I don’t generally send letters in response to letters. However, the sentiments expressed by Newell Augur (July 2) bear reiteration. I couldn’t agree more with his assessments of the recent partisan landscape around local elections. It is almost tragic that political affiliation or loyalty would be seen as indicative of any candidate’s suitability for serving a local council, board or committee.

I like to say that local government’s role is to serve the residents by making the most basic things work: educate our children, maintain our roads and infrastructure, deliver the everyday services people expect. There’s really no such thing as a Democratic or Republican school, snowplow, vehicle registration or landfill.

I can actually remember a time when all Maine elections were unlike national ones. Legislative candidates often didn’t even “advertise” their political affiliations. Maybe they wanted to appeal to the broadest population or perhaps they recognized party affiliation was not important. Most people voted for the person, not the party.

There’s no proof, but I’ve suspected term limits may have altered our former way of electing people. Prior to term limits, political parties had less clout; they were not the literal gatekeepers. Elected representatives were accessible to all the voters and not as beholden to party “leaders.”

Furthermore, there were more genuine “independents” in the legislature and working “across the aisle” was not an anomaly. I hope that in the future, reduction of uber-partisanship in many venues and elimination of it in others may improve our way of thinking about elections.

Suzan Wilson
Brunswick 

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