MAGA maintains a grip on town politics
MAGA is infecting the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting. Symptoms began to appear as town meeting members recently considered grants for the registrars of voters. By Tuesday’s meeting, the virus reached fever pitch.
Knowledgeable observers say they’ve never seen such nasty, partisan acrimony on the RTM.
The grants are $500,000 from the nonpartisan, nonprofit, Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and $9,600 for membership in the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a program launched by CTCL in April to bring together bipartisan election officials for mutual support, updating skills, and sharing best practices. This program reflects CTCL’s effort to ensure professional, inclusive, and secure elections.
A nonprofit with a 97 percent Charity Navigator rating, CTCL promotes modernized technology, high-performing election offices, a resilient and adaptive election system, and increased public confidence in the election process.
These grants offer Greenwich an opportunity to put in place election infrastructure that will maintain high professional standards and outstanding election leadership, timely as Connecticut implements the Early Voting the electorate approved 62 percent to 38 percent in November.
Our Republican and Democratic registrars of voters, Fred DeCaro and Mary Hegarty, welcomed this designation as a Center for Election Excellence, one of 10 election offices so recognized nationwide. CTCL’s award of these grants will allow better pollworker education, improved security, updated technology, and replacement of aging equipment. These much-needed upgrades would not otherwise happen. The Greenwich Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET) would never approve such money for the Registrars.
The grants cannot be used for political purposes such as influencing the outcome of an election or promoting a candidate campaign. The CTCL mission does not allow interference in election outcomes. And, as a 501(c)(3) organization, it’s prohibited from engaging in partisan politics.
The registrars provided RTM members with extensive Q&A information that makes it clear the grants are nonpolitical; cannot be used to influence election outcomes; come without strings attached; and will have spending oversight as all expenditures go through the town’s normal appropriations process.
Given the politicized and polarized environment that now exists, it’s uplifting to see the bipartisan cooperation between our Republican and Democratic Registrars with their shared commitment to the free, fair, secure, and nonpartisan elections that are the bedrock of our democracy.
How could Greenwich not take advantage of this opportunity? Enter the MAGA virus. An anonymous email sent to RTM members revealed that on Jan. 5 Justin Riemer, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee, emailed Leora Levy talking points for Greenwich Republicans to use against the grant. Levy, a Greenwich resident, is a recent Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate and a Republican National Committee member.
The anonymous email questioned Republican National Committee interference in the RTM vote, a point well taken. Members of the nonpartisan RTM are elected as individuals without any party labels.
Greenwich Republican Town Committee chair Beth Macgillivray attempted to justify national Republican involvement on the grounds that CTCL is a national organization. For this reason, she said in an email to the RTM, Greenwich Republican leadership has a “fiduciary duty” to inform itself regarding the national Republican position.
These national talking points, however, reflect the MAGA “voter fraud,” “election denial” strategy, which offers the specious argument that non-government election-related funding taints election outcomes and that grants such as this were used to “steal” the 2020 presidential election. The courts, however, have rejected all lawsuits brought against CTCL based on such unfounded claims.
According to the talking points, proof of the danger nonpublic election-related funding poses for election integrity lies in the number of state legislative bans on such funding. But these bans serve a MAGA voter suppression effort designed to prevent organizations like CTCL from making voting more accessible to all.
The operative word for demonization of organizations like CTCL is “left,” which means anything that could actualize things many Americans support, such as voting accessibility, reproductive choice, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, closing the income gap, gun safety, addressing climate change, protection of democracy.
The RTM approved the $500,000 grant 104-101, with five abstentions. But infected by MAGA, it ended the meeting in vote count denial. The ensuing confusion led to postponing consideration of the $9,600 grant until March.
Meanwhile, the MAGA infection shows no signs of letting up.