OPINION: Will new party be born in places like Stonington?

Jul. 22—If the Forward Party is ever going to become a serious alternative to the extreme partisanship displayed by the Republican and Democratic parties, it is going to start with candidates like Stonington First Selectwoman Danielle Chesebrough.

The Forward Party was founded in October 2021 by Andrew Yang and is co-chaired by Yang and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.

A successful businessman from an early age, Yang became a millionaire in his early 30s when the company he directed as CEO, Manhattan Prep, developed a popular computer test for assessing candidates for Master of Business Administration programs. Jumping into politics at the highest level, Yang outperformed expectations in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries with his attention-grabbing idea of assuring a universal basic income, starting at $1,000 a month, in response to job displacement by automation.

New Jersey voters elected Whitman governor in 1993 and she went on to fulfill a campaign promise by working with the legislature to lower income tax rates. Whitman, a moderate, then earned election to a second term. She later served as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003 during the first President George W. Bush administration.

The Forward Party is founded on the expectation that voters are looking for an alternative to the two major parties, which Yang and Whitman argue are more focused on attacking and tearing down each other than solving problems. The result is often gridlock, particularly in Washington.

The Forward Party seeks "collaborative solutions" based on "new ideas" no matter where or who the ideas come from.

Chances are this effort will fail, as has every attempt to create a competitive party since the founding of the Republican Party and the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Democrats and Republicans control the levers of the election process and are disinclined to make it easy for new parties to emerge and challenge them. And money seeks power and influence. Power and influence lie with the major parties.

Yet the Forward Party deserves credit for taking a patient, long-view approach by looking to grow from the bottom up by focusing on the election of local leaders at the municipal and county levels. The expectation is that if Forward Party candidates win and prove successful in solving problems, thus improving their communities, it will build a base to run candidates for major offices.

"We're building at the grassroots local level, we're talking school board, city council, county executive, these roles that make a big difference in your life," Yang said in an interview last month with WUSF Public Media in Florida. "So that's the kind of change that we can generate, where we actually live and work. And the DC politicos and the journalists won't care because they don't care about these local races. But you know who should care? We care."

That's where a candidate such as Chesebrough comes in. Chesebrough has twice won election as first selectwoman in Stonington, both times running as an unaffiliated candidate. She was unchallenged in her second election in 2021 and had the endorsements of both the Democratic and Republican town committees. In both successes and failures, Chesebrough has shown disinterest in the political game. She is not one to line up votes and strong arm her policy goals into being. Rather, she seeks to build consensus.

Chesebrough told me she has backed the ideals of the Serve America Movement. Founded in 2017, it sought to escape the rigid ideology of modern politics by bringing together centrist Republicans, Democrats and independents. Last year it merged into the Forward Party.

"It aligns with everything I have been trying to talk about for years and I think it is so needed," Chesebrough said of the Forward Party approach. "They welcome Democrats, they welcome Republicans, you can be unaffiliated. They don't ask you to change who you are, they just want people to be involved, to come together and really respectfully listen to each other and talk about how we are going to address the challenges in front of us.

"It's such a unique opportunity to do more to show, in Stonington, what you can do when you put community first. It felt like the right time to do this," she said.

This time Chesebrough will face opposition. Businesswoman Laura Graham is expected to be the Democratic nominee. Bryan Bentz, a Board of Finance member and owner of Bentz Engineering, will head the Republican ticket.

An incumbent, running under a new idealistic and anti-ideological banner against two major party candidates, should make for an interesting race to watch. Chesebrough will not be the town's first Forward Party candidate. In May, in the race for warden of the Borough of Stonington, Democratic candidate Michael Schefers defeated Shaun Mastroianni, who was running under the Forward Party banner, 187-176.

Chesebrough has had her successes. These include the creation of a human services position shared between Stonington Human Services and Stonington Police, an effort aimed at approaching some situations that involve police as more than strictly law-enforcement matters. Likewise, the Housing Repair Loan Fund pilot program, which provides financial aid for home repairs to income-restricted residents, is another think-outside-the-box approach that helps income-restricted residents access funds to make needed home repairs. And Stonington has landed some big grants, including $1 million in federal aid to rebuild Town Dock.

But at times Chesebrough's let's all pull together approach can bring cringe-worthy results. In May 2020, during the pandemic, she showed up in support, she thought, of a businessperson trying to get her barber shop reopened. Chesebrough and a health inspector had to cringe, however, when they were greeted by a mock skeleton wearing a red "Make Haircuts Great Again" shirt. It appeared to all that Chesebrough was assisting someone downplaying the seriousness of the crisis. It was not a good look.

Her efforts to address the growth of short-term rentals in this shoreline community, and the disruptions they are causing, resulted in a compromise lukewarm proposal to monitor such properties. The proposal failed to win voter support. Chesebrough said if re-elected she would return to trying to build consensus on the issue and is hopeful the state legislature will give municipalities greater authority to regulate these businesses through ordinances.

The Forward Party's greatest weakness, and perhaps Chesebrough's, may be that they do not offer voters a clear direction. Instead, this new party asks that voters take the chance that problems can be addressed by working together, without offering specifics about what those solutions should look like. This is not a party that talks about lower taxes or higher taxes, whether more government or less government regulation is necessary, or where lines should be drawn in the culture wars.

Yet voters are so sick of the ugly state of modern politics that offering a different, cooperative path forward may be enough to win them over, even if the destination of that path is uncertain. The verdict of the voters will begin in places like Stonington.

Paul Choiniere is the former editorial page editor of The Day, now retired. He can be reached at p.choiniere@yahoo.com.