Thursday, October 21, 2010

Candidate Forum

The candidate forum at Neptune Hose was fairly well attended (though not by Democrats), despite the nasty weather. Sheriff candidate Lansing was unable to be there, so Sheriff Meskill just introduced himself and stuck around for the Assembly candidate discussion. No questions on fracking--questions instead on truck regulations, constituent service, charter schools, spending, the STAR program. Nothing particularly out of left field. Candidate Reynolds seems to believe that we can just sit down and talk with individuals instead of writing regulations. He also believes that we should make school decisions locally but still have state standards. Candidate Lifton talked about "studying" problems and the complexity of the issues a bit too often. The guy handling the camera in front of me shook his head violently at everything Lifton said about charter schools, none of which seemed shake-worthy to me. I couldn't get a handle on the audience--the grange was well-represented, but there were many people I did not know. ICTV showed up but didn't seem very well organized or able to lift their cameras without clunking around. Two or three local papers were also there; I did not see the radio stations.

1 comment:

Mike Lane said...

Thanks for the post Kathy. As an elected official and member of the Grange, I would very much have liked to have been there to hear the candidates and questions from the public. However, there was a Tompkins County Expanded Budget Committee meeting tonight that prevented Dryden's county legislators and others from attending. Cheers to the Grange and League of Women Voters for holding this important event in Dryden.