No place for identity politics in race

What has happened to our country, the great melting pot? One theory may be our obsession with negative things and the total failure of gratitude for the blessings that many of us enjoy. The beauty of this country is that we acknowledge our shortcomings and constantly strive to better ourselves, admittedly sometimes going overboard before we realize that we have caused unintended consequences. Has the emergence of reality TV hooked us on celebrating others’ misfortunes?

It is now time for us to abandon the nastiness and divisiveness of our current political divide and recognize that we are all human beings with the same longings for love, a good education, prosperity, safety and security. With the proper policies over time, we can achieve this goal without the need to degrade each other verbally and in every other way. In his book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey posits the reasonable theory that effectiveness stems from seeking an understanding of the other person’s position, before seeking the other person’s understanding of your own position.

Unfortunately, that is not the way politics is shaping up this year, either nationally or locally. As head of Stamford’s Democratic City Committee, Josh Fedeli continues to exhibit a pattern of reckless and irresponsible character assassinations of Republican candidates for office, aiming his arrows this year against Ryan Fazio, candidate for State Senate.

The most recent example of this is on display in his Stamford Advocate op-ed of Aug. 7 in which Mr. Fedeli denounced Dan Quigley, the head of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee, for what Mr. Fedeli believes was an inadequate response to a fake Twitter account that had posted odious comments from a fake Ryan Fazio PAC. Mr. Fedeli intimated strongly that the odious, racist messages were endorsed by Candidate Fazio. In fact, Mr. Quigley was much more gracious and appropriate in his response, making it clear that he agreed that the posts were odious, while also emphasizing that neither he nor Mr. Fazio believed that Ms. Alex Kasser, Mr. Fazio’s opponent, had anything to do with their creation.

Mr. Fazio acted quickly with Twitter to shut down this fake account. Conversely, to boost her own campaign, his opponent, Ms. Kasser, played it up and made sure that anyone who would be offended by these ideas became aware of the existence of the fake site with the clear intention of ascribing these thoughts to Mr. Fazio. By these actions, Ms. Kasser has shown an appalling preference for deception and lack of transparency. When she ran for this office the first time, I attended a meeting she had scheduled on the prospect of instituting tolls in Connecticut, a move she favored. The meeting venue at the Italian Center was so well-attended that people were forced to stand outside the meeting room. People thought the purpose of the meeting was to solicit the reactions to the toll proposals; however, when people wanted to speak, she shut the meeting down and would not allow for questions or comments. How is that for representing your constituents?

This is not the first time that Josh Fedeli has authored libelous comments about Republican political candidates. When Barry Michelson (my husband) ran for mayor of Stamford in 2017, in another Stamford Advocate op-ed in which Mr. Fedeli professed to stand against bigotry and hatred, Mr. Fedeli intimated strongly that Mr. Michelson, a Jewish man, stood with Nazis and white supremacists. When was the last time you met a Jewish Nazi or white supremacist, Mr. Fedeli?

Ryan Fazio, who has an impressive record of community volunteerism and business acumen, is running against Ms. Kasser for the 36th Senate District, representing Greenwich, Stamford and New Canaan. This is a local position, not a referendum on the Trump administration. No matter what a candidate thinks of our national leadership, good or bad, our focus should be on our candidates’ positions on the local matters that affect all of us so deeply. The use of Identity Politics to obscure voting records, practiced routinely by Josh Fedeli, only serves to demean him and his party. With these vicious, unfounded attacks, he seeks to destroy our humanity. Ethical behavior and how we treat each other should matter in this election season and always.