Go After the Record. Leave the Person Alone.

Accountability is the whole point. The name-calling buries the issues.

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At the August 11 board meeting, Board President Robin Ghebreal said the social media commentary about the board is “5% facts wrapped around 95% opinion and rhetoric.”

I’ve spent the days since inside that commentary. She has a point about the ratio.

My answer isn’t that she’s wrong. It’s to source everything I write, so you can judge for yourself.

Here’s where I sit, so you know where I’m coming from as you read this: I write ForWharton, I’ve been documenting the school board, and the board president is now running for mayor. Somewhere along the way I stopped watching what was happening and started to inform others about it.

What I published on August 12 was 13 items from the night before. Every one came from the meeting audio or the district’s own written policy. Every one can be checked by anybody, today. Ask anybody that attended. It’s all true.

Within a day, almost nobody was talking about the real issues.

I’ve been personally attacked over this too. Fine. That’s the toll for writing things down, and I’ll keep paying it.

The personal attacks on Robin were a different story. People should be asking her hard questions, not attacking her. She runs the school board and she’s running for mayor; accountability comes with both. What frustrated me was watching it turn personal, because the issues in front of this district and town are real, and a personal attack is the best cover a real issue can ever get. The conversation stops being about the record and starts being about her. That derailed everything.

That’s the part I want to talk about.

“Why now” isn’t the question

The most common response to all of this is that the timing is convenient. “She’s been on the board more than a decade. Nobody was saying any of this a year ago. Now she’s running for mayor and suddenly there’s a problem, so the problem must be political.”

Here’s when it actually started.

Three months before I knew anybody was running for mayor, I learned the district failed QSAC. That’s the state’s review, done every three years, of whether a school district is being run properly. Fall below the line and you have to build an improvement plan. The state’s rules (N.J.A.C. 6A:30) are specific about who gets a say in that: the board has to report the findings at a public meeting, and hold a public meeting on its response with five working days’ notice, where the public gets “the opportunity to comment and be heard.”

I went looking for that conversation in the agenda and minutes.

It wasn’t there.

Unless you were in the room that night, you didn’t know the district had a problem, didn’t know a plan was being written, and didn’t know you had a right to say anything about it. Not because anybody told you no. Because there was no record that it had happened. That’s a real problem.

Before I wrote a word about it, I called Robin. I’d voted for her on the school board for years. We had a good relationship. I wanted to hear her side before anybody else heard mine.

Our relationship certainly isn’t the same anymore. It changed because of what I kept learning. 

That’s what started this. Not a campaign. A lack of transparency on a serious issue.

I’m still at it because now she’s running for mayor. The race is why I’m still reading minutes while lying in bed, and it’s why anybody is reading what I write.

But that’s exactly what a contested election does. Most local seats in this country go uncontested. Of the races Ballotpedia tracked in 2024, 70% were uncontested. Wharton has been no exception.

When nobody runs, nobody looks.

Ten quiet years on the school board is not evidence that ten years were clean. It’s evidence that for ten years, nobody was paying attention. So when Robin asks a few thousand neighbors for the keys to the town as mayor, people will start checking. That isn’t persecution. It’s the job interview, and every candidate sits for it. (The same is true for Vince Binkoski. Scrutinize his record as well.)

It’s working against you

A complaint is about what somebody did. Criticism is about who they are.

With a complaint, every piece of it can be checked: the record is public, the meeting is recorded.

But criticism is personal. And it doesn’t just miss. It helps the person you’re aiming at. It hands them a reason to stop listening and a story to tell about being attacked.

If you have the evidence, you don’t need the insult. If you need the insult, you may not have the evidence.

Here’s the part that should stop everybody cold, whichever side you’re on.

A study of British voters published this year in the European Journal of Political Research put personal attacks on a candidate’s character in front of voters. When a personal attack was made, their opinion of the attacker went down. Their opinion of the target went up. The researchers call it a double backlash. Attacks on the candidate’s policies didn’t produce that result. Only the personal ones did.

So if you’re convinced someone is wrong for this town and you go at them personally, the likeliest thing you accomplish is sympathy for them and suspicion of you.

You can lose the election you’re trying to win, for the person you’re trying to beat.

Three rules

I’m holding myself to these. You should hold me to them.

Go after the record, not the person. If you can’t source it, don’t post it. If you can, post the source: the link, the page, the date.

Stick to the people in office or running for it. Candidates and officeholders put their record in front of the voters. That’s the deal they signed, and I’ll keep holding them to it. But spouses, kids, employers, the neighbor with a sign in the yard – they’re off limits.

Say it to their face. Before you post something about a neighbor, ask whether you’d read it out loud at a meeting with that person sitting 10 feet away. If you wouldn’t, then delete it. Don’t hide behind your keyboard. I’ll continue asking questions in person at meetings.

Keep showing up

Mayor & Council meets Monday, August 17. The Board of Education meets Thursday, August 27.

None of this is a request to back off. Show up. Pay attention. Ask good questions. That’s the kind of pressure that actually changes things in a small town like Wharton.

Personal attacks won’t fix a policy, find a missing document, or change a vote. They just guarantee that in a couple of years, the only people willing to sit at that table are the ones who’ve stopped caring what any of us think.

And notice who hasn’t gone personal: the candidates. I’ve followed this race closely, and Robin Ghebreal and Vince Binkoski have not attacked each other. The two people with the most at stake are keeping it about the issues.

The rest of us should follow their lead. Read both platforms. Ask them both hard questions. And don’t vote on party alone — at this level it tells you almost nothing about how someone will govern.

I’ll keep writing about what these candidates do. I’d like to stop reading about who they are.

Because the day after the election, we’re all still neighbors. And the issues are still the issues.

How to check me, or anybody else

Ask somebody who was there. The fastest way to find out whether something is worth chasing. But two people at the same meeting will tell you two different things, so treat it as a lead, not proof.

Read the minutes. Free, posted online. They have to show what was decided and how each member voted. If what you were told isn’t in there, that’s not nothing. It’s the reason I started writing.

Pull the budget. The Borough and the district each post a User-Friendly Budget.

Record it. Audio recording school board meetings is allowed. Policy 0168 requires notice for only video. Council meetings are already audio recorded by the borough.

Take your three minutes. State law guarantees public comment at Council and BOE meetings. Three minutes is enough to put a question to them in public, with everybody listening.

OPRA it. If it isn’t posted, make them hand it over. A written request to the Borough Clerk or Board Secretary. You’ll receive a response within seven business days.

If you use this on me and find out that I got something wrong, tell me and I’ll correct it where I published it. I’ve made corrections before, and I’ll continue to make them if I make a mistake.