State rejects complaint against Moore campaign
BRIDGEPORT — State election watchdogs have dismissed one of two complaints filed against state Sen. Marilyn Moore’s 2019 mayoral campaign against incumbent Joe Ganim.
Ganim supporter Joel Gonzalez had accused Moore of improperly gathering petition signatures to force a primary against her fellow Democrat as Ganim sought a second term.
Gonzalez submitted to the State Election Enforcement Commission a
YouTube video recorded and posted by Jonathan Rodrigues of his and his fiance’s visit to Moore’s downtown headquarters in August 2019 to sign Moore’s petition.
That footage showed the couple signed the paperwork in front of campaign volunteer Sauda Baraka, even though Moore, as the candidate, should have been the witness. Moore identified herself on the petition page as the circulator, and the page clearly stated on the back that “each person whose name appears on this petition signatures page signed the same in person in my (Moore’s) presence.”
“She was the circulator. You cannot just go ahead, give it (the petition) away and let somebody take control of that,” Gonzalez told Hearst Connecticut Media after submitting his complaint to the SEEC.
But Moore, according to Rodrigues’ YouTube video, was in her headquarters and greeted Rodrigues and his fiancee after the signing, not before or during. And that was good enough for the state investigators, who wrote in their report to the elections commission that “a circulator need not necessarily be the one to actually make the solicitation and/or hand the document to the elector to sign, provided the circulator is ‘present’ when this occurs and can otherwise meet her responsibilities of witnessing the signature and identifying the signatory.”
The investigators further stated that Moore at least interacted with the couple and while “this would have been a cleaner question if Moore had taken a more active circulator role or simply had Ms. Baraka sign the statement (petition paperwork) ... the facts available here do not rise to the level of a violation.”
Neither Moore nor Baraka returned requests for comment Wednesday. Gonzalez in a brief interview characterized the SEEC’s decision as “very thorough.”
Gonzalez is now awaiting elections enforcers’ decision on a second, similar complaint he filed against Moore that was also related to her challenge of Ganim. In that case, Gonzalez alleged that Moore signed off on a different petition page — one to try to secure a spot as a mayoral candidate on the November 2019 general election ballot — without circulating or personally acquiring some of the signatures on it.
The 2019 mayoral race between Moore and Ganim was an acrimonious one with both sides accusing the other of improprieties.
The SEEC is also still investigating accusations of illegal use of absentee ballots on the part of Ganim supporters.
Moore won the in-person votes cast at the polling places in the September 2019 Democratic primary, but Ganim beat her when absentee or mail-in ballots were counted. Moore and her allies later raised questions about the legitimacy of Ganim’s win, and those complaints, along with reporting by Hearst Connecticut Media about possible issues with mail-in vote fraud, resulted in the SEEC launching a probe.
Moore’s effort to petition her way directly onto the November 2019 mayoral ballot failed and she unsuccessfully continued her challenge of Ganim as a write-in candidate.
Last August, Moore survived her own primary challenge for her Senate seat from Ganim supporter City Councilman Marcus Brown, and went on to defeat a Republican opponent in November to return to the legislature for another two years.