High political season begins on the Island this week when voters gather in four Island towns for annual town meetings and elections.
The Edgartown selectmen endorsed plans Monday to regulate medicinal marijuana, voting to place articles on the April special town meeting warrant that would regulate public consumption of the drug and establish a temporary moratorium on setting up dispensaries.
What was once a conservative enclave has given way to a reliable liberal stronghold. And the place where Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly earned the respect of Islanders (if not their votes) by caring more for his boat than he did for electioneering is now known as the summer vacation spot for presidents whose ice cream shop visits and golf games make headlines.
As around the country, the political landscape of Martha’s Vineyard is ever shifting.
Tisbury voters rejected the controversial $3 million connector road proposal at their annual town meeting this week, ultimately convinced by critics of the project that it was too expensive for the town.
Seventy-odd years ago, Everett Poole recalls, the first Democrat appeared in Chilmark. He ran the post office.
“The reason he was a Democrat was that Franklin Roosevelt was President and those jobs were all political appointments. So he had to be a Democrat. He came from Maine,” said Mr. Poole.
“As the post office grew larger, they wanted a clerk, so his wife became a Democrat too.”
Vineyard election officials are expecting a record turnout for Tuesday’s election following a rush of new voter registrations and a huge number of absentee ballots already cast.
The number of absentee ballots as of yesterday was in some cases close to twice that normally seen at a presidential election, a sure sign, Island town clerks said, of an engaged electorate, and a likely indicator of an unprecedented turnout.