COMMENTARY
Tea Party? In Boston, it works again
There’s bound to be some confusion if you call your political party the Boston Tea Party, when the Boston doesn’t refer to the Boston and the tea party doesn’t refer to that tea party.
Then again, you can’t argue with success.
Taking advantage of the attention from their independent party name and a familiar frustration with local government, three Republican, approaching-middle- age businesspeople and family men who had never run for office before swept the three available Town Board seats in Boston (N. Y.) last week.
(OK, I’ll say it: It was a Boston massacre.)
What’s interesting is not only that political neophytes Martin Ballowe, Jay Boardway and Jeffrey Genzel won and defeated incumbents in the process, but they did so with a campaign formula that was artful in its simplicity.
They could point to their own successful small businesses for proof that they know how to manage people and money; they could honestly tell the voters that they were not politicians, career or otherwise, and therefore owed no one anything; and to prove that they had no intention of getting into office and milking it for all it was worth, they told everyone that their first act would be to cut their own pay by 20 percent.
“We’re all on the same page,” Boardway said. “We’re all mad about the same things in town. We all think we can do a better job.”
Ballowe, who owns Suburban Pest Control, said that his company had always donated money to charities and causes but that he was interested in giving some of his time to the community. He and his running mates all were approached by the town’s Republican chairman, who was looking for independent businesspeople who had never been in office before. All said yes.
In addition to running as Republicans, they decided they wanted an independent line on the ballot as well. They were unhappy about the state of the government and were protesting what their leaders were doing, so playing off the historic protest at Boston Harbor, they went for Boston Tea Party.
But there already is a nationwide protest movement using the tea party analogy. They weren’t affiliated with that raucous movement, Boardway said, but they weren’t running away from it, either.
“It was a little bit along the same lines,” he said. “Ours was more of a movement to force the taxpayers to understand that they should expect something for all these taxes they pay, that they should have someone fighting for them to keep [taxes] low.”
One of the first things they agreed to was their desire to send a message to the voters by vowing to cut their own salaries and put the money back into the town. Over their four years in office, they say, the savings will be about $47,000.
None of them needs the money, and it will not have a huge effect on the town’s tax rate. But Boardway said the money could be better used, possibly to help bus children to summer recreation programs or to address long-standing drainage issues.
That apparently resonated with town voters.
“I honestly think people are looking for that,” Ballowe said. “I think people are looking for leaders to use common sense running our big towns, our small towns, our state. I think they want people like us who are . . . open to taking advice and implementing it into what we do in the town.”
Ballowe, Boardway and Genzel found out that this is a good era for political challengers preaching common sense, pragmatism and smaller government.
And having a catchy name to tie it all together? It doesn’t hurt.
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