Considerations for Worcester's fall election

Because we have our preliminary election approaching, I offer the following considerations I am using in making my decisions over whom I vote for.

As always, these are my thoughts as an individual Worcester voter.

1. No fascists.
   As with many other terms of specific historical "bad guys," this is one that has become an insult flung at those with whom one disagrees. That isn't what I mean when I use it. I'm using here the definition shared by the American Library Association in their "Making Sense of Current Events" presentation.
   

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion” (Paxton, 2004, p. 218)

While I've seen this less markedly in the campaign materials I've seen, the "preoccupation with community decline" certainly is something that comes through with some.

2. If they've been in office either this past term or before, and they didn't actually do the job--didn't review the agenda for meetings, didn't pay attention in meetings, didn't schedule or attend subcommittee meetings--no, thank you.

3.Whether or not they've served in the role for which they're running, if they make it apparent that they haven't the faintest idea what, by state law and municipal charter, their job actually is, I'm not interested.

This rather narrows the field. 

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PS: If you leave a flyer on my mailbox that says "Sorry we missed you!" and I have been home all day, you really, really don't get a vote from me.