The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
BACK IN THE RING
City native Susan Bysiewicz considers run for state Senate in 2018
“If my agenda were extreme, I wouldn’t even have a chance in this district, which is overwhelmingly Democrat. But even when I lost, I lost by a whisker in a district that should be slam-dunk Democrat.” — State Sen. Len Suzio, Republican
MIDDLETOWN >> Former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz is filing paperwork to explore a run for the state’s 13th Senate District in 2018.
“The day after the national election, I woke up and was disappointed to find out who our new president would be and even more disappointed to find out who our new senator would be,” the Middletown native said Tuesday. “After having served as a state representative from Middletown and also secretary of the state, Middletown was rarely in a situation when we had a Republican senator.”
State Sen. Len Suzio of Meriden won the November election against incumbent Democratic state Sen. Danté Bartolomeo, who had unseated him in 2012. He first took office in 2011 after winning a special election after former state Sen. Thomas Gaffey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor larceny charges.
“We really need a leader in Hartford who will focus on job creation first and foremost,” the 55-year-old Bysiewicz said Tuesday.
Bysiewicz, who said she’ll seek public financing, is looking forward to being able to go doorknocking in the district, which comprises Meriden, Middletown, Cheshire and Middlefield. She said people started calling her immediately after the election asking if she would consider running for the seat.
“It was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what has happened? What are we going to do? How are we going to get this back?’” she said.
Bysiewicz, who said she believes Suzio doesn’t have the values of the district at heart, points to what she calls his “very extremist agenda.”
“If my agenda were extreme, I wouldn’t even have a chance in this district, which is overwhelmingly Democrat,” Suzio said in response. “But even when I lost, I lost by a whisker in a district that should be slam-dunk Democrat. In fact, I’m the only Republican that’s won in 47 years.
“If she’s saying my agenda is extreme, well, then she’s saying something about the voters that voted for me,” Suzio said. “I had to have had thousands and thousands of Democrats who crossed over and voted for me. So I think she’s disparaging her own voters.”
Bysiewicz said she’ll work to create more opportunities for workers. Since 2008, both Meriden and Middletown “have lost thousands of jobs and haven’t gained them back yet — some but not all,” said Bysiewicz, who has
been an attorney in private practice for the past five years. During that time, she has aided small-business owners in getting access to private capital or economic development funding from the state, she said.
“I helped over 50 companies create hundreds of jobs and we’ve gotten access to millions of dollars in funding to expand and grow their businesses,” Bysiewicz said.
While secretary of the state, Bysiewicz said she spent lot of time helping women-owned, veteran-owned and minority-owned businesses.
“I contrast that with Suzio’s record of leading a company that sells log homes into bankruptcy and creating an environmental disaster for people in Great Barrington (Massachusetts) and, even worse, stiffing taxpayers, to the tune of $300,000, who put down money to purchase those log homes and they never received them.”
Suzio said that’s the favorite thing to do for Democrats when they have nothing else to do — go back in time.
“They try to go back to something that happened 25 or 30 years ago which they totally misrepresent, too,” he said.
Bysiewicz cites Suzio’s town hall meeting at the Russell Library in January, during which several hundred people turned up to ask questions about the Proposed H.B. 5566 that would require parental notification for minors seeking abortions.
She didn’t attend that event but did take part in the Middlefield town hall days later.
“It was very clear to me that he is very out of step with what people want in this district,” she said. “I asked would he support choice law in Connecticut. He didn’t answer.”
In the early 1990s, women’s privacy rights were settled by the passage of Roe v. Wade, she said.
“Since then, there have always been attempts to weaken that law or cut back on it and as soon as Sen. Suzio was sworn in, he put in a bill to cut back on the right to choose and to require parental consent,” Bysiewicz said.
Suzio said his bill would only require parental notification, not consent.
“If a 13-, 14- or 15-year-old is about to have a surgical abortion, the proposed legislation is set up so parents would get involved,” Suzio said. “It would provide an opt-out if their child is in some kind of abusive situation. There is a proceeding she would go to that would not require a parent to even be aware of it.”
Suzio said most people think parents should be involved in a big decision like that.
“She wants to focus on issues like that because she’s running away from her own disastrous public record,” he said. “She is a tax-andspend liberal who doesn’t want to talk about the real important issues: jobs and taxes and crime.”
As a mother of three, whose two daughters graduated from college in 2013 and 2015 and whose son will earn his degree this spring, Bysiewicz said, “if we want a vibrant economy, then we need to keep young people in Connecticut. I live this. I see my children and my friends looking for jobs that are good-paying and struggling with how expensive it is to live in our state.”
Bysiewicz said initiatives like the bill House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz has sponsored that would offer college graduates a five-year tax credit if they remain living and working in the state after earning their degree are essential to retain residents.
“We’re not going to attract young people and keep them here unless we have creative ideas like that one,” she said.
Meanwhile, she is eager to get out and talk to voters.
“If you really want to know what people are thinking, they’re happy to tell you but you’ve got to go to their home and ask them,” she said. “That’s where I got my best ideas.”
Bysiewicz served three terms as a state legislator from 1992-98 in the 100th House District, covering Middletown, Durham and Middlefield. She was elected to the secretary of the state’s job in 1998 after losing the Democratic Party’s nomination and winning a primary against Ellen Scalettar. She served the state in that position for 12 years.
Bysiewicz failed to get the Democratic nomination in 2012 for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Chris Murphy.
She was inspired to go into public service after meeting then-Gov. Ella Grasso the summer after her junior year in high school in 1978, Bysiewicz has said.
She graduated from Yale University and got her law degree at Duke University, where she met her husband, David Donaldson.