CT Dems gained ground in Greater Hartford area Tuesday, but GOP picked up wins in numerous small towns
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Beyond big upsets Tuesday in winning the Danbury and Derby mayoral races, Democrats performed fairly well elsewhere and posted significant victories in the Farmington Valley and along the shoreline.
Democrats flipped control of numerous city and town councils, including those in New Britain, Wethersfield, Cheshire and Norwich, and ousted Republican mayors in Newington and Brookfield.
They also held onto open mayoral seats in big cities including Hartford, Waterbury, West Haven and East Hartford, where popular Democrats incumbents were leaving office and the GOP had its best chance at winning. And in Cromwell, they won the mayoral election in a town that historically has gone to Republicans.
But this year’s election wasn’t a slam-dunk for either party, as Republicans claimed wider-than-usual victory margins in many traditionally conservative towns, and flipped the balance of political power from blue to red in nearly a dozen communities.
In Milford, Tony Giannattasio became the first Republican elected as mayor in more than 10 years.
“I’m very happy with what we accomplished last night. We flipped 11 towns with either the council, the board of selectmen or the mayor,” GOP State Chairman Ben Proto said Wednesday, citing Barkhamsted, Canton, Franklin, Milford, New Fairfield, Newtown, Scotland, South Windsor, Willington and Winsted as gains.
The GOP also overcame bitter party infighting in Southington to win the council and school board elections, and swept every race in Bristol, largely by lopsided margins.
“There will always be winners and losers. We still control well over a majority of all the towns in the state; people think Republicans manage their towns and government better than the Democrats,” Proto said.
Democratic State Chair Nancy DiNardo called the results “a great night for Democrats” and said her party gained the top elected seats in 16 communities where Republicans had been in charge.
In two of the state’s biggest cities, there was one expected result and one surprise. Democrat Arunan Arulampalam coasted to what had been expected to be an easy victory in the Hartford mayoral race; he will replace Democratic incumbent Luke Bronin, who didn’t run.
Bridgeport was a different situation: Democrat John Gomes was running well ahead of incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim in the machine count, but lost narrowly after absentee ballots went overwhelmingly Ganim’s way. The race isn’t over, though. Both are Democrats, and a judge has ordered a new primary that would pit Ganim against Gomes in a head-to-head match with no Republican on the ballot.
Overall across the state, there was no apparent unifying theme to explain how voters made their decisions. DiNardo and Proto agreed that municipal elections are harder to analyze than state or national races, since the major issues vary from community to community. Individual grievances, loyalties and friendships also play a much wider role in exclusively local elections, especially in rural towns and smaller suburbs where voters are more likely to personally know some or all of the candidates.
“The reality is that, especially in the smaller towns, it’s about how many people you know and it’s about local issues: Should the town spend tens of millions of dollars to build a new school or millions for an athletic field, or should town employees or a private contractor do the trash collection,” Proto said. “Are you unhappy with the tax structure and how your streets get plowed, or maybe you’re really happy about how the trash is picked up and the ballfields are maintained.”
Dinardo said veteran politicians have a phrase that describes the Election Day choice for residents: “It’s all about my house, my car, my taxes.”
Local taxes and education are always important in local races, but other issues vary entirely from town to town, she said.
In Bristol, for instance, highly visible progress toward the long-awaited downtown revitalization was a big reason for Republican Mayor Jeff Caggiano’s landslide re-election, according to local GOP leaders. Democrats won a resounding victory in Wethersfield, where environmentalists promoted Democratic candidates. They viewed the Republican-controlled council as increasingly hostile toward preserving the town-owned Kycia Farm.
Progressives in the Farmington Valley worried before the election that Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ rights group, was about to make inroads on local school boards. Protestors showed up when the organization held a meeting last month at the Avon Senior Center, warning that its members support an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda as well as book bans.
Farmington Valley rejected largely rejected GOP school board candidates, even in towns where the party won the general government races.
Unofficial results show Democrats in Avon swept the school board along with the town council and finance board races. The council’s top vote-getter was Democrat Dan Polhemus, the current chair.
In neighboring Simsbury, Democrats also dominated the school board race, while Democratic Mayor Wendy Mackstutis won re-election by a roughly 3-2 ration. At the same time, though, voters decisively rejected a referendum to allow sale of recreational-use marijuana in town; only 2,817 voted “yes,” compared to 3,379 voting no.
West Hartford voters returned Mayor Shari Cantor and her Democratic super-majority on the town council for another term, while giving landslide victories to the two Democratic school board candidates over their Republican and A Connecticut Party opponents.
In Canton and Farmington, Republicans posted stronger showings at the top of the ballot, but not in the education board races. Republican Kevin Witkos was elected as Canton’s new first selectman, winning an open seat that had been held by a Democrat. But of the four school board members elected, three were Democrats.
Similarly, Republican Joe Capodiferro was elected to chair Farmington’s town council, where the GOP will hold a 4-3 majority. But Democrats prevailed in that town’s school board race, too, winning three of the four seats on the ballot.
MomsRising, a national organization of progressives opposed to Moms for Liberty, claimed Wednesday that parents around the country had given the right-wing group a strong rebuke.
“In large part, yesterday’s election was a well-deserved brushback to Moms for Liberty and like-minded groups that have been ‘mom-washing’ by falsely claiming they represent the country’s moms,” CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner said in a statement. “Parents understood the Moms4Liberty agenda, which mirrored the larger Republican Party’s agenda, was rooted in book bans, discrimination, and taking away choice.”
Along the shoreline, unofficial results showed East Lyme on track to have its first Democratic first selectman in more than a decade. In Old Lyme, Democrats took control of the board of selectmen and won the first selectman’s spot, which had been held by a Republican who didn’t seek re-election.
