LETTER: Associating Local Republicans with Trump Is Silly

Submitted by Jeffrey Medina, Greenwich

In the din of this election campaign season, we are seeing a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric. None more ridiculous than local Democrats’ ceaselessly silly attempts to paint their local Republican counterparts as a bunch of Trump sycophants.

This flawed logic does nothing to elevate the discourse in our community and is laughably misplaced. I suppose Republicans could claim that local Democrats take their cues from Nancy Pelosi. She is the highest ranking
elected Democrat in the land and her approval ratings are below 40% nationally.

Never, in all of my years in Greenwich have any candidates for state and local offices run on the record of a sitting President. Candidates who run for these offices have to exhibit a firm grasp of the issues they will be dealing with, if elected. Those issues are directly related to the town of Greenwich and the state of Connecticut.

I suppose when one does not have a record worthy of running on, the next best option is to blame your opponents for everything and anything under the sun. I do not believe this is a wise strategy to apply in a town whose constituency is made up of highly educated, successful and quite informed people. It is a strategy rooted in weakness and its thin veneer is very easy to
see through.

Local Republican candidates are understandably reticent about the President. If they come out against him, they may offend those in their party who support the him. If they offer their unwavering support, it will alienate those in the middle of the electorate. So their challenge is to do neither, and to focus all of their attention on the state and local issues on which they are running. This amounts to a sort of self imposed discipline which will serve them well in the end, because based on what we have seen in debates, they are very well informed on the issues that matter.

For me, this year’s local elections are quite easy to evaluate. Connecticut has become an economic laughingstock for more than a decade. During that time, large scale fiscal mismanagement and the continual pursuit of ill advised policy strategies whose outcomes do not serve our state and its people well have occurred.

One party has been in control of our state government throughout that period. Democrats. It’s time that the people of Connecticut evaluated their representation based on performance and not hyperbole.

Democrats have quite simply not delivered. Now they’re trying to scare voters into giving them another chance. It’s up to us not to fall for it.

Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor in support of local candidates in the Nov 3, 2020 election may be submitted to [email protected] for consideration beginning July 15 and with a hard deadline of Oct 26, 2020 at noon.