In A Tight Race For Select Board, How Will You Vote? - Editorial
We have received more letters to the editor in the last few weeks than any other time in recent memory. It is astounding how many readers have written in with candidate endorsements, sharing stories of their experiences with candidates and just being generally civically engaged. We are very happy to see it.
It’s a tight race for the two select board seats up for grabs this year. Mashpee is lucky to have so many qualified candidates and even more lucky to have voters who care enough to be this engaged throughout the campaigning process. We hope that enthusiastic willingness to engage will carry over into next week’s Mashpee Select Board candidates forum, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Cape Cod Area and the Mashpee Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with Mashpee TV, which has been recording and posting statements from all of the candidates in this year’s election. We recommend watching these statements for yourself either on YouTube or Mashpee TV’s website to get a feel for each candidate and learn more about their platforms ahead of next week’s forum.
The candidates forum will be held on Thursday, May 1, at 5:30 PM at Mashpee Town Hall. It will be recorded and streamed on Channel 1072 HD and the Mashpee TV YouTube channel. The League, a nonpartisan organization that runs forums like these around the region, will moderate the forum.
This campaign season has been an interesting one. As the race for select board heats up we’ve found ourselves having some hard conversations within our newsroom, particularly amongst the editorial board. When it comes to what a candidate for public office says and does, where is the line that separates acceptable from unacceptable, or appropriate from inappropriate? We ask that Mashpee voters do their diligence and pay attention to not just what candidates say they stand for, but how they act and how they treat others. A good leader is someone who is cognizant not just of their words and actions, but how those words and actions affect those around them.
After much conversation with the editorial board, we feel confident in endorsing one candidate for each of the two seats up for grabs on the select board. Our paper has not endorsed candidates in several years, but this year’s race is different. And to be clear, these endorsements are the opinion of the editorial board and do not constitute any sway in our news coverage, which will always remain objective.
Our last few weeks have been overflowing with letters of endorsement, candidate interviews and profiles, conversations and all other election-related things and, as we waded through it all, two candidates became clear front-runners to us: Tracy Kelley and Mike Richardson.
Electing Ms. Kelley and Mr. Richardson to the Mashpee Select Board would be a wise move for Mashpee’s future. Mr. Richardson’s experience as a veteran on the select board with 16 years in town government would make him a great pillar for the board, which is losing a critical member with chairwoman Carol Sherman’s decision to not run for reelection. His familiarity with and knowledge of Mashpee’s issues from his longtime involvement in town government would bolster the board in a way that we see as a benefit to the town.
While Mr. Richardson would be a familiar face to the board, Ms. Kelley would be the opposite—a fresh one, with a new perspective, new ideas and new talents to bring to the table.
Ms. Kelley represents a currently underrepresented but ever-growing population in Mashpee: young people trying to live, work and raise their families here. But what she brings to the table is more than just relatability to the younger generations. Ms. Kelley is a highly qualified, highly educated Indigenous woman who is raising her own family in Mashpee, where her ancestral roots go back thousands of years. She would bring an edge to the select board’s membership that we haven’t quite seen in other candidates: a firsthand knowledge of the struggles younger generations face when it comes to finding affordable housing; an active investment in our school district, where her children are enrolled; and a passionate advocacy for our natural resources that is intimately intertwined with generations of intrinsic knowledge through the deep familial roots she has to this land. Ms. Kelley’s perspective and intersection of identities is unique among this year’s swath of candidates, but is representative of a large portion of this town’s residents. That should not be overlooked. Getting fresh faces on the boards that govern this town is so incredibly important—especially now, when there is such a dire need for such individuals in town—and we think Ms. Kelley is worthy of a seat on this town’s top governing body.
Ms. Kelley’s fresh perspective paired with Mr. Richardson’s experiences as a veteran select board member, we think, is the right dichotomy to fill the open seats on the board, and would be the right move for Mashpee.
The opinion of this editorial board is, at the end of the day, just that: one opinion. In the spirit of democracy, we encourage all of our readers to go out and educate themselves further on each candidate: attend campaign events, watch candidate statements, read our candidate profiles online (easily found in our Mashpee Town Election Hub) and attend Thursday’s forum to hear from the candidates themselves. Take in as much information as you can and decide for yourself: what will you do with your vote?