Town Council Candidates Debate Debating

With a little more than a week before the June 7 primary election, Town Council candidates Roy Messmer and Bob Crawford are calling out their incumbent opponents for not debating the issues with them.

The two challengers say that more than once they have asked for an opportunity to debate Council President John Fox, Vice President Michael dePierro, and Members Brian Stanton and Vincent Ferrara, and they insist they were turned down.

"Neither of these gentlemen has ever reached out to me. They never contacted me," said campaign chair Joseph Ricca. "It's strange they would make a suggestion that they had offered us a debate."

Messmer and Crawford say they made their requests directly to the members of Team Parsippany, the name the incumbent slate is using for its joint campaign.

Crawford said that he and Messmer made numerous requests and were "declined without explanation." 

"We've never turned down anything," said Stanton. "We said that if an organization came forward with a date for a debate, we would do it. We've never been offered a date by any organization.

"This is just something the opposition is pulling because they have nothing to run on," he said.

"Traditionally, incumbents don't give challengers a debate during the primary," said Fox. "That would give them exposure."

Fox added that primaries, save for the mayoral race, normally do not feature debates.

He said he would have made an exception in this case had a legitimate organization come forward with a debate offer.

"If the League of Vomen Voters had asked us to do it, we would have done it," Fox said. "The only ones who asked were Roy and Bob and their supporters. Who was going to run it? It could have gone wild."

DePierro and Ferrara told Patch there cannot be a debate unless a formal one is put together by a neutral group. 

"How are you going to have any debate if no group has organized one?" dePierro said.

Crawford looks at the debate over debating in a different way. 

He said a refusal to debate shows the incumbent slate is perhaps "uncomfortable talking about the positions they have taken as members of the Town Council or that they believe that the voters of Parsippany do not deserve to hear directly from the Team Parsippany candidates about their qualifications and plans for Parsippany.

“Either way," Crawford said, " Team Parsippany’s refusal to debate shortchanges Parsippany voters who deserve to know who [they] are and what they stand for.”