Rapini relishes team-player role in longshot Senate run

Dominic Rapini watches Sen. Chris Murphy’s videos like game film.

He’s studying his opponent in the hopes of defeating him in the season championship, Election Day.

Competing in football and track and field at Trinity College — he was an AllAmerican hammer thrower in 1983 — taught Rapini, 57, that preparation is everything.

Now a youth football coach in his hometown of Hamden, Rapini has applied this attitude to his first run for political office.

The Republican, who was inspired to run by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, has a significant uphill battle ahead. Before appearing on the ballot with the powerful incumbent Murphy, Rapini would have to unseat his party’s endorsed candidate, Matthew Corey, in the Aug. 14 primary.

Rapini and Corey, friendly competitors, both pitch themselves as pro-business outsiders. Rapini brings a corporate, data-driven slant as a longtime Apple executive while Corey, a Hartford window-washer and bar owner, who bills himself as blue-collar.

“To improve the Senate, we need to inject more diversity and new perspectives,” Rapini said. “A businessman — that’s a perspective I think is very valuable.”

Although Corey received 53 percent of delegates’ support to Rapini’s 44 percent at the May Republican state convention, Rapini has outpaced Corey in fundraising by nearly 10 to 1, collecting $117,000 in contributions as of April, the latest reporting period.

That’s a pittance by federal election standards, but will buy Rapini some digital and radio advertising. “It’s been my great opportunity here to learn what it means to be a candidate,” he said, “with all its trials and tribulations.”

Cannoli candidate

This winter, Rapini was known as “the cannoli candidate.” To make an impact, Rapini started bringing a cannoli, as large as a microwave and filled with 48 minicannolis, to Republican town committee meetings.

The gesture is typical Rapini — equal parts generosity and marketing.

Rapini, married with three children, has worked in sales since 1986 when he began his career at Computer Factory, then a national chain of boutique computer stores. James Melillo was manager at the Hamden store, not far from where Melillo and Rapini grew up and played football together.

When customers came in, Rapini would gather four or five around for an off-thecuff product presentation.

“He would speak to them almost like he was on stage,” Melillo remembered. “Ninety-nine percent of the time they bought the product.”

Rapini translated the skill into a career — directing Apple computer sales at Computer Factory, then giving sales training to Apple employees, then a brief stint managing a Apple desktop sales force, and finally landing a job as a senior account manager at Apple in 1997. He has worked there ever since.

The campaign trail is just another kind of pitch for Rapini. This time he’s the product.

Platform pitch

A small “D.R.R.” monogram peeked out of Rapini’s sleeve as he shook hands with voters in a crowded New Haven steakhouse Wednesday night, then attacking Democrats in a speech.

“They have wrecked our economy, they’ve made a mockery of our immigration system — because these sanctuary cities have got to end,” Rapini said. “And every day they attack our civil liberties.”

He wants eject criminal migrants and end “chain migration.” He wants to build a wall on the border with Mexico, or add whatever security measures U.S. Border Control requests.

But Rapini can also trend more moderate. Deporting all undocumented immigrants is too expensive, he said, and he has pitched an idea to open “Freedom Centers,” pop-up immigration shops within Walmart stores, to help America’s undocumented immigrants become legal residents.

He supports universal background checks for gun purchases and would like to see a list of 10 red flags developed by lawmakers that if triggered — say, by saying you want to shoot in a school — would prompt immediate, mandatory police interviews.

On climate, he wants use market incentives to encourage companies to reduce their carbon footprint — although he’s undecided on whether climate change is human-caused. On abortion, he is personally pro-life, but says the government should not intervene in a woman’s choice.

“Some people say things for an applause line,” said Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, of North Haven, who Rapini met with for campaign advice, but has not endorsed a Senate candidate. “What he says — whether you agree with it or not — he says because he really believes it.”

Kung fu kick

Rapini’s first foray into politics was making calls for Republican Linda McMahon, now head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, during her 2012 Senate run against Murphy.

“I loved her business background, but I felt every time I met her personally, I would’ve liked for her to be more engaging,” Rapini said.

Then in 2016, he watched the rise of Republican business candidates Trump, a real estate mogul, and Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. He decided to run for U.S. Senate and did the legwork, calling friends and party regulars for advice, traveling to town committee meetings — some so bogged down with talk of potholes that he thought, “shoot me” — and announced last year.

Since Rapini was a boy, he has been known for taking “crazy risks,” Melillo said. One time he executed a kung fu kick, instead of a tackle, on an opponent in high school football practice.

Rapini acknowledges the extreme longshot of his Senate run. But politics is a “team sport,” he said, and if the August primary or November election do not spell victory, he won’t just sit on the bench.

That’s why he opened a speech Wednesday night by tooting the horns of all the Republican candidates in the room before his own. And he’s holding a fundraiser in his home for Republican Secretary of the State candidate Sue Chapman.

“Win or lose,” he said, “I think I have a role to play to helping candidates learn what I learned.”