To The Editor:

If I voice my disapproval with the use of dangerous rumors as a campaign strategy and I am told to stop inquiries, I am done. As I told Michelle Ku, I hate toxicity, and she never denied knowing the toxicity within her campaign. When I asked if she knew the truth that contradicted the rumors the Ku committee was spreading about Brandon Moore, she said she could not confirm the truth.

So, she allowed the unconfirmed lies about Brandon Moore? Allowed me, as a campaign committee member, to attack him with what I was told was verified? Allowing things to be done by your campaign committee that are harmful to others, is dangerously poor leadership. I left the committee quietly because the republican candidate that laughed as a fellow state representative modeled her ICE IN jacket, has to be voted out. Mitch Bolinsky, who has been in office seven terms while residents are forced to move because they cannot afford utility bills, property taxes, oil price increases, food bills, tuition… has to go.

What led me to be vocal was the fact that three students were scapegoated. Michelle Ku knows where I stand on scapegoating the college Democrats. The Ku campaign committee messaged warnings to campaign leaders that the college Democrats organized a debate and the committee was to go on “radio silence." Text messages that Michelle Ku and the DTC were taking care of the Young Democrat’s Debate and it was not happening. I voiced concerns and was ordered to ignore the forum flyers. Well, it did happen. There was a one-person forum and many people did not participate because of the negative DTC post. Brandon Moore appeared and I watched students raise serious community concerns. So, when I saw the posts calling these young people underhanded, I had to say something. If the DTC and the Ku committee was so set against the debate, they should have explained that to the students instead of discrediting them and gaslighting the community.

I also want the Newtown Community to know about the homophobic campaign strategy used, that is dangerously divisive. For me to be compelled to say, “let’s go high," in response to campaign leadership text messages about “luring him into acting like the mean pompous diva that he is," was the final straw. I can only hope that the committee members joking about never saying these things publicly, never watch a loved one struggle with this type of hate.

I raise these concerns not to disrupt, but to insist on accountability and truthfulness from our DTC and the candidate it seems to be pushing forward. The community needs to be strengthened rather than fractured or we will have Bolinsky in that seat, yet again. At tonight’s League of Women forum, I watched a candidate that never addressed the bigotry issues raised because her own campaign committee was allowed to engage in it and she wants to avoid anything that points to her complicity in such toxic tactics.

Yolanda Castro-Arce

Newtown