Supino: Vote for Benedetti

The upcoming Aspen city council election gives us a chance to effect real change in the politics that matter most: local. That is why I am voting for Christine Benedetti.

Reading the opinion section, it feels like Aspen faces several existential crises: airports, bridges, community erosion, referenda, low snow. It feels like a lot stands in the way of realizing our idealized community. If it snowed more, the rest might not feel so overwhelming. But with serious leadership, these obstacles can be opportunities to have the community and future we want.

Christine has spent a decade serving us on boards and commissions, as a friend and mother, as a professional, as a citizen. She offers serious leadership informed by time spent learning how community and government function. 

She is motivated by a desire to affect positive change, not business interests, an axe to grind, or her ego. She came to the decision to run for elected office after a decade of progressive levels of community service. Her platform is based on the idea that compromise is win-win not lose-lose, and Aspen can be for everyone if its leaders will make the hard choices we elect them to make. Talk about an antidote to our dysfunctional political culture — at every level.

If we listen to the same bitter locals rant, rave, and argue over the arrangement of the deck chairs while the ship goes down, we play into the hands of those who treat Aspen as a commodity not a community. Leadership at the city council table requires listening, compromise, and making the hard decisions that firmly set the course. Christine offers the experience and leadership Aspen deserves and requires. And if she wins, she just might make it snow more. 

Phillip Supino

Aspen