Sen. John Fonfara, lifelong Hartford resident, seeks city’s top job as mayor

John Fonfara wants the toughest job of his life.

As a lifelong Hartford resident, Fonfara has spent the past 36 years representing his hometown at the state Capitol and now wants to shift gears to steer the ship more directly as the city’s next mayor.

Despite securing millions of dollars for the capital city in his position as an influential Democratic legislator and co-chairman of the General Assembly’s finance committee, Fonfara says that is not enough. He recognizes that Hartford is facing huge problems — shootings and murders, inadequate public education, high levels of poverty, and the lowest homeownership rate in the state as 76% of residents are renters.

“This is the toughest job I will ever have, and I have a tough job,” Fonfara said.

After 36 years, Fonfara is seeking a career change.

“So why have I decided after all that time to seek the job of mayor?” Fonfara asked. “I don’t believe I can do what I believe needs to be done in the city from where I am as much as I believe I can from the mayor’s office. We’re just too poor as a city. We have to raise incomes. We have to create more opportunities. I don’t think city government has focused on that. We focused on the symptoms of poverty but not the underlying cause. I believe a mayor can do that better than anyone, and that’s where I will focus.”

Despite winning 18 elections previously, Fonfara failed to win the Democratic Party’s hotly contested convention and was required to gather signatures in order to force the Sept. 12 primary. He is competing against the endorsed convention candidate, Arunan Arulampalam of Frog Hollow, and former state Sen. Eric Coleman, a Democrat who Fonfara describes as “a dear friend” from their days sitting next to each other in the state Senate. All three candidates are battling to replace Mayor Luke Bronin, who is not seeking re-election after eight years of running the city.

Gary Rose, a longtime political science professor and author at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, said he was not surprised that Fonfara lost the convention endorsement to Arulampalam, a relative newcomer who has never held public office. Fonfara has lived in the city for all 67 years of his life, while the 37-year-old Arulampalam has only lived in the city for about a decade.

“That’s the character of American politics today,” Rose said in an interview. “The long resume is not what voters are impressed with.”

Television commercials

Ahead of the other candidates, Fonfara began running an extensive television advertising campaign more than a month ago on major networks like CNN and MSNBC to capture interested voters who are watching the news. In addition to Spanish-language ads on Telemundo and Univision, he also targeted newscasts and CT Capitol Report on Channel 8, a highly watched Sunday morning program among political insiders. The commercials started running before the city Democratic convention in July and continued on CNN on Sunday night during a two-hour documentary called “Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor?” that demonstrates the rise and fall of the once-popular mayor.

“As senator, John has funded more opportunities for our children and created pipelines to employment for our residents,” the narrator intones. “As mayor, John’s number one priority will be investing in our greatest asset — our people. Transforming our education system. Skilling up our residents — connecting them with Hartford employers and investing in all of our neighborhoods. John Fonfara will be a different kind of mayor.”

The problem, insiders said, is that many viewers watching the commercials live in the suburbs around Hartford and cannot vote for Fonfara. Only a narrow slice of the overall Hartford electorate, they said, might be watching CNN at any particular moment in a city with traditionally low voter turnout.

Rose, the political science professor, said he has been watching Fonfara’s ads as far away as Cheshire, which is 28 miles from Hartford and in a different Congressional district.

“I don’t know if it’s overkill or not,” Rose said. “Fonfara’s ads — and they’re good ads — I don’t know how many votes he’s going to get with those. Maybe. But if you want to win the mayoral race in Harford, you’ve got to have the troops on the ground. That’s the bottom line for winning a city contest here in Connecticut.”

Fonfara disputed the notion that the TV commercials might be a waste of money because they reach voters in the suburbs who cannot vote in Hartford.

“In neighborhoods I don’t represent, they recognize me,” Fonfara told The Courant in an interview. “I hear from plenty of voters when door knocking. They say: ‘I saw you on TV.’ This is a small city, but it is a big city to try to door-knock. Candidly, the no-home rate is surprisingly high, compared to what I am used to. I semi-joke and say the Ring Doorbell is a killer. They think it’s a solar salesman because the solar guys are very aggressive. I’m introducing myself through the Ring doorbell in many cases.”

Saying he has been reassured by his team on the TV strategy, Fonfara added, “I want to know. I ask the questions regularly: Are we hitting the people who are going to be voting?”

With TV ads that debuted Tuesday, Arulampalam is conducting a shorter, targeted period of the campaign’s final two weeks to remind voters of the Sept. 12 primary and get them to the polls. The ads, which are scheduled for Channels 3, 8, 30, and 61 and cable stations, feature Arulampalam, his wife, and all five of their children as he says he has plans for improving education, crime, and housing.

Lobbyists

The money for Fonfara’s TV commercials comes partly from about 100 lobbyists who represent clients at the state Capitol. The contributions are legal, but Fonfara raised eyebrows because state law prohibits legislators from accepting contributions from lobbyists during the legislative session when they are running for re-election — but allows it when they are running for a municipal office like mayor.

Among the key lobbyists who contributed to Fonfara was former state Senate Democratic leader William DiBella, who gave the maximum of $1,000 to his longtime Democratic colleague. DiBella remains a key player in Hartford politics as chairman of the powerful Metropolitan District Commission, as does his son, Marc, chairman of the Hartford Democratic Town Committee, who endorsed Arulampalam.

Besides DiBella, other prominent Capitol lobbyists contributed from both political parties, including Patrick Sullivan, Stephen Kinney, H. Craig LeRoy, Kevin Reynolds, Jay Malcynsky, Linda Kowalski, Eric George, and Michael Dugan. Many of the lobbyists gave the maximum $1,000 contribution — far beyond the small donations that are helping fuel Coleman’s campaign. With fewer contributions than Fonfara and Arulampalam, Coleman has loaned $80,000 of his own money to the campaign to cover expenses.

Stoic

During the first 10 debates in the race, Fonfara outlined his views for solving the city’s deep problems. In a recent forum at The Lyceum off Capitol Avenue, Fonfara described his personality by saying candidates are supposed to have “a pithy, sharp, smart answer to every question. I don’t operate that way.”

When he started his campaign, Fonfara did it quietly by filing the necessary paperwork in January but avoiding a traditional opening announcement with a gathering of supporters and a rousing speech from the podium.

A product of public schools and public housing in Hartford’s Rice Heights development, Fonfara never seeks the headlines and performs much of his work at the state Capitol out of the spotlight. He is sometimes misunderstood by those who do not know him well and is sometimes seen as being hard to reach because he rarely stands in front of the TV cameras and largely avoids holding press conferences.

A lifelong Hartford resident, Fonfara has never strayed far from the city — attending the local public schools in his youth, graduating from Bulkeley High School, and still living in the city’s South End that has become his political power base.

He is known for working behind the scenes at the Capitol on complicated issues like electricity prices, energy policy, and taxes. He said he developed his stoic personality from his mother, who turned 98 years old earlier this year. His father is 99.

While he also represents Wethersfield, Fonfara represents about 60% of Hartford that stretches from the city’s southern border and goes north to the SAND Elementary School on Main Street above Albany Avenue. He also represents downtown, Frog Hollow, and the area around the Colt building off Interstate 91 along the city’s eastern border that stretches along the Connecticut River.

The race is expected to be close in an increasingly diverse city with a high poverty rate that is 45% Hispanic or Latino, 34% Black and less than 20% white, according to U.S. Census records. The city’s population peaked in 1950 at 177,000 and has declined for decades to about 121,000 now. The stakes are high as the city chooses its next leader at the end of the era of Bronin, who is not seeking re-election after eight years as mayor.

While supporting Arulampalam, Bronin has called for unity in the future.

“We’ve been through a lot over the last eight years,” Bronin told Democrats during the nominating convention. “No matter what happens in September or November, there is a place for politics. And in Hartford, we play politics hard. But when the politics ends, it’s time to move forward as one Hartford and keep this city moving forward.”

The volatility cap

Fonfara has become known at the Capitol as the father of the “volatility cap” — a key provision in state law that prevents the legislature from spending excessive money from capital gains that are generated in boom years on Wall Street. The cap has been credited with helping create the largest surpluses in state history in recent years — allowing billions of dollars to be transferred to the long-underfunded pension plans for state employees and teachers.

But Fonfara, who was the lead senator to introduce the idea years ago, notes that others were involved in the budget deal of 2017 that was crafted by top legislators without the input of then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Since then, Republicans have also taken credit for the state’s surpluses that they say would not be possible without the caps.

All or nothing

For Fonfara, the Sept. 12 primary is an all-or-nothing proposition. By contrast, Coleman has already gathered the necessary signatures to gain a spot on the November ballot if he loses the contest. Fonfara has not done that.

“Whoever wins this race,” Fonfara said of the primary, “will be the next mayor of Hartford. Period. With all due respect to the voters in November, here we are a hugely Democratic city, and a lot of unaffiliateds vote Democratic as well. The record is clear.”

This is the second in a series of profiles on three candidates in the Hartford mayoral Democratic primary race. The first was on Arunan Arulampalam, and a future story will focus on candidate Eric Coleman.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com