Election 2016: Where New Canaanites Are Contributing [TABLE]

6 thoughts on “Election 2016: Where New Canaanites Are Contributing [TABLE]”

1. I was very surprised to see your listing of political donations made by New Canaan residents. While this information is available by the FEC it is generally not openly published. While I am a huge fan of you publication and will support it in any way I can, I feel that publishing this data was inappropriate and does not serve well to the persons and organizations involved. As the Treasurer of the Democratic Town Committee I will never provide a list of our donors for publication, although by law I must provide this to the State Elections Enforcement Commission in my quarterly reports. I am also sure that my Republican counterpart will fully agree with me.

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   • Thanks for submitting your comment, Bernard. I’m surprised to hear that you feel this way. Our only thought in publishing this list was to give an idea of what candidates and committees New Canaan constituents are supporting, not to affect any individual or organization. Maybe I’m being naive here, but I also felt that since so many of the beneficiaries are political committees or candidates from rather faraway states in obscure races, there’s not a lot of information to glean from a donor contribution. That it’s public information frankly had nothing to do with my decision, as I decline to publish information all the time on principle—for example, names of arrested people. In my view, the list only represents local people who are actively engaged in a democratic process and says nothing about them personally—then again, I watch very little cable news. If I get the sense that others feel differently and agree with you, I’m happy to remove the table column that includes donors’ names. Honestly I do not have strong feelings either way, and it could be that just including the donation info without the names accomplishes the same thing. As you know, it’s never our intention to hurt local people or the wider community, quite the opposite. Thank you again.

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     • Agree with you Mike, but just curious as to why you put “Mr. Sam’s” name in several times related to his blight properties on Richmond Hill??

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       • Fair question. With the blight complaints, I judge case-by-case based on what I hear from the town and what I observe by eye. Here are two more cases where we name the property owner on the receiving end of the complaint— https://newcanaanite.com/east-avenue-woman-72-addresses-neighbors-unexpected-blight-complaint-38513 and https://newcanaanite.com/cited-for-blight-woodridge-circle-property-owner-could-face-thousands-of-dollars-in-fines-34772 —and here’s a case where I declined to ID the property owner: https://newcanaanite.com/neighbor-lodges-blight-complaint-on-lost-district-drive-34374 … Regarding the campaign donors list, I will tell you, Bernie, that at this point I have not heard from a single other reader regarding the publication of names. We have received zero additional comments on the article and I have received no phone calls, emails or texts on it.

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2. I agree with Bernard. For the record, i am the former DTC Chair, and i did not talk to anyone on the DTC about this (don’t want to convey impression that these views represent the organization itself). But, I just don’t get this. Yes, it is publicly available, so if anyone wants to do the legwork to find out who’s donating to who and how much, more power to them. But, this feels voyeuristic to me. How much people give and to whom feels like a personal decision, and when people donate, they honestly don’t expect to have these actions blaring out on the small town news. Mike, i think this decision of yours could have a chilling effect on people here contributing. I know it would make me think twice to know that my actions would appear here. If this is coming from someone who has been about as public about her support of Democrats here in an overwhelmingly Republican town, then i can only imagine what it would do to people who want to keep their political affiliations and support more private.

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   • Jane, thank you for submitting your comment. At this point, we have the comments on the site and a handful of emails, most urging me to preserve the list and one to delete it. What I am planning to do is get a sense of the room at our next Community Coffee which is 9:30 a.m. at the library on Thursday, Sept. 1. As I say, I’m happy to remove the column listing names if I get a sense there’s strong sentiment to do that, and will keep that in mind covering election season in the future. To be honest, I am leaning toward deleting the list now with the possibility of restoring it later, and the main reason is that as I receive emails from those who want me to preserve it, their reasons in nearly every case are that they want those supporting one particular candidate to be known, not in an informative way but what seems like a personal way, so that feels a little off to me and as I say, was never my intention here. I think I know what you mean by the word ‘voyeuristic’ though if you read up through this comment thread that presumption likely would go away. Thanks again.

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