Letter: Candidates’ shenanigans show they don’t trust voters

Posted 7/18/18

To the editor:

What a sad day for Bristol/Warren voters. Up until the last minute, our towns’ state representative, Kenneth Marshall, misled every constituent in the district by making clear …

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Letter: Candidates’ shenanigans show they don’t trust voters

Posted

To the editor:

What a sad day for Bristol/Warren voters. Up until the last minute, our towns’ state representative, Kenneth Marshall, misled every constituent in the district by making clear as recently as June 20 [Rep. Marshall refutes claims, decries ‘bully’ tactics of ‘extreme left’’] that he was running for re-election. Now he says he made the decision not to run a year ago. Either he was deceiving us in June, or he is deceiving us now.

If he had actually decided not to run, why not announce well before the deadline to file?

Instead, Rep. Marshall announced only moments before the end of the filing period that he wasn’t running for re-election. He then hand-picked a candidate to run in his place: Andrew Tyska.

Rep. Marshall showed up at Bristol Town Hall as the clock ran out on declarations with a press release endorsing Mr. Tyska, who had not even publicly declared. It seems Rep. Marshall’s hand-chosen district committee had also already met privately that day to issue this endorsement. That hardly seems coincidental.

Meanwhile, Mr. Tyska chose to keep secret his own decision not to run for re-election to our Town Council. This lack of transparency may have led strong candidates to avoid a primary run for the council, believing the incumbents would be returning. Had others known about Mr. Tyska’s planned departure, they may have made the decision to run for his seat. Instead, a small group of politicians decided, without seeking the input of those affected, that they would determine what was best for us.

How can we trust representatives and candidates who operate behind closed doors? What kind of negotiations at the statehouse led to this last-minute announcement, and why should we believe this pattern will not continue?

These kind of clandestine maneuverings are exactly what’s wrong with the politics as usual we’ve seen in our statehouse and in Rhode Island. House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s inner circle and the ‘leadership’ of the Democratic Party ignore the people they committed to representing, and instead act as unilateral gatekeepers who prevent important pieces of legislation from ever even getting a vote.

We deserve better than a staged hand-off in the final minutes of the candidate filing period. We deserve honest and independent representatives. We deserve strong voices who will advocate for open, transparent government. We deserve elected officials who clearly state their beliefs and are prepared to fight for those values. More than anything we deserve leaders who trust voters enough to make their own decisions.

Only a person equipped with these tools will be prepared to stand up to the entrenched system of backroom deals that rules in Providence.

Lisa Peterson

Bristol

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