Who Are The REAL New Democrats?

When many voters go to the polls today, they will find some different names at the bottom of Column B—the candidates for the Democratic Committee. Here’s why:

During the Obama campaign, some of the so-called “New Democrats” now running for office, including mayoral hopeful Adrian Mapp and Rick Smiley, were nowhere to be seen. Neither were Mapp supporters such as Cory Storch, Dan Damon, Chris Estevez, and many of their current Democratic Committee candidates.

As your Democratic Committee chair, and the person in charge of the Obama campaign in this area, I was in our Plainfield campaign headquarters almost every day and evening—and since every volunteer signed in, we know who helped and who did not. Our headquarters was crowded with volunteers all the time. I feel very strongly that Democratic Committee seats should go to those who helped, because they were willing to put their time and energy into the campaign. The Obama volunteers who are now running for the Democratic Committee in Column B are the REAL New Democrats, and they are eager to put their time and effort into improving Plainfield.

On Election Night, Mapp and some of his supporters finally showed up at our headquarters, where I had arranged for a big-screen TV so we could watch the election returns and celebrate our victory. In Plainfield, we turned out a stunning 14,000 plus vote for Obama, while McCain got barely 1,000 votes—most of them from the Second Ward.

Mapp and his friends may have done some work in the November election, but they did not do it as part of the Obama campaign. They only showed up when it was time to celebrate, and I think most of them were surprised by the huge turnout and the large and joyful crowd. Plainfield was united at that wonderful Election Night celebration, and I hoped it would stay that way.

But as soon as the election was over, Mapp and his cronies went right to work to try to undermine me as well as our mayor, Sharon Robinson-Briggs, and her running mate for the Fourth Ward Council seat, Vera Greaves, who also worked hard to turn out Plainfield’s voters for Barack Obama. And now, Mapp wants to take over Plainfield’s City Hall and our Democratic Committee.

I have really been disappointed by the increasingly nasty tone of Mapp’s mailings and the lies that he is telling. On the subject of Muhlenberg, for example, both Sharon and I were at every public rally and have been working hard to restore our hospital, while Mapp and his supporters have only come to public hearings to make speeches. Now he accuses us of having done nothing. That is an outright lie and he knows it! It’s more than disappointing that a man who wants to be our Mayor would lie to our voters that way.

I am confident that Plainfield’s voters will see through the lies and the false attacks, and vote today for all of the candidates in Column B, including the Democratic Committee candidates at the very end of the Column. With your help, we can continue to move Plainfield forward!

Ps

Usually I read Dan Damon’s “Clippings” every day; most of the time I find links to useful information such as items published in newspapers and events going on in and around town. So I was really surprised yesterday to find that he did not mention my article, published on the editorial page of yesterday’s Courier News, or even provide a link to it. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, because he only mentions me when he can make another of his false attacks.