GREAT BARRINGTON — Reorganization meetings of municipal boards are typically quiet affairs void of controversy or symbolism. It’s the first meeting after an election. Newly elected board members are welcomed and routine business begins anew.
But in the case of the Great Barrington selectboard, there is also the matter of electing officers of the new board. This is usually just as routine as anything else the board does. Not this year, perhaps because this was not just any election year.
This spring’s election saw the retirement of member Bill Cooke, the defeat of a seemingly popular incumbent, Kate Burke, and two newcomers, Eric Gabriel and Garfield Reed, winning seats on the board.
At last night’s reorganization meeting of the board, the first order of business was to appoint a chair. Steve Bannon was reappointed practically by acclamation. Bannon has been chair since 2018, when outgoing chair Sean Stanton opted not to run for reelection after serving on the board for a decade.
Three years ago, selectboard member Ed Abrahams, who was first elected in 2014, had his eyes on the chairmanship and objected to Bannon’s appointment on the grounds that Bannon also chairs the Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and his position on both boards could present a conflict. Cooke echoed that sentiment and supported Abrahams for the selectboard chairmanship.
But Bannon prevailed, in part because he had been on the board for longer than Abrahams and also because of the feeling that experience was needed in the chair’s seat because then-Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin had announced the previous week her intention to leave her post when her contract expired the following year. Instead, Abrahams accepted an appointment as vice chair.
Last night, however, there were no arguments over who would chair the board for the next 12 months. The bone of contention centered on who would be number two. When the matter was raised, Reed immediately nominated Leigh Davis, who had given his candidacy a boost when she endorsed him in a letter to The Edge only a few days earlier. Gabriel seconded the motion.
See video below of last night’s Great Barrington selectboard meeting. Fast forward to 2:25 for the start of the appointment of officers:
“I like her attention to detail and the way she goes about her business,” Reed said of Davis.
Abrahams then asked if he could nominate himself. Bannon suggested deciding the vice chair slot by simply asking each board member whom they preferred instead of asking for a roll call on two motions. As so it went. Reed and Davis voted for Davis, while Abrahams and Gabriel went for Abrahams.
Bannon, who was last in line to vote, said, “This is not the position I wanted to be in tonight. I would love to see this as a unanimous vote and we just pick one person.” Bannon later motioned for Davis to be vice chair, to which even Abrahams eventually agreed and Bannon got the unanimous vote he wanted.
The selection of vice chair, who also serves as the clerk of the board, might seem like a trivial matter. The vice chair presides over meetings when the chair cannot be present and assists the chair in preparing the agenda for meetings. But in this case, the symbolism was hard to miss.
Davis was elected two years ago and a few months later, her fellow board members began a review of board policies and procedures. Davis wondered aloud whether the policy review was a response to actions that she has taken since her election to the board a few months earlier when she had placed the potential return of horse racing to Great Barrington on the agenda. One of the proposed policy changes, since abandoned, would have required a majority vote of the five-member board to place items on the agenda.
“Any attempt to squelch the minority vote has no place in our town’s policies,” Davis said at the time. “Although this proposal has been withdrawn following public pressure, it begs the question as to why this was proposed in the first place.”
So, after feeling marginalized in 2019, Davis has been elevated to vice chair. One of those she tangled with two years ago, Burke, has been defeated. The other, Abrahams, has been replaced by Davis as vice chair. And the candidate she endorsed for selectboard, Reed, won a seat this week. That’s quite a comeback and a remarkable reversal of fortunes in a relatively brief period of time.
There has been chatter on social media concerning the possibility that so-called “bullet voting” played a role in the outcome of the election. Bullet voting is a voting tactic, usually in multiple-winner elections, in which a voter is instructed to vote for more than one candidate, but instead votes for only one candidate. There are various reasons for this.
A voter might engage in bullet voting out of laziness — because it is easier than evaluating all the candidates. It could also be a tactic to maximize the chance that the voter’s preferred candidate will be elected, while increasing the risk that the favored candidates of others will lose. A group of voters using this tactic on a consistent basis has a better chance for one favorite candidate to be elected, according to an explanatory article in Philadelphia Magazine.
Writing on the Great Barrington Community Board Facebook page, Joseph Method of Housatonic elaborated on this and noted that unofficial Great Barrington election results showed 295 blank ballots out of 2,172 cast in the selectboard race:
The ballot does instruct voters on how many candidates to vote for. Next to “Selectboard,” it says “2 for 3 years.” But many voters might have misunderstood that instruction. News reports in The Edge and other local media informed readers that three candidates were running for two seats, but letters to the editor — even those from public officials — often only endorsed one candidate. Davis and Cooke, for example, endorsed only Reed. Bannon endorsed only Burke, while Abrahams and Stanton endorsed Burke and Gabriel.
Part of the confusion could stem from the fact that candidates run at-large in Great Barrington, meaning that they do not run for a specific seat, unless, of course, only one seat is available. This year two were available, so out of three candidates, the top two vote-getters were seated on the selectboard.
Reed might also have benefitted from his skeptical approach to the proliferation of cannabis retailers in town, while Burke voted last year to allow seven cannabis stores townwide, the same number of package store licenses Great Barrington is permitted. In relatively conservative Housatonic (precinct B), Gabriel, who said little about cannabis during the campaign and lives in that village, garnered 269 votes, far more than any other candidate.
It was as interesting as elections get in Great Barrington. Next year, Bannon’s and Davis’s terms are up. Stay tuned…
