This year's election season was short on quantity but high in quality. There were only two contested races, one for selectmen and the other for housing authority, in addition was the ballot question concerning holding multiple seats.
The housing authority race was a lower keyed contest featuring two well known and pretty well liked guys with incumbent Jim Langley prevailing over Dick Howard.
The main event featured five term incumbent Gary Gianino versus challenger Daniel Ditucci. Although it had the potential for a bitter showdown for the most part it was a high road good natured contest featuring two guys who ran like gentleman.
As always there were a couple of side shows featuring some who were uncovered for duplicitous conduct by trying to prove their undying devotion to both candidates as well as a few unfounded rumors about how either candidate was going to take away some benefit or another from town employees but that seemed to be the most controversial of happenings.
All the minor stuff was over shadowed by hard work on both sides. The single seat race hasn't seen a significant challenge in more that two decades. Ditucci knew this going in and had prepared an election business plan that recognized that an all out effort was necessary to win.
Despite having ample negative items in the issues area to attempt to exploit, Dittuci rejected that strategy and focused on offering himself as an agent of change versus an attack on the incumbents performance. There was discontent with his tag line of "Honest Government" but mostly the only notice taken by that were overly sensitive people at town hall and current elected office holders.
Gianino responded to the challenge with an effective strategy of his own. He reached out to a variety of people in the existing power structure who have worked with him for years and they responded with a strong as well as technically efficient effort. Included in the core group of supporters were proven campaigners who had a large number of successes in years gone by.
He needed all of that help because the results came in finding Gianino the victor by a very slim margin. In the race, a total of 3185 votes were cast which resulted in Gianino winning by 26 votes, 1476 to 1450. An interesting aside to the result is that perennially challenger, Virginia Mooney garnered 259 votes in the race. Ginny always promotes herself as the anti establishment anti "Good Ole Boy" candidate. Since it is unlikely that many of Ginny's votes would go to an entrenched incumbent, Ginny finds herself this morning in the uncomfortable role of spoiler. It is obvious that Ginny's part in this years campaign helped perpetuate the incumbents service. It amazes me that in over 40 attempts at various offices Ginny has never found someone else to support other than herself.
The ballot question results came as no surprise. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of restricting office holders to one seat. It was disguised as a good government effort to allow for more participation but really was an effort to prevent Al Fay from continued service in his seats on both the board of selectman as well as planning board. Since Al is probably the hardest working elected official in the town, I think it less a vote against him personally than it is a simple expression of a concern for a concentration of to much power in one persons hands.
For those of us already speculating on next year's races this brings up the question of what office Al will choose to run for since his terms in both seats are expiring. If I were a betting man, which of course I am, I would lay a small, hypothetical of course, adult wager on Al seeking another term on the board of Selectman.
The results are in and the election is over. The community will go back to normal and business will be conducted like it is every post election. The results will not go unnoticed at town hall. The single seat is the strongest seat yet the incumbent survived with a razor thin plurality and were it not for the spoiler in the race most certainly would have gone down to defeat. The message should be obvious.
As in any post election period there will be some residual hard feelings which will smooth out with time until next year when new coalitions are formed, old and new friendships are made or restored and we will repeat the process all over again.
