It is the custom for candidates for elective office to proclaim at every opportunity, “I am not a politician.” This compulsion is largely the result of some notorious “politicians” that have given the profession a bad name throughout history. To be a politician is now considered to be bad politics. Yet, politics, however you react to the word, is in the end the people’s business, and as far as business opportunities go these days it presents better chances for doing something noble and great than most. Sidney Hillman, a labor activist in the 1930s, put it this way: Politics is the science of who gets what, when, and why.

So it is no wonder that now, in the middle of a protracted community tussle over the 2003–2004 budget, the political season leading up to the local elections this November has begun to percolate to life. First Selectman Herb Rosenthal, who has yet to declare his widely assumed intention to run for a fourth term, has been quite solicitous to the “public will” that has twice rejected budgets promoted by the town, noting, “The voters are in charge here.” Republican Town Committee Chairman Owen Carney and William Sheluck, chairman of the town’s Charter Revision Commission in 2001, have both announced their wish to secure the GOP nomination to run against Mr Rosenthal. Even at ground zero of grassroots discontent over increased taxes in Newtown –– the “Town Talk” forum at NewtownBee.com –– there was a call this week for a “Clean Slate Party. All new candidates for every post possible.”

In the darkest shadows of the clouds of frustration, misunderstanding, and mistrust that are swirling through this year’s budget season, this is the silver lining. This is what Newtown needs: people unabashedly taking up the work of the politician, providing the community with a full menu of opinions to consider, poking holes in each other’s arguments, offering their own ideas up for scrutiny and criticism, and engaging an electorate that is feeling increasingly disengaged. If these are the fruits of this spring’s frustration over higher taxes, let’s hope they nourish the democratic ideal of representative government in Newtown come November.