walsh

Politics, logistics and a procedural oversight have reduced from 11 to 2 the pool of candidates to the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee.

Never much of a race –– the committee can have up to 25 members, which means that all 11 would have been automatically elected as long as they qualified –– it could become a committee of one before it reorganizes in January.

The only sure member at this point: James M. Mageau, the acting council president. Mageau is running, unendorsed, for reelection to the Town Council and election to the town committee.

Mageau is currently not a member of the DTC (he left the committee six years ago), but he is guaranteed a spot on the committee when it reorganizes in January because he is one of only two candidates who have filed nomination papers.

A past committee chairman, Mageau said he wants the group to become more active, taking a “public stance” on political issues and putting together slates of candidates.

He calls the current committee “dysfunctional and ineffective.”

“It’s ‘Do nothing, say nothing’ policy and its desire to stay politically ‘safe’ by avoiding controversial issues is a disservice to the taxpayers and voters of Charlestown,” he wrote in a letter to the editor this month.

“People say, ‘You are kind of harsh [on] residents’,” he said yesterday.

His response: “Yeah, they are residents, but they are also the political opposition,” he said, pointing out the connections of some of those residents to the Charlestown Citizens Alliance, a political action committee that once tried to have him recalled.

The other candidate who returned nomination papers, fellow councilman and 2006 running mate Bruce W. Picard, plans to move out of town, probably before the new committee organizes in January, Mageau said.

Picard, who rarely returns calls, did not respond to repeated requests for comment over the past two days.

The town committee did not endorse the two in their 2006 campaign and has not endorsed Mageau as he runs for reelection this year.

After the committee reorganizes, Mageau and Picard –– or Mageau by himself, if Picard becomes ineligible by then –– could appoint additional members to the committee.

“Geez, they accuse me of being a dictator. I guess I could be one,” he joked yesterday.

If the local committee fails to fill vacancies within 45 days of the reorganization, the state Democratic Committee would step in, said Tim Grilo, executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

The seven sitting committee members decided not to serve another term when they realized that their failure to endorse each other would require them each to gather 50 signatures to qualify –– at a time when some of the members were to be away due to previously planned vacations.

Some said they were further put off by the prospect of serving with Mageau.

“I don’t want to be part of any town committee that Jim Mageau is associated with,” said Deborah A. Carney, the current committee vice chair. “Life is too short for that kind of nonsense.”

Catharine O. Collette, the committee’s secretary, said she, too, wanted to have nothing to do with the one-time Democratic councilman.

“I don’t like the way he is conducting himself,” Collette said. “I don’t think that’s what the Democratic Party stands for.”

“Certainly, it’s nothing against Mr. Picard,” Collette added. “It’s strictly about Mr. Mageau.”

State Rep. Donna Walsh said she and her husband, Henry A. Walsh, the current committee chair, also opted out of the local committee over Mageau’s presence.

“I’ve been on a town committee with him before,” Donna Walsh said of Mageau. “Normally he quits. If he doesn’t get his way, he quits. I just don’t want to fight over everything.”

Ralph C. Conti and Raymond S. Dreczko Jr., who are also running for the council, said they too decided to call it quits.

Conti said he wanted to meet with the committee to learn what the panel actually did before submitting his nomination papers, but learned the group would not reconvene until August.

Dreczko, who currently serves on the Zoning Board of Review and is the only candidate endorsed by the town committee, said he realized juggling family and work responsibilities with the committee and perhaps the council might be “biting off more than I can chew.”

Conti and Dreczko are running separately for the council despite Mageau’s past comments that the three would run on the same slate.

marmenta@projo.com