Dear Editor,
First is my big thank you to the 1,471 Windsor County voters. Those voters saw the issues facing local democracy.
I, Mason Wade, spoke strongly about our local democracy being homoginized by the two party system, as an independent candidate for the past two Windsor Senate races. Before I share an example, I would like to congratulate our three incumbent Senators wins for the 2020 race. Our incumbent Senators ran with an ad campaign (funded by the Democratic party) as the Trio- Vote Early for the career politicians!
Many newspaper ads and repeated mailers showing Senator McCormick above and between the other two Senators (kinda felt sexist.) All this is fine and dandy but our three incumbent Senators didn’t sound the alarm in mid-Sept. that no debates were scheduled for the eight candidates for the Senate race. This was a local democracy issue and yes the incumbents needed to sound the alarm.
But I guess the game plan was to keep your head down and shout vote early!
I was very happy to read Tim Calabro’s editorial in the Nov. 5 Herald “Partisan politics endanger democracy.” Talking about the need for rank-choice voting to break the gaming of our democracy by the two-party system.
Will 2022 bring the retirement of our three career politicians? I do hope they will listen to all of Windsor County voters. These next two years, I do wish them well during these very tough times with an ongoing virus issue (a global pandemic with a climate emergency.) Already as reported in the weekly (Nov. 11-18) Seven Days, that Senator Clarkson is jockeying to succeed as majority leader against Sen. Chris Pearson and Sen. Campion. “I think it’s very important to have a democrat as the majority leader,” Clarkson said. “This is the majority party.”
So the party begins!
More locally I do want to thank those who voted for me. Rochester, 87, Bethel 145, Stockbridge 67, Sharon 62, Royalton 126 and Barnard 55.
Should I run in 2022? Please call or text me with your thoughts. 802-349-3970.
Mason Wade
Rochester
