Politics makes for strange bedfellows: candidates, Aftershock ‘Vote BEER’

On Saturday evening, September 12, a number of candidates for Front Royal Town Council and Mayor met citizens in an informal meet and greet event in the Virginia Beer Museum outdoor Biergarten. The backdrop to the “Vote BEER” Party event was a musical performance by Front Royal’s own Aftershock, fronted by Reno Vaughan, with a little help from uncle Dewey Vaughan, propelled by dad James Vaughan’s power drumming and the keyboard, guitar, and bass accompaniment of Lenny Barnhart, Doug Hess, and Dean Smith.

“Solid Fuel” for candidates, music fans, constituents, and music-fan constituents was catered by “So Mote It G Beef” Chef Will and crew’s stacked pork barbecue platters – which saw a non-partisan LANDSLIDE of support over the course of the evening.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Reno Vaughan and Aftershock kicked off the entertainment portion of the evening – not to say political campaigning can’t be entertaining. Below, the So Mote It G Beef catering crew displays the goods – don’t worry, there’s back up when those platters run dry. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

And speaking of non-partisan, it is adhering to the Front Royal Town Charter’s mandate that town elections be non-partisan that really is at the root of Virginia Beer Museum proprietor and local attorney David Downes creation of the “Beer Party” and its “Vote BEER” slogan.

Candidates present at the outset of the 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. or so event, included Mike McCool and council challengers Betty Showers and Josh Ingram. Others seen over the course of the evening included Bruce Rappaport, incumbent Lori Athey Cockrell, running to hold her appointed seat, and we were told Cockrell’s fellow Republican-endorsed candidate Scott Lloyd, as well as mayoral candidate James Favors – sorry we missed you, Scott and Jim.

Above, from left candidates Betty Showers, Mike McCool, and Josh Ingram meet and greet the Royal Examiner camera; below, Showers and Ingram chat as Aftershock begins its first set of the evening.

Interested observers on the scene at various points in the evening were County Board Chairman Walt Mabe, FR-WC EDA Vice-Chair, and acting Chairman Jeff Browne, former Front Royal Town Manager Michael Graham, incumbent Councilwoman Letasha Thompson, whose seat is not up for re-election this year. Two years ago Thompson was the first local candidate to receive a “Beer Party” endorsement.

This year Beer Museum proprietor Downes has endorsed endorsed McCool, Ingram and Showers on the “BEER” platform of:

Better government;
Encouraging cooperation;
Emphasizing non-partisan politics; and
Responsible government.

as illustrated by the signage in front of his Chester Street law office.

And while all those BEER party-endorsed candidates have emphasized their run as non-political party affiliated independents, they have also embraced the Vote BEER theme of cooperative, non-partisan and responsible government. For as former county supervisor John Vance once observed to this reporter, “Local government should be more about common sense than partisan ideology.”

It is a theme at the root of Front Royal’s 2020 Election, as citizens consider the current Republican Committee five-seat Council majority’s decisions on:

– Town staff cutbacks and outsourcing of town governmental functions, particularly related to tourism marketing and the Visitors Center;

– a refusal to assume its moral obligation $10-million debt service on the new town police headquarters which no one in town government has been able to indicate to this reporter there is any indication of any misdirected funds related to the 2014-18 EDA financial scandal;

– and the seemingly related choice of hostile litigation against the re-tooled EDA board and staff and creation of a competing unilateral EDA with no assets and a several-hundred-thousand-dollar annual operational budget the Town will have to fund (compared to its zero-dollar operational funding of the existing Town-County EDA), as opposed to offered good faith negotiations to establish exactly what town assets may have been misdirected as part of the alleged EDA administrative wrongdoings of the former executive director and her co-EDA civil litigation defendants.

As town citizens ponder the impact of partisanship on these decisions as November 3rd approaches, enjoy these images from the October 12 candidates meet and greet, Aftershock show, and So Mote It G’s BBQ landslide …

To an ‘Aftershocking’ musical backdrop the candidates greeted and made their case for support from voters …

And prepared campaign signs for those won over – make sure you see whose sign I’m working on Ingram supporter may be telling photographer as Ingram helps with the leg-installation work.

Above, some smart, early arriving patrons set up close to the So Mote It G catering table, where the action remained steady through the evening.

The Biergarten tent was up just in case those clouds opened up, which they didn’t.

Incumbent council candidate Lori Cockrell chats with former town manager Michael Graham …

And gives the Royal Examiner camera a smile as publisher and mayoral candidate Mike McCool joins the conversation.

Reno takes a break as Uncle Dewey takes a turn up front as Lenny Barnhart keeps an eye on the circling Royal Examiner cameraman …

And purple haze-stage lit drummer James Vaughan gets a laugh at Barnhart’s doubling as stage-right security.

The band knows this photographer too well – Dewey Vaughan takes over the security watch while on lead vocals. Royal Examiner would have filmed at least portions of the show but then ASCAP would have come after us for copyright violations on all the band’s cover material … ‘SAD’