The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State Dems void DTC endorsement of DiCenso
Sets up Sept. 12 primary against incumbent Mayor Dugatto
DERBY » Carmen DiCenso is no longer the endorsed mayoral candidate for town Democrats.
A three-member panel of the Democratic State Central Committee unanimously ruled Friday that the town committee violated national party rules by conducting a secret ballot vote for the mayoral endorsement. They vacated the endorsement.
“The vote is null and void,” said Michael Mandell, executive director of the Democratic State Central Committee. “It was an error, not a malicious one, but an error.”
Mandell said vacation schedules made it impossible to schedule a new vote.
As a result, DiCenso, the Board of Alderman president and Anita Dugatto, the city’s two-term mayor, will fight for the endorsement in a Sept. 12 primary — as long as each obtains the required 117 signatures from registered Democrats.
But that’s a given. Both camps said they are well on the way to that amount.
“I’m fine with it,” DiCenso said. “I was preparing for a primary anyway.”
But Dugatto’s camp saw something more in the way things were handled.
“This is a matter of transparency, plain and simple,” Dugatto said in an emailed statement. “There is a mentality in Derby politics of doing things behind closed doors, and it is often to the detriment of our city. Changing this culture is precisely why I chose to run for mayor four years ago, and why I am running for re-election.”
“Regardless of the state party’s ruling, this election will be decided by who the people ... believe is the most qualified candidate to be our city’s next mayor,” Dugatto’s statement said.
All this added more fuel to Richard Dziekan’s campaign as the Republican mayoral candidate.
“Once again Derby’s Democrats are putting all their energy into fighting each other,” Dziekan said Friday. “I believe the residents deserve someone who will fight for them. Carmen and Anita offer the city no more than the same failed policies that have raised taxes and fees.”
He said he believes the Democratic infighting and the money the party will spend on a primary bodes well for him.
It was Frank Rubino, a Democratic Town Committee member and Dugatto supporter, who filed the complaint.
That led to a half-hour inquiry conducted by a three-member Democratic State Central Committee panel on Friday.
The panelists — Barbara Reynolds, of Wilton, Tom McDonough, of Waterbury, and Tony Duarte, of South Windsor — heard Town Committee Chairwoman Linda Fusco accept the blame. She said the procedure has been Derby’s practice on contested positions “for the past 30 years.”
Fusco said she relied on past practices rather than carefully reading materials sent to her.
“I feel very bad,” she told the panel, adding DiCenso won by a 21-15 margin.
“You are not alone,” Kevin Reynolds, the party’s general counsel, said. “Many town committees conduct votes by secret ballot.”
But that is illegal under party rules, he said.
After both candidates were nominated Tuesday, each of the 36 town committee members were called by name, handed a ballot, circled their choice and deposited the ballot into a cardboard box. Fusco and City/Town Clerk Marc Garofalo read the results aloud.