Recent Elections
As you may be aware, Village of Brookville elections were recently (March 2001) held and the incumbents were returned to office. It is always painful to watch campaigns in which the insurgents have no chance whatever and they themselves seem to be the only ones who don’t realize that inconvenient fact. Their trouncing has two very regrettable consequences:
- it convinces the incumbents that they are invincible and that they will continue to get away with anything they want for as long as they care to remain in office
- it convinces other, potential insurgent candidates that there is no chance of ousting the incumbents in an election and they may as well not even try
In truth, this election was not lost because the incumbents were invincible. It was lost because the insurgent candidates were incompetent and bungled their campaign. They conducted a brief, poorly planned and amateur campaign whose futility should have been obvious to them. They failed to present any coherent vision for the future of the community. They failed to adequately respond to charges and claims made by the incumbents. Indeed, by running at all, they ignored the message that the electorate sent them in their previous attempt at elected office, in 1989. They ignored the extraordinary volume of correspondence in which the residents expressed disdain for their actions in that election. They failed to see that that campaign, in which they sought to embroil Post College students in village elections, had made them unelectable pariahs.
In short, their defeat should not deter you from running for village office. We invite anyone who may be interested in challenging the incumbent government officials and running for Mayor or for a seat on the Board of Trustees to contact us. We can give you every possible assistance in conducting an election campaign, including setting up a political committee, conducting a bulk mailing program, filing the required forms and canvassing potential voters. Whether you run as a VRP candidate or as an independent, we will do whatever we can to help get you elected and thereby oust the indifferent, unresponsive clique that has made a mockery of the process of democratic, public government in our village. Note that assisting the VRP does not affect your affiliation with the major parties, as they do not get involved at the village level.