Bursting the 'bubble:' a potential battle for the future of Saratoga’s Dems?
The fallout from the election loss and Saturday's incident begins.
“Embarrassing,” “delusional,” “insular” and — the worst sleight of them all — “echo chamber.”
If the Dems weren’t frustrated enough after their Nov. 4 loss, the angst that seems to be just heating up after Saturday’s “incident” has proved incredibly revealing.
In a nutshell: Members of the public got kicked out of the Democratic Committee’s election postmortem after unknowingly showing up thinking that they were invited. (The committee had changed the meeting to “closed” two days prior, but not everyone got the message.)
Adding to the insult: The committee voted in front of these members of the public — including hardworking campaign volunteers and at least one former committee member — to throw optics and transparency to the wind and kick them right out.
Now, multiple people are left in shock and pointing fingers at:
the decision to change the nature of the meeting in the first place
not thinking fast enough to seem welcoming when the citizens did show up, and
not seeing the pain this is all causing amongst devoted party members
ChatGPT, define “potential echo chamber fallout.”
“They want to do a postmortem on this and figure out what happened, but they are not interested in knowing what community members, citizens and former volunteers have to say, simply because they’re not on the committee?” says Julie Cuneo, an attorney for the Department of Health and former Democratic committee member who was one of the “visitors” kicked out on Saturday — and she was on crutches. “That’s a very closed mind. If you don’t look outside your bubble for information, then maybe your bubble’s missing something big.
They were presented with an opportunity, and they just closed the door.”
The numbers were in their favor the night their slate lost: Dems had a 12 percent voter registration edge, and the electorate itself came out 15 percent more Dem, according to Saturday’s fateful gathering. Was it the zeitgeist that perhaps was not? After all, more and more people are joining One Saratoga, an action that defines a welcoming spirit and is in direct opposition to the closed-door actions of Saturday’s brutal morning.
“I do not like speaking out against the Democratic party that I support,” Cuneo says. “But I do know that I’m in favor of open meetings, I’m not okay with how we were treated, and since I’m being given an opportunity to speak it’s important that I do.”
Cuneo is such an active member of the community that multiple people have their eye on her for a potential run next election.
But could change be coming within the party even sooner?
“We need a leadership change,” says County Supervisor-Elect Sarah Burger, who voted to allow the members of the public to stay. “The voters have spoken. We need a hard reset here, and that is what should be driving this bus.”
ICYMI…
The election results have made it clear that the Committee has lost the respect and confidence of Saratoga Democrats. One Saratoga took advantage of poor choices the Committe made and ran better candidates.