Brookfield veteran, former teacher run for 107th District seat
BROOKFIELD — The race for state representative for the 107th District is set with Republican Marty Foncello facing Democrat Phoebe Holmes.
The candidates are vying for a position currently held by Rep. Steve Harding, R-Brookfield, who announced in February that he is running for the
30th District seat in the state Senate.
Both Foncello and Holmes are natives of Connecticut and residents of Brookfield who have held positions in local government but are making their first bid for position in the state legislature.
They seek to serve a newly reshaped 107th district including Brookfield and sections of Newtown and Bethel.
“The issues are different in each place, but I am looking forward to getting out there and meeting everybody,” said Foncello, a former Brookfield first selectman and a veteran of the U.S. Army who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He said he plans to retire from the national law enforcement agency in the coming months to focus on the issues facing his community.
Holmes called herself as a “progressive voice,” saying education and the environment are some of her top issues. She added that “gun safety and gun reform” are her priorities.
“I know that is hugely controversial, but I think its really time we do something about this. Too many shootings, just too many, too many lives lost for no reason,” said Holmes, a Brookfield resident and former teacher who serves on the Brookfield Zoning Commission.
A veteran with local political experience
When Foncello starts knocking on doors in the area, it’s likely he will run into some familiar faces. Between 1999 and 2003, Foncello served two terms as Brookfield’s first selectman, juggling the role in his second term with his service as an active-duty member of the U.S. Army after he was called up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Working in military intelligence at the time, he said he performed a range of classified duties related to the attacks but was able to receive permission to keep his role as first selectman in Brookfield.
“I was supposed to go for two months and it ended up being for six,” said Foncello on Thursday. “But the people in town were able to deal with it and I came back and forth to go to selectman meetings and used email and all the resources we had at that time.”
Foncello said there are many issues facing the district and hoped to get a better understanding of how to prioritize them during his campaign but underlined his aim to work with local businesses and municipalities to find ways to attract young people to the area.
“One of the problems I noticed here, and it wasn’t just when I was a first selectman 20 years ago, it’s an ongoing thing and it appears to be, in the area, not just greater Danbury but Connecticut, is that when kids grow up and get out of high school and go away to college, a lot of them don’t come back,” he said.
In other parts of the country, he remarked how “kids will go to school and get whatever degree, engineering or law degree, and they settle in that area and they are not doing that here.”
At the same time, helping seniors find affordable housing options to remain in the state is just as important, Foncello said.
“Attract those younger educated and skilled people to stick around here — it’s a nice place to live — and the seniors because it is a nice place to live, let them stay here as long as they want,” he added.
At the state level, the candidate underlined infrastructure and environmental issues as key focus areas both locally and at the state level.
“There are a number of issues, not all of them jump out at you,” he said. “But to somebody it’s important, so you need to help them as best you can to fix the things that you can.”
‘The right time to run’
Holmes described how she decided to enter local politics in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
“I dove in when my son was 3 or 4,” Holmes said Friday. “I reached out to the Democrats here in Brookfield and I wanted to start getting involved then, big time, because Trump had just won and I felt I was ready and just needed to kind of take a stand and start doing the work so I felt I was contributing.”
Running for the state legislature was not something Holmes had planned to do, but she described how the decision by Harding to seek the state Senate seat prompted her to throw her hat in the ring.
“It’s an exciting time to be running because you are not up against an incumbent, so that was a huge factor and also just my passion for doing this work,” she said. “I never expected an opportunity like this to come along, right now, but I felt like I needed to jump at the chance.”
A native of Fairfield, Holmes worked briefly as a political journalist for several local news stations before receiving a master’s degree in education from the University of Bridgeport and going on to teach social studies in Newtown and surrounding districts. After briefly living in Asheville, N.C., she returned to
Connecticut and worked as a property appraisal specialist where she first encountered the workings of local government.
If elected, the former teacher aims to focus on education and support “teachers, substitute teachers, paraprofessionals — anyone in that field, I really have a heart for,” she said.
At the top of her priorities, however, is ensuring support for younger generations, specifically around her aim to address myriad environmental concerns around climate change, emissions, pollution from plastic and working to regulate “companies and big businesses” who are seemingly allowed “to be able to do things that pollute the planet.”
“My parents kind of knew about pollution and that type of thing, but I don’t think that that generation did enough to help,” she said. “I am not saying anything about the boomers, but I want to be a voice (for) the younger generation, I think these types of issues are very important to young people.”
Other support she hopes to offer to young people comes with affordability and access to housing. Holmes said she wants to see more incentives provided to younger people struggling to buy a home or start a family.
“I don’t know how people get a foothold these days making these low wages and also the fact that a lot of boomers have not left their career jobs so there are not a lot of jobs for young people to get started,” she said.
“People are delaying having families because they can’t afford to pay rent or get a home or do whatever they want to do to start a family, that is a problem.”