In response to Ms. Rosenthal’s LOWV opinion in Oct. 28 issue of New Hyde Park Herald Courrier.
Ms. Rosenthal, in your opinion piece entitled “Candidates duck forums, voters lose,” you mentioned “especially in local elections, where news coverage is limited, voters lose the opportunity to learn crucial information about the priorities and values of the men and women who seek to represent them.”
You went on to mention in recent years, how Republicans and Democrat candidates have accepted your invitations, but in the past two years — bipartisan attendance dropped to only one of four scheduled events.
You went on to say “in every instance, it was the Republican candidate who skipped the chance to engage directly with voters on the issues in an unscripted format.”
I agree with you, Ms. Rosenthal, but must make one exception.
My son Frank Scaturro was a Republican/Conservative Party challenger who ran for United States Congress in 2010, 2012, and 2014 — each time challenging in a primary the last-minute pick of party bosses who reflexively tried to block a candidate they did not control from getting the congressional nomination.
Frank accepted every invitation from you to attend a candidate forum, and thus, the public could have had a chance to hear from him in each election cycle.
However, in 2012 and 2014, the party bosses’ pick declined to show up, and LOWV simply cancelled the event.
Ms. Rosenthal recognizes that “local party bosses may think they have a winning strategy in ignoring democratic forums and undecided voters, but their approach harms the basic principles of democracy.”
I totally agree.
They prefer that as few people as possible even know that there is a congressional primary outside the sphere of influence of their patronage workers, who are deployed as a condition of their taxpayer-funded jobs to turn out the vote for their picks.
So, why then play into their strategy of rendering any challenge to their power invisible?
Why not allow those candidates who indeed are willing to show up to then speak to the people?
And to make an additional observation, in debates where all candidates do show up, LOWV has prohibited attendees from taking video of the event, which stifles voter awareness by keeping those not actually present at the debate in the dark as to what the candidates had to say.
These decisions by the LOWV appear to me to play into the hands of those seeking to harm the basic principles of democracy.
Rosanne Spinner
New Hyde Park
Readers Write: League enables debate-avoiding candidates
