Why vote for an unaffiliated candidate?

Written by Jan Rifkinson
Monday, 07 November 2011 05:26

 

Who am I, what do I stand for, why am I campaigning for a seat on the Board of Selectmen?

I’m a retired, middle class married guy living on a fixed income, financially squeezed like many of you.

Philosophically, I’m for transparency in government, full disclosure and working more closely with Ridgefielders.

Fiscally, I’m careful. I want to understand the reasons for spending and exactly how that spending will benefit the taxpayer. I believe more revenue streams must be developed to reduce the tax burden.

People move here not only for our excellent schools, but because both housing and taxes are lower by comparison to other Fairfield towns in our category. If that formula changes, Ridgefield’s charm will change. I am not in favor of that.

I love new ideas. I like to converse with people. I admire thoughtful individuals with common sense.

I am not politically driven, which is why I made a conscious decision to run as an unaffiliated candidate.

Demagoguery, dogma and political gamesmanship don’t belong in Ridgefield.

Someone willing to volunteer their time for the community, running for a seat on the Board of Selectmen as I am, should understand the town’s major issues. I attended almost all board meetings for the past four years and I can say that I am knowledgeable about those issues.

If I am elected, I may not always get it right, but I’m sure going to do my best to balance the interests of everyone in the entire community.

Rifkinson will run, seeks signatures > Ridgefield Press July 20,2011

Rifkinson will run, seeks signatures

Written by Macklin Reid, Press Staff
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."

Rifkinson May Run > Ridgefield Press July 16, 2011

Rifkinson may run

Written by Macklin Reid
Saturday, 16 July 2011 12:00

Jan Rifkinson

Time to stop throwing tomatoes and take a turn in the stocks?

Outspoken town government critic Jan Rifkinson is considering a run this fall as an unaffiliated candidate for a seat on the Board of Selectmen.

“I’m still sort of betwixt and between, but I’m really seriously thinking about it,” Mr. Rifkinson said in an interview Tuesday.  “I’m considering running unaffiliated, just plain unaffiliated,” he said.

Mr. Rifkinson, a retired television news producer, said he wasn’t interested in running as a candidate of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

He was skeptical but hadn’t closed the door on a nomination by Ridgefield’s Independent Party.

In writings on his blog Mr. Rifkinson traces his unease with party affiliations to his career in the news business, where reporters, editors and producers were eager to guard their independence of thought.

Mr. Rifkinson attends most selectmen’s and some meetings of other town agencies. He speaks out for taxpayers, and is skeptical of school spending. Two years ago he rose repeatedly to speak at the annual town meeting, on a mission to make First Selectman Rudy Marconi explain the use of and need for every pick-up and dump truck in the budget.

In his blog and on various online venues he contributes to, such as The Ridgefield Forum on The Press’s Web site, Mr. Rifkinson has been asking people what they think of him seeking office.

“I’ve just been talking to people, just individually,” he said, “...to get a sense of what they think, not so much to get a sense of my running as an unaffiliated, but my running at all, in terms of my usefulness.”

It’s something he wonders about.

“The question I’m trying to evolve for myself is whether I can do more good as part of a loyal opposition, or whether or not I can be of any use were I elected to the board,” he said.

In December, when the selectmen were appointing someone to the vacancy left by Joan Plock’s resignation from the board, Mr. Rifkinson joined Republicans Marty Heiser and Maureen Kozlark in interviewing for the seat.

“I thought I was treated pretty shabbily, not because they didn’t select me, just the way they went about business,” he said.

Mr. Rifkinson sat out the subsequent Heiser-Kozlark special election.

Many people who’ve read his blogs and periodic opinion pieces in The Press have suggested he run, Mr. Rifkinson said.

He believes the public has an appetite for candidates outside the two-party politics-as-usual mainstream, and says an unaffiliated candidacy shouldn’t be dismissed as a hopeless long shot.

“I’m just not interested in wasting my time,” he said. “If I run it’s not an exercise in freedom of speech, or to make a point, it’s to win.”