What Tuesday’s elections will tell us about 2022
As watchers of local elections scatter across Connecticut’s cities and towns Tuesday night to follow the results, many will let their minds wander a year ahead to the 2022 statewide races.
What will the municipals, as politicos call the local elections, tell us about Gov. Ned Lamont’s chances of keeping his seat, and the Democrats’ chances of holding their near-super-majorities in the House and Senate? Will we see hints that the Dems’ blue lock on every statewide and Congressional seat might loosen?
The short answer is, it will be hard to discern a clear message for the statewide campaigns in the electoral tea leaves of 2021. Hard, but depending on how the elections turn out, Democrats might have cause to worry they won’t sweep in 2022.
The biggest pressure falls on Democrats to hold what they have. But Republicans control more towns (tons of tiny burgs especially out East), so in the big picture tally of town halls, both sides have something to lose.
And Republicans might be looking at a rising faction of far-right social conservatives in places such as Guilford and Cheshire — even as the Democrats deal with their own internal divisions, as we’re seeing play out in Washington, D.C., over President Joe Biden’s massive social spending plan.
Before we take a quick tour of what’s at stake for 2022, let’s be clear, as the Democratic and Republican chairs both emphasized to me Monday: Local races, famously and by definition, are mostly about local personalities and issues.
The changing demographics in Danbury; affordable housing in Stamford; funding from the state, just about everywhere; the high school mascots in Watertown and Danielson; and, in the unfortunate case of West Haven, the shocking arrest of a sitting state lawmaker and town official on fraud charges connected to the possible theft of $600,000 in pandemic relief money.
“Connecticut is unique in a very particular way in that we have 169 towns, we don’t have counties, we don’t have a regional system of government,” said Ben Proto, the GOP state chairman.
In Guilford, for example, a slate of insurgent Republicans for the school board won their way onto the ballot by opposing so-called, alleged critical race theory being taught on the schools. The tempest caused the Democrats to join forces with a “Fusion” slate to keep those Republicans out of control.
“Clinton could care less and they’re a border town,” Proto said, naming the neighboring community just as an example.
Maybe so, but if those Republican insurgents in the Trump mold, energized by mask and vaccine mandates and what they call leftist teaching in the schools, win any significant number of seats across the state, the party will need to give them a bigger piece of the pie come the nominating conventions next May.
And Democrats would love to see that; they’re already salivating over a right-wing Trumpist resurgence in 2022.
For a one-stop bellwether, let’s visit Danbury. The mayor’s office is open for the first time since 2001 when former Mayor Mark Boughton won the seat his father once held. Boughton (the younger) took a job as Gov. Ned Lamont’s chief tax collector and the interim city hall boss decided not to run.
That leaves two good candidates to vie for the Hat City’s head office: Democrat Robert Alves, an immigrant and political outsider, and Republican Dean Esposito, a top Boughton staffer. It’s as close as Connecticut has to a single bellwether for 2022, with Democrats holding a significant but not overwhelming edge in registration and Republicans having done a creditable job in charge under Boughton for all these years.
Danbury is not the reliable stronghold for Lamont and other Dems that we see in the bigger cities, and it’s more important than most towns. “It can be indicative of the way the state is going,” Nancy DiNardo, the state Democratic chairwoman, told me.
But more likely, in her view: “I don’t know that any of the races can be an indication of which way the state is going except the possibility of inside that city or town.”
The local results serve more as a guide for the party in setting strategy and executing tactics for 2022, DiNardo said.
So it’s a subtle game,
this guesswork about the meaning of Tuesday’s results. Subtle, but real, especially if expectations break one way or the other across much of the state. If unaffiliated former longtime Republican Bobby Valentine beats established Democrat Caroline Simmons in Stamford, Esposito outpolls Alves in Danbury, and New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart holds her seat as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city against well known state Rep. Bobby Sanchez — “it’s not a good omen for the Democrats,” Proto said.
Is the opposite true? If Simmons, Alves and Sanchez all win, shouldn’t Republicans forget about winning the corner office at the Capitol in 2022? Somewhat, but not as much because of the voter registration numbers.
“You’ve got to be able to win on the road if you’re going to win,”
Proto said, “and the Democrats are the home team in Connecticut.”
On the other hand, as one Democratic insider told me Monday, “If Bobby Valentine loses, there is no Republican Party in Fairfield County.” He’s partly right; Valentine, a Republican for decades until he dropped out of the party to run for Stamford mayor as an unaffiliated, left that city’s GOP — the largest in the state — without a Republican name on the ballot for the top slot.
Mostly, it’s a matter of local quirks, and worse, in every local race — by far the biggest and gravest coming in West Haven. With a 4-to-1 Democratic registration advantage, Mayor Nancy Rossi would sooner have had to worry about an attack from Jupiter than a loss to GOP council member Barry Lee Cohen. But now Rossi faces the voters just days after
her close aide and rising town star — protege? — Michael DiMassa, was arrested and resigned over federal charges that he bilked the town right under Rossi’s nose, with a fake consulting firm.
I don’t know Rossi or Cohen but I can’t see anyone actually filling in an oval for Rossi, who has not been accused by authorities of any wrongdoing. She’ll probably still win and either way, Republicans will try to use that against Democrats.
That’s a stretch. Not a stretch is that Proto has already notched a turnaround before the polls even open. In Killingworth, the incumbent Democratic first selectwoman decided not to run — and the party didn’t put anyone on the ballot for the job.
“We flipped one,” Proto said.