{"id":5729,"date":"2011-11-12T11:34:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T16:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5729"},"modified":"2011-11-13T08:02:46","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T13:02:46","slug":"election-2011-the-move-to-the-middle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5729","title":{"rendered":"Election 2011: the move to the middle?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can moderation be the winner in this year’s school board election?<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann,<\/strong> Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span>
\n\"\"<\/a>So what lessons are we to draw from this past week\u2019s elections?<\/p>\n

Does this represent some sort of mandate to raise taxes, spend lots of money and basically go nuts when it comes to the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District?<\/p>\n

In a word (a really short one): no.<\/p>\n

No more than 2009\u2019s election was a mandate to ignore long-held local beliefs about funding education and inspire some slash-and-burn economics, but rather:<\/p>\n

\u201cSlow down. Be careful. Talk to us. Listen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, Tuesday\u2019s vote isn\u2019t a mandate to go forward and build a new middle school and in general, throw cash around like it came from a Monopoly set. Guess what the message from the voters was, again:<\/p>\n

\u201cSlow down. Be careful. Talk to us. Listen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think, in both elections, the voters were signaling a desire for a conservative approach. That\u2019s not to be confused with a Conservative \u2122, Fox News, deny global warming, blame the liberal media for it all (hi!) approach, but rather the way it might have been defined a generation ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,\u201d <\/em>\u2014 George Santayana<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose who repeat it and still don\u2019t get it are really asking for trouble.\u201d <\/em>\u2014 Mike McGann\u2019s corollary.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Slow, careful, cautious, even methodical \u2014 you know, like bankers used to be before they decided it would be more fun to trash the economy and get giant bonuses. Now, I suppose that would be moderate in an era where the extreme elements of one side wants to ban steaks, cupcakes and anything else remotely fun or interesting (to save you from yourself), while the other wants to abolish government (to save you from yourself).<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m sensing that\u2019s what people want: a calm, middle-of-the-road approach that neither thrills nor terrifies, but rather rolls up its collective sleeves and works to find solutions to the very real challenges this district and community face in the coming years.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great chance for this new board to seek the common ground, sensibly balance the needs of students and taxpayers and maybe find a way to calm the rifts that have divided this community for a number of years.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope they seize that opportunity \u2014 and the early indications suggest they will try \u2014 and let\u2019s hope the community as a whole allows them the room to do so.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Some are crying foul about Tuesday\u2019s board elections because, get this: the Democrats, Kathy Do and Gregg Lindner, killed in one precinct and lost the other five.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s patently silly. That\u2019s a bit like complaining that the Phillies hit a ton of home runs at Citizen Bank Park because they have hitters like Ryan Howard. Surely, that\u2019s not fair! If the Phillies didn\u2019t hit all those home runs to the short porch in right, they wouldn\u2019t have won the National League East.<\/p>\n

Or…maybe they looked at the park and built a team to match it \u2014 and, well, it\u2019s worked out pretty well. And that\u2019s exactly what Do and Lindner did, sort of \u2014 and it worked, despite a roughly 2-1 Republican to Democratic voter registration edge in Region C.<\/p>\n

I spoke to Do about it a bit \u2014 and having run and managed races in both Chadds Ford and Pennsbury, I was pretty interested in their approach.<\/p>\n

With a relatively small budget (about $3,000), Do said they were a bit limited in what they could do in terms of traditional campaign expenditures \u2014 lots of lawn signs, pricey mailings and other paid media were pretty much off the table. Sure, they bought some signs, did a small mailing and bought one Internet news site ad (yes, here, and for the record, we would have happily taken an ad from anyone \u2014 we\u2019re equal-opportunity capitalists \u2014 but no one else sought one, which is a shame because our eyeballs to dollars ratio puts every other media outlet in the county to shame \u2014 sorry for the self-promotion, but hey…).<\/p>\n

Do and Lindner mixed old-school \u201cget out the vote\u201d (GOTV) with some newer approaches, largely outside of the party structure. While the local Democrats supported the effort \u2014 typically that support amounted to very minor fiscal help, a handful of phone calls and poll greeters (which, by the way, are about 1\/100th as valuable as a good four-day, pre-election GOTV effort). As recent elections have shown (including elsewhere on the Democratic slate, Tuesday), that probably wouldn\u2019t have cut it \u2014 or even come close.<\/p>\n

Instead, Do and Lindner did some old-school campaigning, knocking on doors, holding \u201cmeet the candidate coffees\u201d at various people\u2019s homes \u2014 all fairly traditional ways of getting voters to know you in local campaigns. But the modern twist was two (and maybe three) fold:<\/p>\n

Social media. The duo made use of a Facebook group to grow support, get their message out and spread the word, mostly among Unionville-Chadds Ford parents. They also opted to use a dynamic Web site \u2014 with a content management system \u2014 to allow rapid and constant updates to their site, something that not only gives supporters more items to share with friends and neighbors, but (if implemented right) vastly improves how the site searches, bringing would-be voters and those interested in Unionville school issues to their site.<\/p>\n

They also made use of email \u2014 asking supporters to share emails with friends and neighbors. This mail list grew organically over the summer, growing supporters and creating a passionate grass-roots network.<\/p>\n

Clearly, not only is this a template for local campaigns, but I think it offers lessons on better methods for local groups, townships and even the school district in terms of improving communication with area residents.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s Saturday and you\u2019re reading this: why aren\u2019t you at the Unionville Art Gala? It\u2019s at the High School and features dozens of local artists, not to mention the works of students. It is one of the signature events of the area and not to be missed.<\/p>\n

Go. Now.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

You have to be impressed by the work on the Route 52\/Route 926 intersection \u2014 for the most part it\u2019s gone off without a hitch and met schedules. And wow, it really looks like it should improve traffic flow and safety.<\/p>\n

It gives me some hope that when PennDOT finally gets around to tackling the 926 bridge over the Brandywine, the resulting work will be done well.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Unionville’s own Steve Shinn, who won election as a West Chester Borough Council member this week. Shinn, a Unionville High School graduate, who works as a manager at Sovana Bistro in the heart of Unionville, won a seat in the borough’s Sixth Ward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can moderation be the winner in this year’s school board election? By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com So what lessons are we to draw from this past week\u2019s elections? Does this represent some sort of mandate to raise taxes, spend lots of money and basically go nuts when it comes to the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,7],"tags":[661,182,43,24],"class_list":["post-5729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-featured","tag-columns-2","tag-election-2011","tag-schools-2","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}