I posted Saturday about the Brattleboro Candidate’s Forum and focused some on the candidates who were there. I’d like to take a moment to focus on one who wasn’t.
Deb Markowitz had an opportunity Saturday to make inroads in Windham County, to connect with a group of child care providers and to convince a very open and attentive audience that she was worthy of their vote. But clearly, they weren’t worthy of her time.
Can Markowitz be forgiven for not attending a candidate forum on her kid’s birthday? Of course she can. It’s an understandable choice. But she agreed to participate in this forum, only to bail on it shortly before the date. It’s not like the birthday was rescheduled at the last minute.
I don’t think that the forum participants were necessarily offended by Markowitz’s no-show, but she didn’t win any new friends that day.
Shumlin made a point during the forum to note that Dubie didn’t show up for the forum and that it’s important to tell him that this is a job interview and if you don’t show up, you don’t get the job. No one said that about Markowitz, which I understand (and applaud– it’s important for us not to have Democrats getting too destructive for one another), but it does kind of apply.
For me, it just boils down to this: when you run for governor, you can’t afford to treat someone’s vote as irrelevant. This makes me question Markowitz’s commitment to this race and her willingness to treat child care as a relevant and important issue.
Even though I’m not sold on her candidacy, I feel compelled to defend candidate Markowitz on this issue. Deb’s choice to attend the birthday celebration of her child rather than the Brattleboro Candidate’s forum displayed her willingness to treat child care (her own) as a relevant and important issue. This can’t become a zero sum game in which candidates with family commitments are criticized for treating “someone’s vote as irrelevant” each time they choose their family over another political event. A number of the candidates for Governor will confront family obligations during this campaign and, I for one, am hopeful that cynicism will give way to compassion for these people who choose to run for elective office while raising families. If there are other reasons to believe that Deb’s absence at this event was avoident behavior, please inform. Thank you.
…all this whining and not a mention of the issue at hand (ahem, child care as I recall). Par for the site, I guess. Carry on.
As a parent, I can think of numerous scenarios (some of which have been proposed in the comments already) in which she could have reasonably goofed with her schedule and ended up needing to choose her commitment to her child over her commitment to her campaign. I can’t view it as another commenter did in comparing her to Dubie “using his kid as an excuse” to miss an event. (I wouldn’t go there with Dubie, either – I don’t know what’s going on with his family, and I don’t have any reason to think that his commitments to them aren’t genuine.)
I just can’t draw a line between her prioritizing her kid’s birthday and a lack of commitment to child care – even given that she said she’d be there and then backed out.