GOP: Democrats declined rare opportunity to show bipartisanship in Manlius (Your Letters)

To the Editor:
After 16 quality years as our Manlius Town Clerk, Allison Weber resigned in May to pursue an employment opportunity elsewhere. Weber asked the Manlius Town Board to appoint Deputy Clerk Carrie Grevelding as her interim replacement until the November election. Grevelding is registered as an independent (non-enrolled) and would need to be on the ballot in November for her to seek election to maintain her position as town clerk. She would have needed to pass enough petitions to create an independent party line on the ballot in November. Due to election law and the limited time frame, it would have been nearly impossible for Grevelding to complete this process.
Supervisor John Deer reached out to me, as I am the town of Manlius Republican Chairman, and suggested that the town Republican and Democrat committees cross-endorse Grevelding. We both took this to our committees for discussion, and in early August each committee met separately and voted to cross-endorse her for town clerk.
The next step was to submit this request to our respective county committees, along with all of the documentation, to include the committee votes and minutes of the meetings, confirming our endorsements. Sadly, the Onondaga County Democratic Committee declined the cross-endorsement, while the county Republican Committee approved the cross-endorsement. The result is that Grevelding will be on the Republican line in November.
I believe this is the first time in our town’s history that both the town of Manlius Republican and Democratic committees agreed to cross-endorse any candidate. This is a sad statement for the county Democratic Committee that they do not recognize local government, with two competing parties, working together for a common cause.
Ed Theobald
Chairman
Town of Manlius Republican Committee
Minoa
Joe Carni
Chairman
Onondaga County Republican Committee