Local officials seeking re-election should attend civic group ‘meet the candidate’ nights

It’s puzzling to me that Riverhead Town’s elected officials seeking re-election don’t want to participate in candidate forums hosted by local civic associations.

These local election year forums are a long-standing tradition in Riverhead Town. Candidates attend civic association meetings and field questions posed by a moderator, usually a civic association officer, most of which have been submitted to the association in advance by members of the organization or residents in the community served by the civic association. They’re a chance for residents to meet and greet officials at a community forum held right in their own neighborhood. 

These forums are not usually debates. They are question-and-answer sessions. They’ve always been conducted in a civil and polite manner. I’ve attended plenty of them, first as a town council candidate myself (back in 1987) and then as a reporter — most recently about a week ago in Flanders, when the Flanders, Riverside and Northampton civic group held one for Southampton Town and County Legislature candidates. 

This year, for a reason or reasons not overtly expressed, the Riverhead Republican Committee chairperson notified the Greater Jamesport Civic Association, the Heart of Riverhead Civic Association, the Greater Calverton Civic Association and the Wading River Civic Association that the Republican candidates would not attend the candidate forums this year. According to the civic groups, their invitations did not even garner a reply until one of the groups, the Greater Jamesport Civic Association sent the invitation out by certified mail. That got an emailed response to all the civic groups that the Republican candidates would not be participating, and would, instead, seek to hold a debate with a neutral moderator in a neutral location.

See: Republican incumbents will pass on two of three civic group candidate events, GOP leader says (Sept. 22)

After we started making calls asking about this, the GOP chairperson notified the president of the Greater Calverton Civic Association that the Republican candidates would attend the forum held jointly by the Calverton and Wading River civic groups at Riley Avenue Elementary School Oct. 16. The party chairperson told RiverheadLOCAL the same. But they will not attend the other two scheduled forums.

Given the language used in the email declining the invitations  about a “neutral moderator” in a “neutral location,” it sounds like the town Republican party and its incumbent elected officials view the civic groups as partisan entities. We asked about that and one council member said that since the president of the Greater Jamesport Civic Association is also the chairperson of the town Democratic Party committee, the Jamesport “meet the candidate” event “is probably not necessarily a fair forum.”

Republicans questioned whether the forum “was going to be run fair and ethically, because [Jens-Smith is] the Democratic chairwoman, Council Member Ken Rothwell said.

Jens-Smith held both those roles two years ago. She said she recuses herself from anything to do with “meet the candidates” nights. Civic Vice President Steve Green will moderate, as he did in 2023. I attended that event and it was very ordinary and cordial. It’s notable that I never heard a single peep out of anyone crying foul. 

Being a local elected official is hard. I speak from personal experience. It requires you to see your constituents face to face — at town board meetings, at the supermarket or at a restaurant, at the library and at local civic group meetings. Sometimes those constituents are not happy with your decisions as a town official, requiring you to “face the music.” That’s part of the job. You’re required to hear them out — not to argue, but to listen. 

You represent them, you act on their behalf. You spend their tax dollars. It doesn’t matter if they are enrolled in the same party as you are or if they are enrolled in a party running someone against you. They are still your constituents. They are your neighbors, not your adversaries. They have the right to ask questions and voice opinions. Or even run for office if they feel strongly enough about it. Doing so does not make them your enemy.

Remember, these are people who care about our town, care about their communities. They’re the people who answer the call to pick up litter on our streets and clean up our beaches, who volunteer in our fire departments and in other organizations that do good works to better our community. They care enough to want to be involved in local government, too — enough to know what’s going on and enough to come to town meetings to ask questions and voice their concerns or complaints. 

We live in a time of a lot of noise. People take to social media and write horrible things about other people, whom they often don’t even know. They make snap judgments about everything, regardless of whether they even have a working knowledge of the subject they are opining about. Nastiness prevails.

But this is not how civic association “meet the candidates” nights are conducted in this town. They never have been and there’s no reason to think they would be that way this year. Questions will be asked, some of them hard no doubt. As our elected representatives, you are fairly expected to be there to answer them.

Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there’s been a lot of talk about the need to “dial it back” and engage in civil discourse. These same Town Board members stood together and prayed for this very thing at the World Trade Center Memorial in Calverton on Sept. 11. 

Well, folks, now’s your chance to put your words and prayers into action. Don’t turn your backs on your constituents. Embrace them in the name of unity and community. Shutting them out only escalates the very thing you stood together and prayed to end.

Please, show up for these forums and meet the people who care enough about our town to show up too.