In a convention style meeting that rivaled any hilarity that the current City Council could muster, the Democratic Town Committee settled on which three candidates they will put up for Novembers Board of Education members, officially the most thankless job in the municipality. Voters get to vote for three and the top four get appointed. Currently the four elected officials are three Democrats Andrea Comer, Elizabeth Brad Noel, and Luis Rodriguez Davila with one Working Families member, Sharon Patterson-Stallings.
Chosen in last night’s “clusterf$%,” as one DTC member called it, were Robert LaChance, Albert Barrueco, and Luis Rodriguez Davila. But that doesn’t begin to tell the story of this wonderful group of the bullied and bought. Lets go back for a sec. (insert cool time machine noise here)…
As first announced by yours truly and later reported on Cityline, the DTC basically gave the incumbent group of Dem’s on the BoE a vote of No Confidence by not suggesting any of them to be re-elected. Andrea Comer was not planning to run for another term, but members of the selection committee say that would have not mattered. At that earlier meeting the top three candidates were LaChance, Barrueco, and Lori Hudson.
After said meeting another meeting was held in order to ask questions of the candidates so that every individual could make up their own mind as to whom to choose. Yeah right…
Last night’s election started with the nomination of all the candidates which included the three selected along with Inez Pegeas, Elvis Tejada, Lori Hudson, and Elizabeth Brad Noel. Noticeably absent was Benjamin Cruise of Leadership Greater Hartford. Benjamin had finished fourth in the initial committee’s score card. Sources say that he dropped out most likely to go back to school full time. After all the nominations were made, all the independent minds were unleashed to vote.
First the West Enders: La Chance, Barrueco, and E. Brad Noel across the board except for one vote for Inez Pegaes (Thom Page) and one for Lori Hudson (Elaine Hatcher). Then Ramon Arroyo’s bloc all came up and each one stepped up and passed. Next, chairman Sean Arena’s minions. LaChance, Barrueco, and Hudson in domo origato-ish type voices. With the exception of two members who took the previous crew’s cue while making a statement that people should stop voting in blocs because that’s how they got back stabbed. The comment was apparently made toward chairman Arena as there was some tit for tat between the two.
The remaining districts voted similarly with the consistent vote getter being LaChance with Pegaes, Barrueco, Davila, and Hudson each getting a small spurt. An interesting note to make is that only two people voted both for Lori Hudson and Inez Pegaes (both African American Women) on their ballot. Otherwise someone either voted for Inez, or for Hudson, or for neither. Would that make a difference…let’s see…
Near the end of the first round of voting one voter summed up the voting by jokingly stating aloud “what did they tell me to do?” There was a hearty laugh felt throughout the land.
So now we come back to all the passes and Ramon Arroyo’s bloc of 13-15 votes who went for Davila, Pegaes, and Tejada. This was a big blow on many fronts, but most notably for Luis Rodriguez Davila who now found himself back in the race.
At the end of the first round of voting (8:36pm) the votes were the following: LaChance (39), Barrueco (32), Davila (32) Hudson (31) Pegaes (27) Noel (22)
Now for the fun part. Apparently because there were 65 people who cast votes. The nominees who win have to do it with at least 50%. So you need at least 33 votes to be nominated. So Chairmen Arenas announces that people can go and change their vote. woot!! This is better than Democratic Pizza!! The room starts a buzzing with everyone and their mom offering all sorts of good stuff to each other for that one vote.
In the corner was Cityline correspondent and DTC Chair wannabee Bruce Rubenstein just taking it all in with a smile on his face. I swear I thought I heard a muahaha come out of him.
In total about 16 people chose to change one of their votes. Most went from an out of the running candidate to one in the running. An interesting note here again is the fact that the proponents of the African American women didn’t get together to put Hudson over the top. Four people changed their votes to Hudson but two changed their votes to Pegaes!!?? End result Barrueco (38) LaChance (36) Davila (36), had the two Pegaes people chose Hudson, she would have had 37 votes.
I guess you know where I’m heading with this. There are NO African Americans on the Democratic slate for Board of Education. Currently the Boe has three African Americans on the board; Comer, Stallings and Pamela Richmond who is a mayoral appointee. Stallings is an elected official and is a strong candidate to represent the Working Families Party again.
Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? Is this even a thing? I have no idea, but people were P-I-S-S-E-D at that realization and something tells me that there will be more to this story.
til then….