CHEN is a party that has done some great work in the Bet Shemesh City Council. Their problem is really in marketing, because based on their performance, based on their success, and based on their integrity, they should be a much larger party. (And perhaps some better marketing of themselves would also help...)

CHEN only had one seat in the outgoing City Council. Their one mandate has been threatened with Rav Alon leaving CHEN and merging with TOV. That left a nice hole that CHEN has to figure how they will fill, if they plan to make it past the minimum threshold in the upcoming elections.

It is possible. Zvi and David are optimistic about their chances. I don't like relying on polls (polls are giving CHEN low numbers), because everybody uses the numbers differently and polls have always been unreliable, but CHEN's numbers have been going up recently, and according to the basic count Zvi detailed for me, it looks like they will surpass the minimum threshold. I hope they do, because it would be a great loss if we did not have them fighting for the city in City Hall.

Some people are worried about the overlap between CHEN and TOV. While it would have been nice to see a merger between the two parties, ensuring the joint success, it did not happen, for whatever reasons. An interesting piece of irony I noted is a point that was mentioned in a recent interview in a local newspaper Tmura with Zvi Wolicki. The article mentioned that Zvi was always a supporter of the (now defunct) Poalei Agudat Yisrael, and would be again if they made a comeback. TOV is a reincarnation, of sorts, of the Poalei Agudat Yisrael party.

I say the more the merrier. If they can both get in, we gain that much more by having more people fighting for us.

Look at the flyers below put out by CHEN, and you can see they are non-partisan. They work to improve the quality of life of Bet Shemesh residents, no matter who or what group you are affiliated with. I personally know of numerous cases in which CHEN simply helped people solve problems, even though they knew that the petitioner had not voted for them and would not vote for them in the future. They just want to improve our quality of life.

And with Ephrayim Naiman joining the CHEN list, it made an already great team even better. there is nobody in RBS, and I mean literally nobody - not a single individual, who I would prefer to have as a representative over Ephrayim.


(this should also remove any preconceptions generated by previous posts that I work for TOV or that I fully endorse TOV. I support TOV. I like TOV. But I also like other parties. not every party is for every person. In addition, there are still other parties I like and support. I might write about some of them, I might not. Maybe more on this idea in a later post.)

If you have any questions about CHEN - who they are, what they do, what they want to do, what they have done, whatever, ask them in the comments. Either I will try to get answers, or hopefully I will try to get a chen person to answer directly...

Bet Shemesh politics has heated up this past week. As we get deeper into election season, it will continue to do so, but this week was particularly busy.

This week was the deadline for various parties to submit their final lists for candidacy for city council seats in the upcoming elections. People listed in the various parties lists will be competing in the elections for seats, and the positioning of the name on the list determines your spot in the party and whether you have a realistic chance to win a seat or not.

So all the various parties submitted their lists this week. There were some interesting developments.

• UTJ's local party is in for a tough fight. Lots of people have been upset at them for some time. Add to that a number of people who were upset because they were being left off their lists and they wanted spots. Some of those people have opened their own splinter parties, most of which have absolutely no chance of getting more than a few hundred votes each (if that much). The most notable of these are TOV (which was announced a while back), a "general chassidik" party, and a party of people from the Mishkenos Yaakov of RBS. UTJ I am sure will be fighting to have these people drop out of the race. All that will happen is that they will waste a few hundred votes each, thus weakening UTJ.
• UTJ settled their fight, it seems, about placement on the list. The Gerrer candidate for mayor, Ehrenreich, is heading the list at number one, with Shmulik Greenberg at number 2, and Moshe Montag at number 3. All three would be considered realistic spots, but they really have to get some of the splinter parties to disband and support them. If not, the number three spot could be in danger.
• The most unusual move of the week was I think Natan Sheetrit being convinced to abandon his candidacy for mayor under the Ichud Leumi party list, and join up with current mayor Danny Vaknin. Vaknin secured the number two spot on the Likud list for Sheetrit, and promised him to be appointed in charge of education after the elections. This is an unusual move because Sheetrit has very little support of people behind him. I am not sure why Vaknin was even interested in him. Perhaps it was just to be able to show he has people behind him. The most unusual aspect of it, to me, is the fact that Sheetrit's whole selling point why he should be elected mayor is that he is the only one who has fought local corruption. The way he fought it was that after the last election in which he lost to Danny Vaknin, he appealed to the courts to overturn it. That was his big anti-corruption fight. But considering that he has campaigned on the line that Vaknin is corrupt and he is the "anti-Vaknin", it is unusual that he has now joined forces with Vaknin.
  
• A few parties submitted some very well developed lists, refreshing their ranks and putting very hard working and impressive people on their lists, even if in unrealistic spots: Mafdal, Shalom Lerners party put together an impressive list of people, including our good friend David Morris in the number 5 spot. TOV put together a nice list, including Rav Alon, which will pretty much guarantee their passing the threshold and make their fight really for the second seat. The list is headed by Eli Friedman, Rav Alon and Mendy Newman, with other spots going notably to Ari Rosenstein at number 4, and Rav Raviv Shaked at number 7. This list is pretty good and should make their fight for the second, or even a third, seat on the council. The next one is what i consider the best, and perhaps most surprising, move in local politics this week. It therefore will get its own bullet, even though it really fits in this category.
• CHEN submitted its list for the upcoming elections, and they made a brilliant move. CHEN pretty much had no presence in RBS in the last elections, and since then as well. Losing Rav Alon (to TOV) could potentially have been a big blow to CHEN. They made a brilliant move and somehow convinced Ephrayim Naiman to officially join CHEN (he had been working with them for a number fo years unofficially) and include his name in the number 2 spot on the list. The list is headed by Zvi Wolicki, Ephrayim Naiman and David Geudalia. In my eyes, getting Ephrayim Naiman on board is the most brilliant political move of the week. he is a powerhouse here in RBS. Everybody loves him because of how much he does around the neighborhood and because he, and his whole family, is just a great and positive person. They should surpass their expectations because of signing up Ephrayim.

Election season should keep getting more interesting, but I hereby give the award of "Brilliant move of the Week" to CHEN for getting Ephrayim Naiman on board.