The 1st Silly Season Award Goes To…

For those who pay attention to politics, you know this is the time of year known as The Silly Season.  The silly season and the type of antics that go along with it, is exactly what keeps about 80% of people away from the political process, especially at the local level.  The silly, meaningless, and degrading literature and other antics is a real turn off to the masses and makes most people feel that politicians just don’t get it or they just don’t care. We expect this to be a pretty interesting “Silly Season” because most of the incumbents who are running and those associated with them, we believe, do not have a good record. We are going to “acknowledge” those ads and the politicians that epitomize just the nonsense we are talking about.

The first Silly Season Award goes to William Spencer who is running against Elizabeth Black for the 18th Legislative District.  A mailing went out earlier this week from the New York State Democratic Committee.

It depicts Elizabeth Black sticking out of a cupcake. Our first reaction to it was that it was a dig against the Cupcake Mom movement. The title Cupcake Mom was given to those mom’s in the Huntington School district who were fighting against Town Hall for the safety of their children. We are not sure if this was the intention, but if it was, it certainly wasn’t a smart political tactic.  The mailing caused a stir amongst the Cupcake Moms and other women who found the post card to be sexist.  It is currently being e-mail blasted around.  Politics 101 will tell you, that is not a smart move to appear sexist, especially when you have a male vs. female political race.

The part we find the most annoying is the old, tired political tactic of accusing school board members of causing tax increases.   This is simply a way to intentionally mislead the public.  All school districts propose a budget and the residents vote on it. Here is the part that gets especially disturbing. Elizabeth Black is a member of the Huntington School Board. William Spencer is directly responsible for costing the Huntington School District millions of dollars in poorly managed Section 8 properties. In addition to being part of a group that pushes all the public housing into one community, he tried to push the Gateway Garden project, which would have been an unprecedented down zoning that would have led to tax increases not only in Huntington Station but throughout the Town.  The Huntington School district spent $10,000 to fight William Spencer and the HHA from changing the density in the Huntington School District community. The Huntington School Board has been forced to cut programs over and over to help maintain the cost of taxes, in large part due to the policies created and supported by William Spencer and the HHA.    William Spencer was directly responsible for managing the section 8 housing which also included  the $3.7 million, that Don Pius costs the Huntington tax payers annually, and that is only one landlord managed by the HHA.

All in all, we do not even understand what point William Spencer and the Democratic Committee is trying to make.  This mailing leaves us with more questions than answers.  One question we do have for William Spencer is, if you are elected are you intending to downzone the entire 18th Distrcit or is that a special gift reserved only for the Huntington Station community?

As a prize to honor William Spencer for the obnoxious and misleading mailing,  The Huntingtonian was thinking about asking Reinwalds Bakery if they could duplicate the Liz Black cupcake and send William Spencer a dozen.

Below, is a response to the mailing from Liz Black supporters:

An open letter to Dr. William Spencer and the NYS Democratic Committee:

Candidate, Dr. William Spencer, and the NYS Democratic Committee depicted his political opponent, Elizabeth Black popping out of a cupcake and made reference to being “sweet for politicians” on a recent flyer.  This is demeaning, disgusting and disrespectful not only toElizabeth, but to all women.  This offensive imagery and language has no place in our society and we expect better, especially from one who seeks to represent us in our Government, let alone a doctor who vowed to “Do No Harm”.  Further, it is distressing that the New York State Democratic Committee approved and published this sexist literature.

We are the fabric of our community and have performed great works be it as mothers, grandmothers, nurses, teachers, bankers, lawyers, business-owners, Marines, volunteers, spouses, sisters and friends.  We work to better our society, not to damage or destroy.  Do not destroy our great works and those of other women with your derogatory words and imagery.

We are raising our children to respect others regardless of our differences.  We expect nothing less in return.  We are teaching our children to speak out in ways for the good.  We expect nothing less from our adults.

We will no longer allow destructive messages to be propagated against our daughters and our sisters.  We call upon you to immediately stop your harmful tactics, publicly apologize to Elizabeth Black and to all women in our community.

Bronwyn Kelly

Kathleen Richardson

Annabelle Staudinger

Carolynn Lucca

We received a copy of this letter several days ago, we believe many more woman have since signed the letter.