NORWALK, Conn. — The Norwalk Republican Town Committee has revised its slate for Common Council at-large, naming Doug Hempstead and John Cardamone as candidates for the November municipal election.
Hempstead, a veteran council member, and Cardamone, a William Raveis real estate agent, replace Steve Cenatiempo and Greg Helms. Helms had been listed as a placeholder candidate.
RTC Chair Lisa Henderson confirmed the change on Wednesday.
Historically, Americans in the Reconstruction Era had a choice.
Before the Civil War, the political system had collapsed. One of the two major parties splintered under its contradictions — the Whigs — and re-formed as the Republican Party, which famously went on to elect Lincoln and win the war. In the aftermath, Republicans — many of whom were former Whigs — wanted to stop a similarly cataclysmic collapse from happening again.
The main choice was between (A) adopting the new voting systems and Proportional Representation rules that were gaining steam in the first waves of democratic consolidation back in Europe, or (B) adopting state-level primaries that could democratically settle intraparty disputes over who to nominate.
Americans chose the latter, out of a misguided Jacksonian impulse to maintain direct parochial accountability with their representatives, and it has UTTERLY FAILED. It kicked off the inexorable path towards consolidation of our odious two-party system.
All of that is to say, this action by the RTC exposes why that Jacksonian impulse was misguided. Americans thought that Proportional Representation’s party lists would rob them of their right to choose specific individual candidates, and hand it to party insiders. But the RTC is doing just that!
And lest we ignore Norwalk’s Democrats, we just opened up voting for a primary contest between two… party insiders. WHERE IS THE CHOICE?!?
A system that only gives us two choices, is no better than tyranny. It relies on the same logic of domination and zero-sum competition as tyranny. And any voting system that creates the same zero-sum logic, such as our UTTERLY OBSOLETE First-Past-The-Post, single-member districts, and the worthless kabuki of our primaries, is likewise no better than tyranny.
Primaries never saved us from party insiders. Primaries DOOMED us to them.
To those who do not like our current political system, I have a suggestion: Rather than complaining, run for office and change the process.
I second that.
This is not a realistic nor serious response.
Why have you not done so yourself?
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