OPINION: A new chance to vote against wanna-be book-banning GOP Chairman John Scott
Oct. 28—I always assumed that the 2015 scandal that consumed freshman legislator from Groton John Scott, beginning with a headline in the Hartford Courant, "Legislator's Bill Could Have Benefited His Insurance Agency ..." probably killed the lawmaker's political career for good.
Indeed, Rep. Scott, then representing District 40, talked a lot at the time about how the bill he introduced, one of the first things he did after arriving in the Capitol, could have saved taxpayers money and given students better health care.
But I think the big takeaway for voters was that the freshman lawmaker landed in Hartford and promptly proposed a law that could benefit the insurance agency he owned at the time. Yikes.
It was no surprise to me that Scott, now the GOP town chairman in Groton, lost a bid for reelection in 2016, and another in 2018, amid stories he was pursued for nonpayment of rent.
He was back on the ballot, as a candidate for Town Council, and lost again in 2021.
Scott has put his hat in again this year for council, and that doesn't worry me much, because I'm sure Groton voters know how to continue his losing streak and keep him away from their government.
I'm a little concerned, though, that serial candidate Scott is also running this election season for a seat on the Board of Education. I hope Groton voters are vigilant in keeping Scott away from the administration of the town schools.
I am especially worried, given that it was just a year ago when Scott wrote to Town Manager John Burt suggesting a Groton librarian be "disciplined or terminated" because of a book he said she was recommending about a drag queen librarian, "The Sublime Ms. Stacks," by New York Times bestselling author Robb Pearlman.
"This is highly inappropriate and it sexualizes our school children. No one under the age of 18 should have access to it let alone have it read to them," Scott wrote to the town manager last Oct. 14, asking for "removal of all copies of the book from circulation."
In his very measured response to Scott's alarmist call for banning the book, Town Manager Burt noted the inaccuracies in the Republican chairman's email, explaining that social media posts about the book were wrong and that the Groton library doesn't own a copy.
He added that he watched a video of the author reading it and found it innocuous. He added that the alarmist and inaccurate posts about the book and librarian in Groton had led to her receiving death threats.
In a comment in an earlier column I wrote about Scott's attempted book banning, he referred to me as "Mr. Human Garbage." I appreciated that he at least capitalized it.
When I asked him for comment this week about his book protest, as a candidate for Board of Education, he was considerably more polite.
He said in a long email response that he accepted the town manager's conclusion that the book was innocuous and denied he targeted the librarian in his October 2022 email, the one in which he very clearly said he was seeking discipline or her termination.
"It was never my intention to target the librarian personally, but rather to raise questions about the content being recommended in our schools," he wrote this week.
"I stand by my initial concerns, but I also respect the town manager's viewpoint and the value of differing opinions."
Scott also responded in his email to questions I had, given his ambitions to sit on the school board, about his wishes for transgender people to be forsaken by members of the LGBTQ community.
"LGB folks should part ways with TQ+ folks, as our interests no longer align," he wrote in comments last year on theday.com
Both Scott and I are gay men, who I believe should not be abandoning the people who have helped shape the gay rights movement and helped bring us so many rights and opportunities, like gay marriage.
They shouldn't be cast aside because we white gay men don't need them anymore, and because they've become convenient new political scapegoats for the far right, with "woke" behavior that Scott wrote last year makes him "uncomfortable."
In candidate Scott's email this week, he said in his wish to "distinguish" transgender individuals from the LGBTQ community his aim was to "highlight the unique challenges and experiences that transgender individuals face ... "
Unique because Republicans have decided to demonize them.
Groton voters have been very successful in keeping Scott away from the workings of government. I can't imagine why Groton Republicans have kept him as chairman.
Voters now need to be equally vigilant in keeping an intolerant would-be book banning candidate from being allowed to help run the schools.
This is the opinion of David Collins.