 campaign. See the relevant End note in Part 4 of this series.
End note 2.
I was mistaken about Chris Fuehrer's involvement in the 1996 campaign. See the relevant End note in Part 4 of this series.
End note 2.
Also, until a very few years
ago, I still got e-mailed invitations from (as did many other Dems who were
still on, or associated with, the SCDC) to sit at the Democratic booth at the
yearly county fair (for days of my choice in early August). This followed their
tradition to show a Dem presence in the county. I haven’t sat at the fair in
some years now.
End note 3.
I originally estimated 35, but the number was closer to 25. A concise report I did on the three campaigns in late 1996, showing how the 1996 campaign stacked up to the others, indicates that there was about 20 helpers--non-central campaign workers--in each of the three campaigns. Since the 1994 and 1995 campaigns each had about six central workers (Dick, Dan, and others), they averaged about 25-30 people apiece. The 1996 campaign had fewer central people--only about four--but we had about the same number of helpers as the others, particularly because of the element of spontaneity among people who just opt to join a campaign from the public at large.
End note 3.
I originally estimated 35, but the number was closer to 25. A concise report I did on the three campaigns in late 1996, showing how the 1996 campaign stacked up to the others, indicates that there was about 20 helpers--non-central campaign workers--in each of the three campaigns. Since the 1994 and 1995 campaigns each had about six central workers (Dick, Dan, and others), they averaged about 25-30 people apiece. The 1996 campaign had fewer central people--only about four--but we had about the same number of helpers as the others, particularly because of the element of spontaneity among people who just opt to join a campaign from the public at large.
