August 7, 2008 A town-wide effort in Ramapo has focused on electing members to the Ramapo Democratic Committee in order to bring change to a local party broken by self-serving incumbents, special interests, and patronage. The Ramapo Democrats for Change is a wide-ranging coalition of activists, neighbors, and Democrats already serving in office who are tired of machine politics in the town. The group has gone through the petition process and have nominated more than 200 candidates for 300+ committee seats.

The reaction from Town Hall and the chief mechanic for the local machine—Christopher St. Lawrence—was not surprising. His comments in today’s Journal News were attacking and not very reasonable. He said the coalition were not "true Democrats," and then he bragged that his involvement with the party goes back to when he was 5 years old and someone had him licking envelopes for a party mailing. Just as a footnote, my personal involvement with the party goes back even further than that chronologically, and my first active contribution involved playing in a band that was part of the entertainment for John F. Kennedy in a fundraiser in Providence, R.I. A lifelong registered Democrat, I find the Supervisor’s accusation insulting, and just a little disturbing. Who puts a stack of envelopes in front of their five-year-old and asks them to lick and seal them?

You can understand St. Lawrence’s annoyance at this challenge to his personal control over the local party. When he tells Jim Walsh, the Journal reporter, "I believe the long-term Democrats will be successful because they represent the principles of the Democratic Party." Here’s a little story that will shed some light on the way the "principles" of the party are observed here in Ramapo.

In the last election, at the nominating meeting for the Ramapo Democratic Party, Chris Samson (Town Clerk and then Party Chairman) called for nominations from the floor for the open seat on the Ramapo Town Board. A small group of people tried to put the name of James Hyer up for consideration, and Samson told those nominating the young lawyer from Spring Valley to sit down and shut up because they were out of order. Joseph Meyers, one of those nominating and seconding the nomination told Chris that he would not stand down and that the group had standing as members and could nominate a candidate. After some shouting, someone other than Samson prevailed on the committee to accept and vote on the nomination. The joke of the evening was that the meeting was called to consider nominations for a town board seat, and while the committee members were inside the old porno theater in Spring Valley pretending to make a decision, stacks of Elect Itamar Yeger for Ramapo Town Board signs were out in the theater lobby waiting for the committee members to pick up on the way out. That’s what passes for "the principles of the Democratic Party" in Chris St. Lawrence’s and Chris Samson’s Ramapo. We’ll make the signs, and then you can vote, as long as the name you pick matches what’s on the signs.

St. Lawrence also told Walsh that this was an attempt by Preserve Ramapo to "hijack the Democratic Party." That’s very flattering to us here at Preserve Ramapo, but St. Lawrence is going to have to expand his paranoia in order to understand that this is a much larger coalition and Preserve Ramapo is a strong supporter and part of this movement, but we are only a part. And if he believes that neighbors going out and collecting signatures, and candidates volunteering to run for a position that does not pay anything, and having the electorate decide is "hijacking" it makes you wonder what he defines as "democratic."

The chances look good and the basic reason is that St. Lawrence’s lock-step bloc vote cannot affect your district’s choice unless you live in area controlled by that contingent. In the voting districts that have already decided on the winners, the Ramapo Democrats for Change are leading by a little more than a dozen. These districts have been decided because one side or the other have not put up candidates, or their candidates have been eliminated because of faulty petitions or not enough signatures.

In this category, a particularly galling loss for the Supervisor happened in his own voting district. His own candidates for the Committee have already been defeated in his home district by the Democrats for Change. Perhaps this is the first canary to fall in the underground mine that passes for open government here in Ramapo.

Reactions in today’s paper from the establishment are an admission of the sweep and the influence of the reform movement.

Nathan Oberman, Ramapo’s finance director said, "We’ve had infighting, but it was more localized. This is more comprehensive."

Town Clerk, Chris Samson called the effort "the broadest challenge in terms of the number of candidates and seats sought," and Larry Toole, the current Chairman of the Ramapo Democratic Committee offered the opinion, "Anything that makes the Democratic Party stronger, I’m for."

You can read The Journal News story here, and when the Ramapo Democrats for Change launch their website, we will provide links and additional information.

Michael Castelluccio