Marmer Makes It Official
By A_Vernonite | April 1, 2007
There hasn’t been a whole lot of news lately. However, the JI posted an article a few days back about how Marmer has officially decided to run for a third term. A few passages that stuck out to me:
Marmer plans to make the formal announcement Monday during a news conference at Town Hall to be attended by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Joseph D. Courtney, D-2nd District.
Courtney is in town for a DTC fundraiser, but apparently he’ll stick around for Dr. Marmer’s news conference. It strikes me that she’s really bringing out the big guns here. Maybe she’s not quite as confident about her chances as many have thought.
Local Republicans have yet to publicly announce a candidate to challenge Marmer. Republican Town Committee Chairman Hal Cummings said the nominations and recruitment committee was now interviewing candidates for the school board and council seats. As for the mayor’s race, “we have three credible, significant candidates who’ve expressed an interest, and maybe two more,” Cummings said, adding “We might have to beat them off with a stick. But all of the candidates are viable.”
Sure. I think its very odd that none of these candidates have been named, or none of them seem readily obvious. The biggest problem for Republicans won’t be they lack leverage on issues — they most certainly will run on the Democrat’s spending and record on taxes — but rather name recognition will be their main hindrance. They better name a candidate soon.
Topics: Ellen Marmer, Joe Courtney, Richard Blumenthal | No Comments »
Vernon COW Rally
By A_Vernonite | February 23, 2007
Tomorrow, organization rallies will be held accross the state, town-by-town, for Connecticut Opposes the War. There will be such a rally in Vernon, according to the CTCOW Website. You can attend at the following address:
Location: Talbot Residence - 30 Tunnel Road - Vernon, CT 06066
Coordinator: Jeff Talbot
Phone: 860-871-6049
Email: jandjtalbot@comcast.net
If you are interested, I’m sure they’d appreciate a friendly RSVP. The meeting begins at 2 PM.
Topics: COW, Anti-War | No Comments »
A Beginning
By A_Vernonite | February 23, 2007
It seems to have been a relatively quiet campaign season so far, but Mayor Marmer doesn’t seem to have quite gotten off on the right foot (though I do disapprove of the editorializing by the JI in the first paragraph):
VERNON - Mayor Ellen L. Marmer publicly apologized to Town Council Republicans Tuesday after she tried to stack the local Ethics Board with Democrats, in violation of an ordinance she helped craft more than 20 years ago.
[…]
Republican member Carlos Cruz resigned from the board this month because of time constraints at work, leaving only one Republican on the board, Herbert Slicer, to serve alongside three Democrats: Fredrick Nowsch, Lois Schumey, and Chairman David Herrmann.
Saying there were no viable Republican or unaffiliated candidates to chose from, Marmer nominated alternate member Christal Petrone, a Democrat, to replace Cruz. She further nominated Democrat Kwabena Tandoh to replace Petrone as an alternate on the board.
It seems as though Marmer was simply trying to fill the space by promoting an alternate (and calling the filling of a single vacancy “stacking” is a tenuous allegation at best), however as she did craft the regulation that says that there cannot be more than three members of a single party on the board at a time, her behavior would simply seem to give the town Republicans additional fodder to use in the upcoming Mayoral election.
Use the comments to discuss any potential Republican mayoral candidates. At the moment, the presumed candidate would be Bill Campbell. However, his campaign to unseat Representative Claire Janowski last year barely made her sweat: he only drew 23% of the vote. Contrastingly, former Councilman Robert Kleinhans more narrowly lost to another popular Vernon Rep, Joan Lewis, a few years before his unprecedented loss to Marmer in 2005, breaking the single-term curse that had plagued Vernon mayors for more than a decade. So if the annual quixotic campaign to unseat a popular Dem Rep is any bellweather, Campbell has some catching up to do.
Topics: Ellen Marmer, Bill Campbell, Ethics, Mayoral, Claire Janowski, Robert Kleinhans | No Comments »