Wayne Mayor Asks People to Reassert, Practice Democratic Principles

The Mayor of Wayne Township sought yesterday to rebut charges of anti-Semitism against the community growing out of a heated school board election in which voters apparently accepted an appeal to defeat two candidates for the board because they were Jews.

Mayor Edward Sisco made the effort in connection with issuance of a statement proclaiming Brotherhood Week in the prosperous suburban community, starting Sunday. He said that “the basic facts involved in the election were completely overshadowed by outside influences and outside news coverage.” He called all the candidates “well qualified” and declared that their sincerity “has never been doubted by anyone in the community.” He insisted that the voters “went to the polls solely to express their views on rising taxes and individual qualifications of the candidates.”

The mayor stressed that the 45,000 residents of the township had for many years had the “experience of living together, regardless of race, color or religion, in the true sense of the American way.”

In his post-election statement, Mayor Sisco said the school budget would have forced a tax increase of $58 a year for persons owning $20,000 homes.” In his proclamation of Brotherhood Week, the Mayor said “to all our citizens” that “it is well, at a time when the principles upon which our democracy is founded are gravely threatened, that we should reassert them firmly and rededicate ourselves to their daily practice.”

A New York Times editorial asserted that a community which stints on the schooling of its children “compromises its future” and that a town “that stigmatizes candidates because of their racial or religious background becomes a house divided, a victim of homebred hatreds.”