Tom Mountain for School Committee

Friends,

Well, we certainly tried. But it was like David and Goliath, and the Newton political machine prevailed once again. I had no illusions when I got into this race last August. I knew it would be a tough fight, no matter who my opponent would be, because I knew that the powers-that-be would be out gunning for me all the way though. We caught them by surprise in the September primary when, after only jumping into the race six weeks before, I beat two reputable opponents, and made it to the final two in November. I sense that they saw this as a shot across the bow, and redoubled their efforts to make sure that I would not win in the end. So they called in every vote they could muster. And in a mayor’s race where two avowed liberals faced off, it meant that every liberal voter from every nook and cranny in the city would come out to vote for one of them, and inevitably, as they went down the ballot, against me.

Yesterday I made sure to take an hour to meet with the new Superintendent, Jim Marini. I hadn’t seen him since he exited the stage a decade ago. But when I walked into the Education Center, and into the Superintendent’s office where I was (literally) greeted with open arms by my old friend Jim, I experienced not only a sense of relief that he’s superintendent and not you-know-who, but it was the first time in a decade that I could honestly say that I felt good about being in that building. I had a long talk with him, and I can safely confrim to you that… he gets it. We’re on the same wavelength. He knows that the pendulmn has swung too far to the left, and he wants to bring our schools back to the center, back to the mainstream, where they were in the decades before the Cohen-Young era.

So yesterday I lost a battle. Nevertheless, I’ve never felt so positive about the direction of the Newton Public Schools as I do now. The whole culture of the school department is changing. The era of political correctness is coming to a close. The days of agenda-driven nonsense are winding down. Common sense is returning.

The future looks good. Have faith.

Thank you very much for your support.

And God bless All of You,

Tom

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.