City councilors dismissed a complaint Wednesday from an unsuccessful mayoral candidate, who said he felt Keene should have given candidates in the recent municipal elections a forum to share their platforms with the public.
Multiple councilors on the Planning, Licenses and Development Committee said that while those events, such as debates, have been put on in the past by local media outlets and other organizations, they are not the city’s responsibility.
The committee voted 5-0 to recommend that the full council drop the complaint, filed by Mark Zuchowski, who lost the Nov. 2 election to incumbent Mayor George Hansel. Ward 2 City Councilor Mitchell Greenwald, the panel’s vice chairman, thanked Zuchowski for his candidacy but said he had “failed to provide any factual evidence” of electoral fraud or misconduct.
In remarks to the PLD Committee earlier on Wednesday night, Zuchowski said he was challenging the election — which Hansel won 2,133-212 — because he thought the city should have held a so-called “candidates night” to help introduce residents to them and their beliefs.
Zuchowski, who emerged with Hansel from a three-candidate primary election last month, noted that Hansel and Greenwald participated in a debate — held by Keene State College and The Sentinel — before the 2019 mayoral election, in which Greenwald was a candidate.
“I did not get the same consideration,” Zuchowski said.
City Attorney Thomas Mullins responded, however, that he does not believe the city has legal authority to hold such an event. Mullins said he thus struggled to understand how Zuchowski’s allegations satisfied the “pretty precise” criteria, under the city charter, for claims of electoral fraud or misconduct. (Under those rules, no candidate in an election with more than 200 votes cast is entitled to a recount unless they lost by 5 percent or less.)
“That’s not the city’s role,” Mullins said of helping candidates share their beliefs. “It could be the role of all kinds of entities out there.”
Ward 5 Councilor Philip Jones, who ran unopposed in the recent elections, echoed that position.
“I would have liked to get my platform out there, too,” he said. “It didn’t happen.”
Zuchowski, who threatened at the hearing to take his concerns to New Hampshire elections officials, said later he would withdraw those allegations due to the points made by Mullins and multiple councilors.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.