Election season officially descended on Wareham last Friday, the first day candidates could take out papers to announce their intention to run in April’s town election. If you think politics have been dirty in Wareham for the past few years, you haven’t seen anything yet. April’s election will leave more mud in its wake than a 100-foot tsunami.
    It’s already begun. Two selectmen – Bruce Sauvageau and John Cronan – have already absorbed smear bombs and they haven’t even declared their intention to seek reelection yet. John Donahue will need to fend off partisan attacks the likes of which he has never seen if he wishes to remain town moderator. The partisans will not allow Town Clerk Mary Ann Silva (the Wareham Observer’s 2009 Woman of the Year) to forget for one second that her adopted son will face trial on murder charges stemming from an altercation with another man in Onset several years ago.
    This will go beyond the usual sign-stealing nonsense in years past. This is go-for-the-throat politics now. The stakes are that high.
    The Massachusetts Inspector General’s investigation into wide-spread corruption will shadow this election every step of the way. There are people in Wareham who will do or say anything to put an end to this quest for truth. The amount of shameless misinformation being spewed by political partisans right now, all in the hope of planting a seed of doubt in the minds of voters, has only just begun. Come March, as the election grows near, the lies and distortions will reach epic proportions.
    In a world of proper perspective, this election should be a no-brainer. While Sauvageau and Cronan lack the self-edit button of most politicians they have served the town more than ably. Their determination to rid Wareham of the deadwood in town government has resulted in a superb interim police chief, a dedicated and savvy new town accountant and a promising town administrator. If the investigation by the Inspector General bears the expected fruit prior to the election, Sauvageau and Cronan would win in a landslide in most communities. Even if the investigation isn’t concluded by then, the mere fact that the Inspector General had enough evidence to launch an investigation validates last year’s attempted audit of all town-owned computers by town leaders.
    Except for some gruff personalities on the board, the current selectmen have proven their willingness to walk the walk when former boards just talked the talk. One way echoes loudly. The other does not.
    But reason and logic doesn’t always come into play in Wareham politics, especially when a small group of power-hungry individuals can’t seem to tell the difference between what’s best for themselves and what’s best for the community as a whole. They talk about taking back Wareham without realizing that no one "took" Wareham from them. They never actually owned the place, even if they act like they did. Wareham chose its current leadership because people were tired of the back-room dealing with developers. They were tired of the conflicts of interest that ran rampant in every corner of town government. They were tired of paying artificially inflated sewer fees simply to double the salaries of many town employees. They were tired of being treated like sheep by a group of rich and powerful people who thought they had been given the divine right to manipulate other people’s lives.
    Wareham isn’t a football that one team can take from another. It belongs to everyone. But right now it’s become a game among a small group of people. And the win-at-all-cost mentality is causing a great deal of damage right now.
    If there has been wide-spread corruption in Wareham, what possible reason would anyone have to oppose an investigation? How many taxpayer dollars would be saved by eliminating possible graft, embezzlement and money laundering? It makes no sense whatsoever to attack the people who support such an investigation, but that is exactly what’s happening now. And that’s the point. For some people it isn’t about what’s best for the people in Wareham. It’s about winning an election. They want to stop the investigation because they realize if corruption is revealed and the selectmen are vindicated in their quest to stop it then the incumbents will be reelected.
    Wareham saw this scenario play out at Town Meeting. The Westfield project was a very noble cause. Seniors desperately need affordable housing in Wareham. It would have helped address a dire need while bring much-needed revenue into the town. But that didn’t matter. The article was defeated because of heartless politics. It was defeated by a relatively small group of people who couldn’t put reason, logic and compassion ahead of their own personal ambitions.
     Over the next few months people in Wareham will hear all sorts of distortions. Hopefully these distortions won’t come from the new publication Wareham Week, which made two big mistakes before publishing a single edition. Setting up shop in the Decas Building and recruiting Bob Brady to sell advertising space in the paper does little to assuage concerns that Wareham Week will be nothing more than Take Back Wareham’s mouth piece. Launching a newspaper in the dead of winter, three months before a critical election when the Wareham Courier, the Standard-Times, and the Observer are all covering the area just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
    Take Back Wareham will undoubtedly put together a slate of candidates in order to gain political power. It won’t matter how qualified their candidates may be. They will form a voting block and try to gain support from every special interest group in Wareham.
    They’ve already done everything possible to put the Observer – their strongest voice of opposition – out of business. Their boycott failed. Now they are threatening to bury us under a sea of frivolous lawsuits. That’s how badly they want power in Wareham. They’ve already denied access of the Observer to clients of the Meals on Wheels program. There is apparently no depth to which they will not sink.
    But they should not be underestimated. Special interest holds a lot of sway in politics, especially in local elections. Take Back Wareham has already begun a campaign of intimidation against those who speak out against them. They openly speak of "payback" against those who expose their lies and distortions. That’s pretty scary in this day and age.
    People wrongly assume the Observer blindly supports the current administration. That simply isn’t true. The selectmen have made some missteps along the way. We’ve documented that. But we’ve also seen the lack of a moral center in the heart of Take Back Wareham. We’ve seen people with personal gripes against the board wave the flag of change. We’ve seen the threats and insults they’ve made against people who don’t share their way of thinking. We shudder to think what Wareham would be like if these people ever gain actual politic power rather than remain extremists on some hate web site where they belong.
    In the end, common sense should rule the day. Does it make sense that Sauvageau is responsible for Swifts Beach when he repeatedly recused himself from voting? Does it make sense that the selectmen have a personal vendetta against the library when the library support groups refuse to share their financial records with the public? Does it make sense that the selectmen would intentionally violate open meeting law by failing to pubicly utter a single innocuous sentence? Does it make sense that a group of volunteers would repeatedly put themselves through vicious smearing by their political opponents for any other reason than they really care about their community and are willing to do the hard work necessary for real change?
    There’s a reason there is only one hate web site in Wareham. The good people in Wareham would never dream of creating a public web site where people mock, threaten and smear others with profanity-laced tirades alongside Nazi imagery. Does it make sense for a political candidate to utilize such a hate site to promote his or her campaign? Of course it doesn’t. It’s horrifying. Any rational person would know that.
    Maybe the Take Back Wareham crew has the legal right to spew some of that garbage, but Wareham has the right not to embrace it, especially during an election.
    It’s about common sense. It’s about right and wrong. It’s about respect for the community as a whole.
    If you truly believe that Wareham deserves the new path that so many have been fighting so hard to forge then it’s time to get involved. It’s time to get off the sidelines and step into the game. It’s time to oppose this hatred once and for all, to push it back into the shadows where it belongs.
    Wareham belongs to you.
    Fight for it.