As it has been for decades, profit over preservation is a core distinction among the candidates for East Hampton Town Board. But this cycle also raises the question of fairness: Is monolithic Democratic Party control acceptable? But the question of party cuts both ways, and voters should have serious reservations about where at least one of the three active candidates is on essential national issues.
We need to consider the effect of one-party rule in Town Hall first. In its recent iteration, personal distinctions among the councilpeople have been tamped down. One effect of which was the disastrous new senior citizens center planning, which has already cost the town almost $2 million and produced nothing. Even one sharply dissenting voice on the board might have headed off some of the worst aspects of this debacle.
J.P. Foster, a Republican with 13 years on the East Hampton School Board, might be that dissenting voice. He has publicly centered three issues in his campaign: complaints about the senior center, school security, and his opposition to a recent plan to reduce house sizes. But his framing of the debate over floor-area calculations has been misleading, describing the reductions as hurting local people who want to expand their houses for their growing families, when he is actually speaking for speculative developers and narrow real estate interests.
Voters have so far appreciated that Cate Rogers is a roll-up-your-sleeves official. She is a nine-year zoning board veteran and is broadly experienced in the business world, including in food service, an employment sector critical to the East Hampton economy. Ms. Rogers spearheaded the floor-area debate, which irritated many in the building trades and spurred Mr. Foster’s main campaign theme. She has also been willing to take on the demands of climate change, even though members of both major parties have tended to stick their fingers in their ears and hope that it will all go away.
Ian Calder-Piedmonte did 12 years on the town planning board before moving up to the town board. He is running for his first full term and has taken on housing affordability, among other tricky issues. As the co-owner of a very successful farming business with two retail sites and a thriving wholesale operation, he is practical-minded, which he has shown in his brief time on the board. Mr. Calder-Piedmonte is emerging as his own thinker, and we’ll need to see more of that if he is re-elected.
Mr. Foster, while recently claiming that he “has no extreme views,” has been a Republican nearly all of his adult life, briefly changing his registration to Democratic then back again to the G.O.P. in time for this year’s campaign. It is impossible for us to support a candidate that rejoined a party that has willingly gutted itself, turning government over to the White House, defying the fundamental aspect of the United States Constitution. To gain our support, we would need to hear Mr. Foster publicly repudiate the illegal authoritarian takeover as well as President Trump’s unprecedented corruption.
With the caveat that a better diversity of views would make for a better East Hampton Town Board, we believe that voters should support Ms. Rogers and Mr. Calder-Piedmonte.