While I am happy that the Amherst Charter Commission has members from both sides of the debate, I am disappointed that the two most centrist candidates were not elected.
Amy Gates, the only candidate not endorsed by either slate, and Chris Riddle, the only candidate endorsed by the Town Meeting Works slate who had signed the papers to get the charter question on the ballot, received the lowest number of votes out of all 19 candidates.
Having a commission composed of two opposing sides will make it far less likely that the group will come back with a proposed charter we can all get behind. And this is representative of a larger problem in our democracy: the two-party system that constrains political choices both locally and nationally is the main reason we don’t see the big changes we need being passed in Congress.
I hope we can come together more in the future around what some call “radical centrist” politics — not moderates, but candidates who look at issues objectively and go for bold solutions, regardless of identity with factions.
These candidates are often shut out of our politics because they don’t have the support of the opposing camps, so our policy ends up being a compromise between two flawed extremes. Instead, I hope we will choose the best possible policy, and I hope the members of the Amherst Charter Commission will approach their work with this spirit.
Solomon Goldstein-Rose
Amherst
Goldstein-Rose is a former School Committee member and a senior at Brown University.