Too bad for Robert Zirgulis and Gary Abrams that last night’s School Board meeting was not rained out.
Their ill-conceived behavior when they reached the speaker podium to address their presumably potential colleagues on the Board further marred their already scuffed-up reputations as candidates.
The first law of candidacy is to take yourself seriously and, in public, conduct yourself accordingly.
Not even their closest relatives would have defended their hackneyed crude, jagged ranting and the temerity they repeatedly summoned to insult the Board President and other members.
You don’t call your potential colleagues dirty names, then sink to your knees begging to join them.
The parents of Mr. Abrams and Mr. Zirgulis would have been ashamed.
Sassy children would not have been allowed to escape severe penalties for the way these two deliberately demeaned their peers and themselves.
Privately, I am fond of them. They are lovely gentlemen, congenial conversationalists who would not dare conduct their home lives the way they have comported themselves before the Board or on the campaign trail.
Merely being unorthodox is insufficient reason for seeking office. Having created a vacuum, one is obligated to find a way to meaningfully fill the space. Neither has tried. They are running because they are running, they tell us.
When, at one of the numerous candidate forums — the final two are today — you are asked a serious question, you should comply with a substantive answer or leave the stage.
Breaking an Agreement
Consistently, both have evaded that societal responsibility. We lead busy lives, and when we soberly attend a forum, we expect to gain useful information not vacuous giggles or unbecoming tirades that assault the boundaries of rudimentary civility.
It is unfortunate that on Nov. 8 their mere presence will deprive the true candidates — Laura Chardiet, Nancy Goldberg, Scott Zeidman — of merited support, thus skewering the outcome of what should be a skintight election.
Their tired, unimaginative acts wore out after the first performances two years ago.
When Mr. Zirgulis was confronted last night by Mr. Zeidman, the Board President, with an uncomplicated question about the oil tax he has been shamelessly shlepping since summer, he was unable to provide an answer. Later, almost shockingly, he called out “Liar, liar” from the audience.
Like Mr. Zirgulis, Mr. Abrams has been conducting a hollow, conviction-free campaign. Both gentlemen have been consumed with dishing out unremitting, often unfounded, wild-swinging criticism of the School Board without offering a panacea.
One of them recently said he was running because none of his ideas from two years ago had been implemented. If we know why they weren’t — hint, hint — why doesn’t the gentleman?
Thirteen days until the election.
It is not too late for them to quit the race. Friends don’t let friends run for office on invisible platforms with invisible motivations and intentions.
