Campaigns clash online and off in Amherst

BY Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on February 16, 2007

A couple of weeks ago subscribers to an online forum for Amherst Town Meeting members complained that Select Board member Robie Hubley was using the forum for campaign purposes.

This week, Select Board Chairwoman Anne Awad, Hubley's wife, is complaining that one of her husband's opponents in the March 27 election is using an email listserv to further her own political campaign.

Signs of the Internet's growing influence in small town elections are popping up all over in a campaign season marked by unusually high tension, resulting from a looming $3.7 million shortfall in the budget.

In a Valentine's Day email with six attachments sent to reporters and Select Board candidate Alisa Brewer, Awad takes issue with comments Brewer posted two days earlier on a schools supporter listserv.

"What are the guiding principles of the parent listserve?" Awad begins. "The comments about the Select Board, challenging our role in economic development, seem to be part of a political campaign rather than dialogue among parents of school children in Amherst. Since all candidates are not part of the listserve, placing this on the listserve provides unfair advantage for one candidate and means that only one perspective is offered."

Brewer, who is on the School Committee, responds that she was discussing remarks made at the Select Board hearing and that her opponents are, in fact, listserv members. Besides Hubley and Brewer, Select Board member Gerald Weiss, a frequent poster to the local Internet forums, is running for a seat on the board.

Tempers were already fraying on the listserv, as posters weigh the pros and cons of a Proposition 2 1/2 tax levy override.

Advocates say the future of the school system is at stake.

Opponents say property taxes are already so high Amherst that residents increasingly are being priced out of town.

Posters to the Town Meeting Web site have suggested to each other that they take a "happy pill." Writers on the parents' listserv have suggested to each other that they pop a couple of aspirin, and also "Shut up."

Disagreements in the virtual world are sometimes carried over from face-to-face meetings at Town Hall. The back-and-forth between Awad and Brewer began at Monday's Select Board meeting, when despite a concerted drive by schools supporters to place an override question on the March 27 ballot, the board voted to wait until May 1.

Arguing that having good schools increases property values, Town Meeting member Katharine Troast told the Select Board that, "In some ways, Amherst is kind of stopped in time." Preserving its old-time ambience is not incompatible with economic development, Troast said. She promised she would attend meetings "year round" to find a solution to the town's economic troubles because, "I think we're all going to have to work overtime."

To that, Awad replied that, "All of the Select Board members are working overtime and we work overtime 52 weeks a year.

"We are serious about economic development," Awad continued, citing a list of examples she said demonstrated the board's pro-economic development credentials.

In a show of turnaround impressive even by national campaign standards, Brewer fired off an email to listserve members challenging Awad's recollection of some of the details before the meeting was even over.

"I've been a member of Town Meeting since 1999," she writes, "and I remember it rather differently."