Letter From Write-in Candidate Robert Selvaggio

Here’s a letter to the site from Robert Selvaggio who was a write-in candidate for Village Trustee in the Tuesday March 15 election, reflecting on the events of the week:
Joanne: By providing an open forum for Scarsdale citizens to disseminate information and express their views, you are of course doing great service to the community. Thank you! However, it's understandable that the interests of the community at large and certain private interests will often clash -- and that explains the motivation of these individuals for impugning your motives and hurling false accusations at you.

We corresponded and spoke for first time on Monday, and I admire your persistence in tracking me down and extracting a statement (by the way, I still have no idea who was behind this "sinister plot" to write us in, but in retrospect I am glad they hatched it). Scarsdale voters wanted to know more, and your website was the only medium that gave us the information we needed to vote intelligently. After posting our comments in your "Candidates Speak Out" column, my phone didn't stop ringing and my "inboxes" at work and at home were jammed. There was no possibility of going to work that day.

Neighbors I hadn't met previously called to ask whether I registered all my home improvements over the years at Town Hall and whether I paid nanny taxes for Maggie, our popular babysitter who was with us for eighteen years. Fair questions of a candidate -- how can a Trustee have the moral authority to tax others if he himself won't pay his fair and legal share? (Yes, all my home improvements were registered over the years, and we faithfully paid all nanny taxes and insurance). How would I as an economist evaluate the risk-return (from both an EBITDA and social perspective) tradeoffs of the proposed SCC project? What was my view on the "affordable housing" initiative? Do I understand that roundabouts are safer than traditional intersections and old-time traffic circles? A recently-minted MBA e-mailed a question about my thoughts of an article in "Wired" magazine that blamed the financial crisis on a particular mathematical technique used by quantitative analysts (I wonder how my answer impacted her decision at the voting booth!) People actually "Googled" my name, examined my Linked-in profile, and read a recent article on the "Monoline Meltdown" I was invited to post. Upon request, I sent out 14 CVs, and when I was told that one Scarsdale organization that I recently joined didn't know enough about me to support the write-in candidates, I sent out many more. I don't think I distributed more resumes since I looked for a summer internship in 1982. It's all about information; people want more of it, not less.

I'm told that we actually received in the neighborhood of 200 votes, not the 130-140 reported. There are clearly spelling and logistical challenges to writing-in candidates, so many ballots could not be counted in the official tally. I am proud of the votes Sharon and I received -- we did not campaign or hand out flyers or even ask for votes at the train stations -- our votes surely came from the information people could gather from Scarsdale10583 and from their own follow-up due diligence. And no one (including me!) even knew there was a write-in initiative until last Friday. Over a thousand of us voted -- that's a new record and that's just terrific, and you deserve much credit for that.

I have been encouraged to run again next year, and to do it again through the CNC nominating process that has served us well for many years. I will do just that. And I look forward to communicating with my friends and neighbors via Scarsdale10583.

Regards,
Bob Selvaggio