Thank you for your fair report on the Republican forum. We labored hard to make the forum as fair and non partisan as possible and utilizing the Toastmaster International organization, as was suggested to us, was only considered after it was researched to verify that they were non-partisan.

Separating the Republican forum from the Democratic one was decided during the discussions with the Toastmaster representative and was necessitated, we believed at the time, by the total number of candidates and the limited time to present a forum and hold the audience’s attention. Had we known early on that three candidates would drop out, we might have gone ahead with our original plan of one forum for all candidates. That certainly would have lowered our costs; our resources are based on blind donations at our monthly meetings. And would have reduced the time consuming efforts of two of our steering committee members who assumed the major burden of this event.

The Cecil County Patriots do not endorse candidates or parties, contrary to some TEA Party groups, but will provide information on our site for all candidates’ events and will direct members to candidates if they wish to volunteer their time.

I take it upon myself to seriously analyze anything we propose to do as to how it will reflect on the Patriots. While we generically support smaller government, less government spending and lower taxes, we strenuously try to avoid addressing these issues at our meetings or in public announcement in any manner that may be considered partisan, regardless of our personal preferences. I think the forum is an excellent example of our efforts to be fair and non partisan.

As you observed, the format was fair to the candidates. We tried to establish a format that gave a reasonable time frame for a policy statement and rebuttals. How anyone would consider the forum to be a “lynch mob” is beyond me. Since I have not seen anyone quoted and explain what that means, I have to assume that any such statement is “cover” for their decision to reject our offer to justify their positions in a give and take forum in front of their fellow citizens.

I was very appreciative of the audience’s behavior during the forum and look forward to the Democratic forum on August 30th. I hope that all Democratic commissioner candidates agree to attend and give our citizens an opportunity to judge them while defending their positions.