Editor, The Spotlight;
“If you are disappointed in the choices party leaders have made on your behalf in recent years, and want to see a more open, participatory, representative party organization, I urge you to support the Reform Democrats running for the committee. We want Bethlehem’s Democratic Party to be a model for other communities.”
— Pam Robbins, Aug. 22, 2012, The Spotlight
In the summer of 2012, if you were a registered Democrat in the Town of Bethlehem, Bethlehem Reform Democrats aggressively sought your support in their campaign to challenge, defeat and replace incumbents on the town’s Democratic Committee.
The message of the so-called reformers was simple: elect Reform Democrats and replace the existing leadership of the Town Democratic Committee with individuals who would be committed to “…openness, transparency… and the full participation of the membership in decision-making…” Reformers also asserted that the Town Democratic Committee should be a “consensus-based, bottom-up organization.”
The reformers scored an impressive victory, securing sufficient committee seats to elect a new slate of officers. However, it took less than two years for the so-called reformers to abandon openness and transparency and embrace “backroom deals” and secrecy.
This past fall, without Committee knowledge and approval, and operating outside the spirit of the Committee by-laws, Chairman Jeff Kuhn, Secretary Pam Robbins and Treasurer Dan Coffey undertook a secret campaign to support their hand-picked candidates for Committee seats. In advance of the September primary, these officers published and circulated campaign literature, financed with Committee monies, in support of their candidates for committee seats. This literature featured the Committee logo, which naturally gave readers the impression that the Town Democratic Committee at-large endorsed their hand-picked candidates. Such was not the case. The committee never endorsed any of these candidates, nor did the rank-and-file of the committee authorize committee funds to be allocated in support of these candidates.
Weeks ago, committee members asked the committee officers for a report explaining their motives and intentions in mounting these committee seat primaries, an itemized accounting of the funds they expended, and for copies of the literature and letters they published and distributed with committee funds over the course of this secret primary campaign. The committee members are still waiting for these reports.
Chairman Kuhn, Ms. Robbins, and Mr. Coffey acted entirely outside of the Committee structure and in possible violation of Committee by-laws. They chose not to discuss their plans, seek consensus or approval or meaningfully involve the remaining 59 or so other members of the Committee in important decision-making. Through their actions, they have abandoned their stated and emphatic commitment to operate the committee in an open, transparent and consensus-based manner, and instead have embraced the preference for backroom deals and secrecy of their predecessors.
“Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.” — Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina”
Sean Raleigh
Bethlehem
Raleigh is a member of the Bethlehem Democratic Committee.
