How To Elect-trocute An Official

“Let’s give them something to talk about....”

According to last week’s Shelter Island Reporter, the Republican primary for Island Supervisor will be decided by 50 absentee island votes, of which 20 have been challenged. So the three candidates, Al Kilb, Jr., Art Williams and Hap Bowditch, sit and wait...

But does this election really have to be decided by absentee votes? There are other ways to decide these things, for instance...

How about a swimsuit competition? The Lion’s Club could sell tickets and donate the proceeds to charity. It would certainly be a memorable event! The photographs of the guys in Speedos could be used to blackmail them for years...

How about taking a page from “Fear Factor” and see who can eat disgusting things the fastest? Peanut butter and fish sandwiches downed with a clam broth and chocolate milk cocktail, but with a twist of lemon so as not to be too cruel...

How about a tolerance test? The Town Supervisor has to be able to tolerate a lot of anger without using napalm as a response. How about having the candidates sit at the school playground, surrounded by Moms, while wearing a sign that says, “I think you are a lousy mother!” Hell hath no wrath as a mother criticized...

What about a Dr. Phil competition? Have all the candidates sit in chair while holding handguns and listening to endless inane whining. The candidate who doesn’t shoot himself or the designated whiner, wins!

An Oprah test could be interesting. The three candidates would sit on her couch and listen to supermodels complain about their hard lives. How hard it is to keep their hair nice on a beach shoot, how no one understands the burden of beauty and how people prejudge them because of their incomparable faces and bodies. The first candidate to tie one of the supermoaners into a pretzel and jam her face into the backfold of the couch wins!

We could always do a Jerry Springer competition. The candidates, with ALL their collective relatives on the island in the audience, could debate absolutely any issue. It could be “Is a Gnat the same as a No See Em?” Within ten minutes it will be a donnybrook with full audience participation, chairs flying and everyone taking pictures with their cell phones for the lawsuits later.

How about a wheelbarrow race like they do in Ireland? Each candidate gets a partner and a wheelbarrow. Starting at Sweet Tomatoes, the candidate drinks a beer and the partner pushes him in the wheelbarrow to The Old Salty Dog, where they switch, and now the partner downs a pint and pushes the candidate in the wheelbarrow to the next bar, etc., until they reach the last bar or until they are the last one standing, whichever comes first. Some may say that a drinking tolerance test isn’t the best way to select a supervisor, but I say it is, because if the candidate isn’t a drinking man when he starts his term, he probably will be by the end, so we might as well see who can handle it now.

“A Queer Eye For the Straight Guy” test? The three candidates could be locked in a room with the Queer Eye boys, and ....nope...that will never work. The winner wouldn’t even be in office before he was up on charges for assault.

I’d enjoy a Mapquest test. Give each candidate a blank map of the island and see who can draw in the most roads from memory. Then, who can list who lives on each road, who they are related to, and what kind of car do they drive? Extra points if they know what kind of dog they own and mega bonus points if they know the dog’s name.

The Shelter Island Phone Book test would be excellent. Each candidate puts a dot next to the name of everyone he knows. The dots can be connected to form a network and the best connected person wins! Why? Because the island is all about connections. The term ‘dial-up connection’ doesn’t refer to the Internet here. It means you called in a favor.

“Desperate Housewives” Test: This is an excellent way to choose a Supervisor. Each candidate lists how many island secrets he knows and how many bodies he can locate, and the one with the longest list wins.

But then of course, the whole town will know who knows too much...