Rifkinson will run, seeks signatures
Written by Macklin Reid, Press Staff
Wednesday, 20 July 2011 05:36
Wednesday, 20 July 2011 05:36
Jan Rifkinson
Jan Rifkinson is in. He’s decided to run for a seat on the Board of Selectmen.
“I have indeed decided to make this run as an unaffiliated candidate,” said Mr. Rifkinson, a frequent critic of town government who has been seeking feedback for a couple of weeks on the idea of running for a board seat — and announced his interest in the idea in last week’s Press.
“I’m filing my papers today,” he said Tuesday. “That’s without any guarantees from anybody for anything. I have no assurance of any kind from any of the parties that they will endorse me, or cross endorse me, or side endorse me...
“I’m just going out on my own,” he said. “It’s just me.”
Because he plans to run unaffiliated, Mr. Rifkinson has some work to do to get on the ballot.
“First thing is you get an application for a nominating petition — not part of a party — and then I get this filled out, with the help of the town clerk,” he said. “And then it gets sent off to Hartford, to the elections office.”
The state elections office then computes the number of valid signatures of registered Ridgefield voters — of any party affiliation — he’ll need to sign a petition in support of his being placed on the ballot.
“They send me a letter of acknowledgment that they’ve received my petition, and then they tell me how many names I’ll need on a petition to become a candidate.”
The number of valid signatures needed is one percent of the number of votes cast for the office of selectmen in the previous general election.
In the winter, when Maureen Kozlark petitioned to get on the special election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate after losing the Republican caucus to Marty Heiser, she needed 59 signatures — 1% of the 5,844 votes cast for selectmen in the 2007 election.
Whatever the number, Mr. Rifkinson was optimistic — 1% is [sic] a low threshold.
“It couldn’t be more than 150, because there’s only 15,000 registered voters in town,” he said.
“The entire process has to completed by Aug. 10. It all has to be in to and confirmed by the Town Clerk by Aug. 10. So, I don’t have a whole lot of time.
“I have to have an official form, and then I guess I’ll go stand somewhere and, hopefully, people will sign it,” he said.
People don’t have to plan on voting for him to sign the petition to get him on the ballot.
“I hope people will sign it just on general principle, whether they’ll support me or not. It’s an exercise in democracy,” he said.
Mr. Rifkinson said, “I continue to get comments both privately and publicly that I should run. And it seems to be from a wide swath of the community,” he said.
He has no qualms about doing it the hard way.
“I suppose the conventional thinking is that if I were to run from a party platform I would stand a better chance, and that’s probably true. But I’m just not comfortable doing it,” he said.
“I don’t want anybody calling me or saying to me ‘Don’t support that’ or ‘Do support that’ or ‘If you don’t support that, I’m not going to support you.
“People have written to me,” he added. “They say they’re tired of politics as usual.”
He may not have a party, but he does plan to make his voice heard.
“Oh, yeah, I’m going to run a campaign,” he said. “Certainly I have to sit down with people who know what they’re doing along those lines, because I’ve never been through one of these before.
“I guess, try to find a campaign manager, try to raise some cash, get my face out there, talk to people so they get to know me — and keep my fingers crossed.”
While he’s not going to run on any party’s platform, he said, he wouldn’t mind if the Independent Party, or even one of the major parties, decided to support him.
“Anybody can endorse me, that’s up to them. I’d accept anybody’s endorsement,” he said.
“All three of them can endorse me, as far as I’m concerned.
Mr. Rifkinson said he wasn’t ready to detail the topics he’d be campaigning on, but he had sense of what he wanted to talk about.
“I have a lot of thoughts about that,” he said. “I suppose open government, more transparency, more, more public meetings, more cooperation between the boards...
“I’m hoping people can come around to dealing with issues from a common sense and common good point of view, instead of a political point of view,” he said.
“It should be interesting."
No comments:
Post a Comment