In the spring election of 2023 we experienced a first in Grand Chute when a Washington, DC political action committee spent a very significant sum of money supporting the election of Supervisor Beth English. This year, in the spring 2024 election, we saw the state Democrat Party do exactly the same thing for Tim Bantes.
After the spring 2023 election, I spoke to the Town Board against this outside partisan political action committee interfering in our Grand Chute non-partisan election and asked, what did they want from English?
Now we have the state Democrat Party doing the same thing and it raises the same question: what do they want from Bantes?
Let me be very clear, no political party – as the Democrat Party has for Supervisor Bantes and the political action committee has for Supervisor English – puts in effort and significant money as these two political entities have without wanting something in return. The only thing that can be of value to them is to have influence over our Town Board decisions.
Our Town Board is required to be non-partisan so no candidate can run as a political party candidate, and that only we as residents of Grand Chute say how we run our Town. That is so that the resident who runs for a non-partisan position in the Town is responsible only to the residents, and that the residents can have a trust in the person and that their duty is solely to the residents of the Town and to no other party.
This is the absolute value of having non-partisan positions. Non-partisanship helps to ensure that our elected officials are responsible only to the residents. Every Board member must answer only to the residents.
Both Supervisor Bantes and Supervisor English are compromised in their ability to represent only residents in this respect by their use of outside political organizations to whom they now owe their allegiance.
