08/19/08 Zebora explains how Lee Whitnum became the best friend Jim Himes had in the democratic primary campaign

We don't reject candidates; voters do
By Jim Zebora managing editor of Greenwich Time

All politics is local, and a lot of it is personal.

That was very apparent in the recent Democratic primary race between Greenwich residents Jim Himes and Lee Whitnum for the 4th District nod against Republic incumbent Christopher Shays of Bridgeport.

The Himes camp was upset - nay, offended - that Whitnum, using the existing democratic process, had petitioned successfully to force a primary against the party's endorsed candidate.

To Himes supporters, Whitnum was an expensive distraction who took focus off the real fight - to win the seat that Shays, the lone Republican from New England in the U.S. House of Representatives, has occupied for two decades.

In public and in private, Himes' people portrayed Whitnum as an erratic, fringe candidate with dangerous ideas. The constant undercurrent was that Whitnum should never have been on the primary ballot - that they had bigger fish to fry.

Whitnum, however, had won the right to engage Himes by soliciting enough petition signatures across the district, employing one of the great privileges of this nation to have a lone person's voice heard by the electorate at large....

...Still, supporters of Himes questioned why the media, this newspaper in particular, would give Whitnum a forum to speak her mind and make her ideas known. Their candidate was the one with the sane and sensible positions in this campaign, they said, and we should be telling that to our readers.

We didn't have to. Or readers could see for themselves....

...The newspaper's role in this, and in so many parts of the democratic process, was to report the truth and let the people decide.

This solemn duty is often misunderstood. It is not a reporter's or editor's place to determine if someone's ideas are worthy of someone else's vote, and we do not, by writing stories about those ideas, take any position on them.

Our job is to convey the information, the electorate's job is to make the choice.

The philosphy behind these has never been stated more elegantly than by Abraham Lincoln. I keep his words posted on a bulletin board near my desk.

"I am a firm believer in the people," the 16th president said. "If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."

Please Read Mr. Zebora's Entire Article

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