Signatures for Stemer-who?

Petitions under arm, a middleaged man ambled up to the coffee drinkers seated outside the Starbucks on High Ridge Road in Stamford on Sunday afternoon.

“Do you want to support the Republican party?” the man asked the patrons.

Though on a fervent mission to Trader Joe’s, I stopped to see which elected-office hopeful was staking out my neighborhood.

“Which candidate are you petitioning for?” I asked the man.

“Stemer... ski,” he said with hesistation.

“David Stemerman?” I inquired.

A Greenwich hedge fund manager and gubernatorial candidate, Stemerman is petitioning to get on the August primary ballot. His campaign — or the firm hired to help with the petition effort — needs to collect 9,081signatures from registered Connecticut Republicans by June 12.

“Stemerman, yes,” the petitioner said, blaming jetlag for his confusion. He had just flown in from California, he explained, and was just one of a group of petition circulators crowding into Connecticut from other states.

State law requires those collecting signatures must themselves be Connecticut voters registered with the same party as the candidate.

The jet-lagged Stemerski canvasser didn’t stop to discuss that. A woman in a red leather jacket with a toy poodle handed a petition form back to him, taking his attention away.

“I’m a Republican,” she said, “but what is this for again?” — Emilie Munson

Wanted: a GOP spy in CT

State Rep. Melissa Ziobron, a Republican from East Haddam running for the state Senate recruited a friend to help with her race. The friend, Irene Haines, tried to recruit others in turn.

Haines, an insurance agent who once ran for first selectman, sent out an email with the subject line “Melissa is looking for a spy.”

The missive starts out asking after the health of the recipient, then inquires whether the recipient had planned to attend an open meeting of local Democrats.

“But to the spy mission should you choose to accept,” Haines wrote. “There’s a meeting this weekend that Dems are putting on about knocking on doors. Any chance you were already going??”

Email being what it is, a Democrat got hold of the spy request and spread it around. Contacted a couple days later, Haines pleaded partial innocence.

“I’m new to this,” she said over the phone. “I don’t know anything about the whole politics game. I contacted someone I thought was a friend. That’s all it is. It was definitely wasn’t much more than Mission Impossible.” She said she’s looking forward to serving in the House of Representatives. “We’ve got a mess and we have to fix it.”

Ziobron said she’s been busy knocking on doors in the largely suburban and rural district to focus on what her opponents might be doing.

“It has nothing to do with me,” she said over the phone. “I would assume it’s a public meeting. I kind of laughed when I saw ‘Mission Impossible,’” she said.

She conceded that Haines might have been “a little naive” and that “maybe some people are not your friends.” — Ken Dixon

Stefanowski’s got names

Bob Stefanowski, a Republican running for governor who opted to skip the party’s political convention, will begin submitting petition signatures to registrars of voters, his campaign announced Monday.

“I am pleased to report that we have obtained more than enough valid signatures to qualify for the August 14 Republican Primary with submission to registrars starting today,” Stefanowski said in a statement. “As a political outsider, I felt it was important to gain broad based support from the 450,000 registered Republicans rather than relying on an outdated convention process that strongly favors career politicians.”

Petitioning candidates must collect signatures from 2 percent of registered voters in their party in order to appear on the August primary ballot. In the case of Republicans that’s around 9,000 signatures.

Stefanowski’s campaign, which he is largely funding himself, reported he has collected more than 12,000. It’s common for candidates to collect a surplus in case some signatures are deemed ineligible.

Per state guidelines, signatures must be submitted to local registrars in the towns where they were collected. Stefanowski’s campaign has collected signatures in 96 Connecticut towns and counting, said Stefanowski’s campaign manager Pat Trueman. Trueman said the campaign will continue to collect signatures until the June 12 filing deadline, but the effort will be less aggressive than it has been for the past month.

Republicans David Stemerman and Mark Lauretti are also collecting signatures, as well as Democrats Joe Ganim and Guy Smith.

Gabe Rosenberg, Communications Director for Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, reported as of 4 p.m. Monday, the number of primary petition signatures tabulated by the Connecticut Secretary of the State’s office was 381, Ganim; 19, Stemerman; and 18, Stefanowski. — Kaitlyn Krasselt