LETTERS

‘Fear & smear’ belittles sincere candidates

Posted 9/7/22

To the Editor,

Another campaign year and another year of hearing from candidates asking for your vote in order to serve the people of Rhode Island. It seems we’re in campaign mode much of …

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LETTERS

‘Fear & smear’ belittles sincere candidates

Posted

To the Editor,


Another campaign year and another year of hearing from candidates asking for your vote in order to serve the people of Rhode Island. It seems we’re in campaign mode much of the time. It can be exhausting for the candidates and their volunteers and exhausting for the voters. But why?

Shouldn’t it be a useful time of community building where people interested in serving in government contact the residents in their districts in a myriad of ways to ask what is important to them? I remember having incredible conversations with residents of Warwick about their hopes and dreams and what they wanted for themselves and their families. I sat in people’s kitchens drinking coffee and talking about how to reduce the burden on them as small business owners and toured their gardens talking about the environment.

But these kinds of conversations can become strained, negative and uncomfortable if campaigns focus on inaccurately portraying their opponent with erroneous information, instead of concentrating on what they can do to improve the lives of people in their community.

Once again this year the old and tired campaign tactic of the “fear and smear” campaign mailer was used in full force in an attempt to scare voters away from hard working sincere candidates. Instead of this season being a time to draw community together and discuss what is possible these inaccurate mailers quite often turned people off to the democratic process.

There is nothing wrong with candidates comparing and contrasting their work and vision with the opponent’s. After all this is a competition to see who appeals to the voters most and who is presenting them with the platform and temperament they feel will represent them authentically in government.

Luckily the voters this time around are rejecting the negative untruthful mailers and campaign mudslinging. They are yearning and asking us to stop sowing gratuitous division and come together to do the hard work of making sure everybody has access to high quality healthcare with Medicare for all. They’re asking for women to be treated fairly and for reproductive justice, they’re asking for us to address the climate crisis at the scale that’s needed to stop dangerous flooding and they're asking for honesty and civility from their elected officials.

In order to change what we know needs to be changed we must all look at ourselves and say what do I need to change in how I interact with the world to affect the change I’m looking for. As politicians and elected officials we must do the same as we’ve got a lot of work to do going forward."


Kendra Anderson

State Senator, District 31

Warwick/Cranston

letter, editorial

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