More on County Committee

The county committee members elected in the June primary are also known as the municipal or city committee. There used to be a larger number of seats. Click here for a Plaintalker post on how voter apathy erodes the numbers.

Somebody asked who is on the current Democratic committee. Click here to see. The officers' list at the top is not correct, nor do we have eight City Council members. But the ward and district names are correct, as far as I know. One member, Hugh Smith, recently passed away.

Over the years, a number of husband and wife teams have run for and won district seats. Perhaps the rule that there must be one male and one female in each district was meant to overcome early all-male representation. I took a fast look at Title 19 and saw the requirement in the statute, but could not pinpoint when it came about.

In 2009, I wondered whether the time would come when Title 19 would be amended to permit same-sex partners to run for committee seats. Certainly Plainfield has a large number of gay or lesbian couples who are very much engaged in civic matters and who would be good committee candidates. Or maybe readers think two committee members from the same household, straight or gay, is or would be just hogging the representation if they win.

Many years ago, the Democratic City Committee roster for the June primary had quite a few "no nomination made" lines on the ballot. That changed when Harold Mitchell ran a full slate of challengers to Jerry Green's candidates. Since then, the RDOs have tended to field candidates for every possible seat. That was the case in 2009. The New Dems had a slate of 54 candidates to the RDO's 68. The winners were 27 New Dems and 41 RDOs, with RDOs coming out on top in Wards 1 and 4 and New Dems taking 14 Second Ward seats to the RDOs' eight. In the Third Ward, New Dems took the edge, 11-9. Of course, now they are all RDOs by dint of winning and all are supposed to support the party line. Heh, as somebody on Facebook likes to say.

--Bernice