To the Editor:

Nick Viscio’s letter to The Enterprise of Aug. 13 regarding the recent Knox Democratic Party caucus and comments on the caucus in the accompanying article on page 9 of this paper did not match what I experienced at the caucus.

The party committee’s effort to get registered Knox Democrats to the caucus complied with the letter of the State Election Law but did not live up to the spirit of representative democracy.    Posting notices of the caucus in seldom visited places, like the kiosk at the town wetlands, while neglecting to post notices at well attended facilities such as the Township Tavern or in The Enterprise was not a good-faith outreach.

“Word of mouth” indeed resulted in a large turnout for the caucus.  However, the “word of mouth” was the result of a frantic last-minute scramble to recruit the party faithful comprised overwhelmingly of town employees, committee members, and their family members.

Those called and visited hardly represented a cross-section of Knox Democrats.  These contacts were made once the incumbent town supervisor became aware of a looming challenge by Vas Lefkaditis, and were needed because so few people were aware of the caucus.

The Town Democratic Party will certainly spend a fair amount of money on commercial advertising in the upcoming general election.  Surely the modest expense of clearly advertising the date, time, and location of the caucus in the local newspaper would have been well worth the cost, even if all it did was to prove to all the Knox Democrats that their ideas and opinions were truly valued by the current power structure.

John Elberfeld

Knox