Boughton is gone; is city at a turning point?

Race for Danbury mayor well underway

DANBURY — Officially, the race for mayor will take shape in one month, when Mayor Joe Cavo exercises his right of first refusal, and tells the GOP whether he’ll run for the office he’s held since December, when Republican Mark Boughton abruptly resigned.

At the same time, the race for the city’s highest elected office is well underway for Democrats, whose front-runner Roberto Alves raised $55,000 in his first month of candidacy.

“Every minute of every day of this campaign counts,” said Alves, a rising star among Democrats who was tapped by party leaders when high-profile Democrat Chris Setaro announced he would not run. “Conventional campaigning is

out the window until times are safe again, and door-to-door is hard to do, so the more time we have to meet people virtually and let people know where we stand on the issues the better.”

Alves is referring not only to coronavirus protocols that prohibit political rallies, fundraising dinners and neighborhood canvassing that are staples for candidates, but the need to begin campaigns for higher office earlier in the year.

Republicans agree, but a top party leader says he has no plans to press Cavo to decide sooner.

The reason: When Boughton

unexpectedly resigned in December, Cavo agreed to come out of retirement to sit in City Hall’s hottest seat, while Danbury fights a multi-sided COVID-19 pandemic and a classroom shortage crisis.

“I don’t think it will hurt our momentum because Joe deserves time,” said Danbury GOP leader Michael Safranek. “He’s not going to make some knee-jerk decision — he’s going to think this out and make the best decision for the people — and whatever decision he makes, Republicans are going to be united and build on the success we have here in Danbury.”

Cavo, who resigned his unpaid, part-time elected job as City Council president to serve Boughton’s remaining term, said as much last week.

“When I first stepped in this office, so much was happening that all I could do was run around to keep the 100 plates spinning in the air, and I am still doing that with two hot issues I deal with every day — the homeless shelter at the Super 8 Motel, and the two school building projects at the Ellsworth Avenue Annex and the career academy at The Summit,” Cavo said. “But I will have that (candidacy) conversation soon with Mike, in a month or so.”

While the week before St. Patrick’s Day might seem early to be focused on a municipal election seven months away, at this time two years ago, Setaro and Boughton were on their way to raising a combined $170,000 for the first three months of 2019 — an indication that there was indeed plenty of early interest in who would run City Hall for the next two years.

This year, with Boughton off the ticket for the first time in two decades to become Gov. Ned Lamont’s tax czar, there’s a palpable sense that Connecticut’s seventh largest city is at a crossroads, a leading Democrat said.

“For a long time, Mark Boughton defined the politics of Danbury,” said Andrea Gartner, the city’s Democratic Party leader. “That’s a force to be reckoned with.”

The way Democrats see it, the mayor should represent the diversity and the complexity of the city’s many voices and backgrounds as a unifying force. For Democrats, the most pressing issue is the city’s underfunded school system, which is racing to build enough classrooms to house a surge of new students.

“First and foremost, we want to represent the values that are important to the people of Danbury, but these are also important Democratic values,” Gartner said. “Danbury is a microcosm of our country demographically and racially, and it helps a city to run better when representatives look like the people they are representing.”

For the GOP, it seems clear that the same party which helped Danbury emerge from the Great Recession of 2008 to become the state’s leading economy has a mandate to guide the city out of the coronavirus economic crisis.

“One of the great things about Danbury is people are flocking here — and people are flocking here for a reason,” Safranek said. “People are lining up at the border to rent and to buy homes, and that is a product of great leadership.”

Most voters don’t identify with either party, however. Like Connecticut as a whole, the largest number of registered voters are those unaffiliated with a political party. The latest numbers in Danbury show 20,400 voters, or 45 percent of everyone registered, are unaffiliated. The next largest group is registered Democrats at 14,970, or 33 percent. Registered Republicans number 8,990, or 20 percent. The remaining 2 percent of voters are registered with minor parties.

‘Incredibly important election’

With nominating conventions still months away, the GOP is content for now to let Cavo and the Republicancontrolled City Council govern, and hope that shortly after Easter, Cavo will be their candidate on the top of the ticket.

Absolutely,” Safranek said. “He is the city mayor and has been an integral member of the City Council for 18 years, and the decision is his.”

Should the retired fire department apparatus superintendent decide not to run, the GOP would “unite behind the best candidate possible,” Safranek said.

In the same way, because Democrats don’t have their nominating meeting until mid-July, other candidates have expressed interest in running for mayor.

Lawrence Sedenka, an accountant who moved to Danbury five years ago, filed papers to run for mayor as a Democrat because “people only come around when it’s election time,” and “there are things I can change,” he said last week.

Earlier this month, Democrat John Esposito III, who represents Danbury’s 4th Ward on the City Council, said he is considering seeking the mayor’s office or an at-large seat on City Council, but “I’m not looking to create any divides or anything like that.”

Among the 40 other races on the November ballot, Democrats and Republicans have their eyes on the City Council, where the GOP has an 11-to-10 majority. Democrats would like flip at least one seat to gain control of the council. Republicans are looking to regain at least a two-thirds majority.

Much of the momentum from those races will come from the strength of the mayoral campaigns.

“Joe is the guy you want living next door to you, because he’s a great neighbor,” Safranek said. “He cares about taxpayers and has his focus on moving the city forward.”

Alves said he is in this “incredibly important election” for the same reason.

“It’s important to have leaders in the city who can relate to the city as a whole,” Alves said. “And I think I bring that as a candidate for mayor.”