Our Personal Election

This past election, while the rest of the country was pondering issues of health care and governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, and that whacky 23rd Congressional District race in upstate New York, my family and I were concerned about a more mundane race to fill the unexpired term on the Canfield Township Board of Trustees. My son was a candidate…and lost the race after a great campaign.

I have been politically active my whole life, but always viewed local township politics, be it Boardman or Canfield, as somewhat of a yawn. When Alex and I decided last January that he should give this race a go, we knew nothing about the township political landscape or issues other than the sitting trustee, who was appointed after a cronyism scandal, told the local paper that he didn’t know what he wanted to do as trustee. He turned out to be a nice guy...but looked vulnerable.

So Alex and I set out to learn what makes Canfield Township tick. What we found is the old adage “all politics is local” is true. This is where the rubber meets the road. Alex did a door to door campaign, pounding on 1400 doors. He found that issues ranged from roads to sewers to water to traffic to possible annexation into Youngstown, to a new township hall nobody wanted. These are issues that directly affect folks. If things are going fine, they are taken for granted. Let something go wrong, and all hell breaks loose.

He heard complaints about a road that was supposed to be dedicated in a development and wasn’t, thus preventing it from getting paved. He heard about sewer projects only partially completed with no date for completion in sight. He heard about wasted money for a proposed township hall with a windmill to generate electricity attached, next to a soccer field, next to the farm of an outgoing trustee who pushed the township to buy land for the park right next to his property. He heard about various township employees and their efforts to pad their retirement with buyouts and rehires.

In a three candidate race where 2500 votes were cast, he beat out the sitting incumbent by a substantial margin, coming in second by 300 votes to the favorite, a woman who has a long illustrious history of community service on numerous worthy charitable and health boards. She also served on the Canfield School Board for 22 years. Then several years ago she didn’t run for school board, and took a leave of absence from her local service organization. We were told that she was ill.

David Skolnick wrote in the Vindicator on October 23 relating to her Vindicator candidacy submission: “The form submitted by (her), a Canfield trustee candidate who served 22 years on the school board, was such a mess that one of her daughters had to turn in a new one.” Obviously there is a problem. But her name carried the day, and her many years of community service were rewarded by the voters. We truly hope she is up to the job and wish her well.

Alex started his campaign from scratch. He was only 23 years old with zero name recognition. He had to overcome a sitting incumbent, and a long time local politician with almost 100% name recognition. Yet he lost by only 300 votes out of 2500 cast. Not too bad.

The campaign strategy was based on numerous mailings to likely voter households. The campaign taught us there are several categories of likely voter lists, and we should have used a slightly more expansive list. The campaign taught us that yard signs, while they don’t vote, are a necessary evil. Next time out we will put a person in charge of finding more yard sign locations than we had. We learned that many people who knew Alex were not on the likely voter list and therefore missed the campaign literature. These folks should have been accounted for by either adding them to the list or with a specific “get out the vote” campaign aimed at them. This, by itself, probably would have been sufficient to overtake the 300 vote deficit. You would be surprised as to who doesn’t vote.

But mostly we learned that most of the candidates in both of the trustee races were great people, who ran good, clean campaigns with the best interest of the township at heart. The camaraderie among candidates is based on a shared misery factor. It’s a wonder that people are willing to run for office at all. We should be grateful for all of the efforts of our public officeholders.

My son is a political animal who enjoys campaigning. He has worked numerous campaigns for other people over the past years. Whether or not he decides to do it for himself again is another issue. Meanwhile, if any of his supporters are reading this…we thank you for your assistance and your vote.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER TO VOTE!!!!