There will be a debate tomorrow at 4 PM at Eastchester Town Hall sponsored by the League of Women Voters between Democrat Greg Varian and Republican Sheila Marcotte. The two are competing in a special election to fill the 10th District seat on the Westchester County Board of Legislators. The special election was called after Democrat Vito Pinto vacated the seat to accept a position in the Astorino administration running the Veterans Service Agency and the Office of Drug Prevention and Stop-DWI.
Varian sent a campaign email warning of Republican dirty tricks and asking supporters to show and coordinate their questions with the campaign.
LWV Debate: Sunday, 4pm, Eastchester Town Hall
The League of Women Voters is sponsoring a debate this Sunday at 4pm. I could use your support in the room, especially since audience questions will make up the bulk of the debate. I’ve been warned that the Eastchester Republicans take these things very seriously: they will have an army of citizens ready to beat me over the head with out-of-context quotes and made-up statistics. So, naturally, we have to be ready.
If you can make the debate and are willing to ask a question, please reply to this email and let my campaign know. We’ll want you to show up at 3:30 on Sunday so that we can discuss some possible questions for you to ask and plan our strategy for the room.
Clearly Varian does not believe that the Marcotte campaign has much respect for the League of Women Voters and expects them to game the system with trumped up questions. It appears that Varian’s solution is to demonstrate the same lack of respect and seek to out-game the Republicans.
The problem lies not with the two campaigns but with the League of Women Voters which allows anyone to get in line and ask a questions — an approach ripe for abuse. Such abuse was on display a few weeks ago at the LWV Board of Education forum in New Rochelle where then-candidate Valeria Orellana responded to a complex, multi-part question from the audience and proceeded to openly read from a prepared text.
Maybe it’s time for the LWV to re-think its approach on how they moderate these debates or forums.
Vote Sheila Marcotte June 22nd!
To think that the quesitons were stacked is showing some weird paranoia on the part of Greg Varian. He’s free to pack the audiance as much as Sheila Marcotte was.
In any event, the choice voters face on June 22nd is clearly about the amount of real estate taxes that we pay and county governments role in it.
Varian espouses continued big government and along with it the high taxes that are driving families out of the area.
Marcotte, on the other hand, is going to support the policies of Rob Astorino and hopefully reduce our county government and therefore our county taxes.
So the choice is clear, do we want a bigger county government and higher taxes or do we want a smaller county goverment and less taxes? You make the call!