CT elections watchdog group can’t find Bridgeport councilman
BRIDGEPORT — Connecticut elections watchdogs have issued another handful of subpoenas in the ongoing probe of the 2019 Democratic mayoral primary, including to a City Council member the state is having a tough time tracking down.
At Wednesday’s regular meeting of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, Ryan Burns, a staff attorney, updated members on the status of the 2-year-old investigation into alleged absentee or mail-in ballot abuses during 2019’s contest between incumbent Joe Ganim and state Sen. Marilyn Moore.
As reported in June, following some pandemic-related delays, the SEEC’s work on that case has resumed, with commission staff questioning some of the individuals involved with the Ganim campaign or with the Democratic Town Committee, which had endorsed the mayor for another four-year-term.
One of the four subpoenas authorized by the SEEC in the latest round was to council member Alfredo Castillo, who in August was arrested and charged with second-degree breach of peace and second-degree threatening following an alleged confrontation with Bridgeport’s head of public facilities.
“The state marshal charged with serving Mr. Castillo did confirm the address, but has been unable to make effective service,” Burns told the SEEC Wednesday.
Burns said the date on Castillo’s subpoena will soon pass and, if the marshal does not find the council member and hand the document to him by then, one of the commissioners will be needed to sign a new subpoena with a new expiration date.
Castillo could not be reached for comment by phone or text message. On Sept. 14, he won his Democratic primary and will be up for reelection on the November ballot for another 2-year term.
Castillo has represented the 136th District, a center-of-the-city neighborhood dubbed the Hollow, since 2013. His court date in the threatening case is Nov. 5, three days after the upcoming general election.
The state’s primary investigation stems from the bitter September 2019 primary race between Ganim and Moore. The latter received more in-person votes at polling places — 4,721 to 4,337 — but Ganim won the mail-in ballots 967 to 313 and, subsequently, the Democratic primary.
Moore and her allies accused Ganim and his supporters of winning through absentee ballot irregularities and potential fraud, which the mayor and his allies have consistently denied. The SEEC, based in part on an investigation published at the time by Hearst Connecticut Media, voted to open its pending case following a referral from the Secretary of the State.
The Hearst Connecticut Media investigation found alleged issues with the absentee voting process, including absentee voters who were pressured into voting for the incumbent or who received absentee ballots they did not request, and residents saying strangers swarmed elderly housing complexes seeking — and sometimes allegedly helping cast — votes.
The SEEC, immediately following the 2019 primary, subpoenaed election documents from Bridgeport Town Clerk Charles Clemons, as well as surveillance video and visitor logs of two apartment complexes run by Bridgeport’s public housing authority, Park City Communities — the P.T. Barnum Apartments in Black Rock and Harborview Towers on the East Side.
Some Moore supporters also filed a lawsuit attempting to have a Superior Court judge order a 2019 primary do-over, but lost. Ganim subsequently easily won that November’s general election in which Moore participated as a write-in candidate.
Castillo is the most prominent of the four targets of subpoenas the SEEC discussed Wednesday. Burns told commissioners two others — Alberto Ayala and Sonia Belardo — were served by marshals but Nilsa Heredia also could not be located.
None of the three could be reached for comment.
Heredia appeared in court in 2019 during the failed effort to toss out the primary results.
As Hearst Connecticut Media reported at the time, she was paid hundreds of dollars by the Ganim campaign for circulating dozens of absentee ballot applications through P.T. Barnum Apartments.
Heredia testified that she knocked on doors throughout the complex, offering ballot applications and postage stamps to those who wanted them, but that she had no part in filling out the actual ballots, or possessing them after they were filled out.