Rematch in race for 32nd District Senate seat

Affordable health care, gun safety and taxes are emerging as top issues in the rematch for who should represent the 32nd state Senate District.

Incumbent Republican Eric Berthel and Democrat Jeff Desmarais are running against each other to serve the district that encompasses Bethel, Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Middlebury, Oxford, Roxbury, Seymour, Southbury, Washington, Watertown, and Woodbury. They ran against each other in 2020.

For Desmarais, one issue that is top of mind is promoting gun safety.

“This is a situation where it's multiplying and as a deep concern of mine ... that, to me, is a threat to democracy as well,” said Desmarais, 46, who is a Watertown resident who has served on the Watertown Public Buildings Commission, the Charter Revision Commission and is the chairperson of the Watertown/Oakville Democratic Town Committee. In 2017 and 2021, he served on the Watertown Town Council.

“How can a free people be free if they are worried about being massacred,” he said. “That's not a tenable situation,” he said.

Berthel, meanwhile, said one of his goals is to lower taxes. He supports removing the state gas tax and argued the state Senate Republicans' proposal to drop the sales taxes from 6.35 percent to 5.99 percent would give residents “immediate savings.”

“In Connecticut, we have such regressive taxes — between property taxes, what we pay on our houses and our cars, and our state income taxes,” said Berthel, 55. “People come to me and they say, ‘Here's what I paid in income taxes in the state of Connecticut. What do I get in exchange for it?' Usually when you pay taxes, you like to see some benefit.”

The Watertown resident has represented the 32nd District since 2017. He was elected to the 68th House District in 2014 and re-elected in 2016, elected in a special election for the 32nd Senate District in 2017, and then re-elected in 2018 and 2020.

QAnon controversy

Desmarais criticized Berthel for “extremism,” citing an incident in 2020 where he put a sticker on his car with a phrase affiliated with the conspiracy group QAnon. Berthel apologized at the time, saying he doesn't adhere to QAnon's more-extreme conspiracy theories, but supported its belief in government accountability.

“We can't have that kind of representation in the Senate,” Desmarais said. “We need to have responsible people who are going to do the job to represent all the towns in the district as a senator and to be accountable to common sense.”

Berthel said the incident doesn't define him.

“It was a mistake that I made,” he said. “I was very clear and transparent about that. And when we got into the November election, I think the most important aspect of this, quite honestly, is that I beat Jeff Desmarais by 10,000 votes, so the voters clearly didn't care either, in terms of this. It was a dumb mistake that I made and we cleared the air on that.”

Desmarais said he's running to support “democracy.”

“To me, democracy is not just a form of government. It's who we are as a people — our compassion, our empathy, our ability to help each other out,” he said. “It's what our way of life is.”

He said as a senator, one should support legislation that plays to those ideas.

Health care

Berthel had bariatric surgery twice, and as a result of the surgery and an insurance policy that covered it, he said he has kept off about 145 pounds that he lost.

That's why he advocates for the state to require private health insurance companies to pay for metabolic and bariatric surgery procedures, which he said many other states do.

“If I hadn't (had the surgery), probably today I would be a full blown diabetic or had a heart attack or stroke,” he said. “We've tried unsuccessfully, despite great understanding from colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to get this bill passed. Assuming I'm reelected in November, I like to think that next year will be the year that we can get this bill passed and funded and get it done.”

Desmarais argues the state should offer a public option health plan, which could help residents and alleviate health care costs for small businesses still struggling due to COVID-19.

“People can't afford their basic health care,” he said.

“Upper middle class communities are having great difficulty in affording healthcare,” he added. “Their insurance is expensive. It doesn't cover as much as it should.”

Other issues

Desmarais said he wants to be a voice for “vulnerable” people in the community, such as “senior citizens and kids.”

He said those groups “need to know that someone has their back,” he said. “There needs to be someone there that's going to fight for them.”

One issue facing kids is bullying — which he said has heightened in the age of social media. He said experts in the field should work with the legislature and state Department of Education to create laws and policies to combat bullying.

Additionally, he said it's important that the education curriculum prepares students for the future.

“We're in the 21st century now — two decades into it. We're in the third decade and we still teach our curriculum very much like it's still 1985,” he said. “We have to really be looking at preparing our kids for a successful future by giving them the tools. By tools, I mean, a fully well rounded education — subjects that teach them exactly how things are, and get them to think critically, which helps them be able to be more successful in life — not just professionally, but personally.”

When citing his prior accomplishments, Berthel referenced a “renaissance arts bill” he introduced that allows for some tax relief to property and real estate owners on Main Streets who support the arts.

“We passed a bill that allows the town to not collect property taxes from those landlords who are leasing their space to people who are involved in the arts,” he said. “They might have the ability to open an art studio or we have the theater down in Oakville that has a little stage that people can go in, and then we have the country cinema on the other end of Main Street.”

He added the bill allows landlords, if they don't have to pay some property taxes, to possibly provide lower their rent.

“So now you might have a starving artist that can set up a studio on a Main Street and now it becomes a place where someone might go to, to go and see this artist,” he added.

He added the artist can bring in business to the town since, after visiting him or her, people may want to stay in town and visit some of the other businesses and maybe have dinner in town.

Desmarais

Berthel