Troubling questions have arisen about the Council race for the Ward 2 seat.
Will they be answered tonight? One can hope.
You will not want to miss the forum -- which will include not only Democrats Cory Storch and Tony Rucker, but Republican candidate Deborah Dowe -- at the Plainfield Public Library, 7 PM sharp.
With apologies to the GOP, whose last successful candidate for the Council's Ward 2 seat (former Councillor Donna Vose) ran in the early 1990s, the seat will be won in November by the victor in the June Democratic primary.
That is why this evening's forum is so important for those concerned about the Ward and the City. And why troubling questions should be answered NOW, before the primary election.
For openers, Storch's campaign has reported his campaign signs have been removed from homeowners' lawns.
This is an perennial annoyance, though Plainfield has never been in the same league as those towns in which municipal employees of the faction in power have removed opponents signs en masse (as in Sharpe v. Booker in the first go-round).
I had hoped for better things, though, from this campaign.
A more troubling question is centered on Rucker's upcoming appearance as a guest of city employee and radio personality Laurence Rice on Harvest Radio (1070 on the AM dial), scheduled for the day before the election, as reported on Rucker's campaign blog --
"Monday. June 4. 1:30 - 2:30 PM. The day before the June 5th election I am an invited guest speaking and broadcasting live on Harvest Radio 1070AM. Please tune in!!"I can appreciate the candidate's enthusiasm at being able to present his views, but radio stations get their licenses of bandwidth from the Federal Communication Commission as a public trust.
And the FCC takes a decidedly dim view of radio stations endorsing, or even appearing to endorse, political candidates.
If Rucker alone is being invited to share his views, and he posts it on his campaign blog as another part of his campaign for office, one has to ask: Is Harvest Radio endorsing a candidate?
A call by the Storch campaign to Harvest Radio's station manager yesterday was not returned by the end of the business day.
This is indeed a troubling question.
Will we get an answer?
Tonight?
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2 comments:
Dan, you are in error about the history of the 2nd Ward Council seat. The last Republican elected to it was Bob Ferraro, in 1999. And as for the removal of campaign signs, I used to hear rumors of it almost every year, though I do not claim to know what really happened. What I do know is the cause: in 1987, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision, the New Jersey Attorney General entered into a Consent Decree in federal court, agreeing that campaign signs placed on people's lawns-- including the grass between the sidewalk and the curb--would not be removed by local officials or policemen. It was a First Amendment free speech issue. The problem had previously been one of interpretation: the space between the sidewalk and the curb was assumed to be public property, where neither party should put anything. In fact, in most places that strip is owned by the adjacent landowner, not the city. Regardless of who owns it, some public employees used to assume campaign signs either required a zoning permit (like a commercial sign on a lawn), or amounted to trespass on public property. Unfortunately, the city ordinances were not amended until the one I helped write, adopted in 2002, to make it clear that free speech trumps zoning. In fairness to past public employees, they would have looked at the ordinance, and seen that it made no exception for campaign signs. To tell them that the ordinance was no longer in effect, but was still in the book, was a hopeless task. Today, there is no excuse for removing this kind of sign unless it interferes with a driver's line of sight. If you see campaign signs, LEAVE THEM ALONE.
While you are correct about Donna Vose being the last true R elected in the 2nd Ward, please recall that Ferraro ran as a republican and beat Storch the first time he ran. No one ever knew what Bob was politically, he switched parties so many times. He truely wore a many colored coat. (and as it turns out, Donna was really a Dem in disguise)
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