Eva’s challenge gears up for vote

On the way to the Democratic state convention, Eva Bermudez Zimmerman started her day with a spark of difficult emotion.

It was not about her quest to win the election for lieutenant governor. That would come later — with an upbeat tone, as she told me she had 38 percent of delegates and rising as of mid-afternoon.

“I’m very much nearing the 50 percent that I need,” she told a small gathering of Democrats.

Before all that politicking, Bermudez Zimmerman

left her home in Newtown and stopped in Hartford to talk to a 9 a.m. class at the Global Communications Academy, as a volunteer for Connecticut Against Gun Violence. She gave the 20 teenagers a harrowing story — about losing two friends who were shot to death when she was a student 16 years ago in that very building, then Quirk Middle School.

The 30-year-old union organizer didn’t lose her composure but she came close. “I don’t usually talk about gun violence, it’s too emotional for me,” she told them.

As she set out toward the convention hall — with a long stop at a Park Street salon — Bermudez Zimmerman rebuffed the notion she’s a disruption to a Democratic Party trying to unify the top of its ticket. “I’m fortifying the party,” she declared.

Ned Lamont, who is expected to win the endorsement overwhelmingly Saturday, persuaded Susan Bysiewicz to drop out of the race for governor and join him as his pick for the No. 2 spot. That caused Bermudez Zimmerman, already exploring a run with an eye toward lieutenant governor, to gain momentum as black and Hispanic supporters, among others, recoiled at an all-white top of the ticket.

So it seems on the surface a simple standoff: Bermudez Zimmerman, a young, upstart Latina unionist going up against an established candidate, a former secretary of the state and frequent stateside candidate who’s not widely loved by neither labor nor big-city delegates of color.

But traveling with Bermudez Zimmerman on the way to the convention in downtown Hartford, a few things come clear. No one who hears the labor organizer for the Connecticut State Employees Association, SEIU, is likely to come away believing her age — she’s turning 31 next month — is a factor in the race.

She talks about her 13 years of experience in policy and politics and says her urban-suburban-international background makes her mature beyond her years. That, she said, came from a childhood in a tough neighborhood in the capital city in the ‘90s.

“I grew up very fast,” she said after the school visit. “You didn’t have a Disney reality.”

At the school, she gave the students, all of them black and Hispanic, cards to be mailed to legislators. “If you fee strongly about stopping gun violence,” she said, “you can write that in this note.”

Minutes after she left the school, a shooter in a Texas high school killed at least 10 people and wounded 10 others.

Bermudez Zimmerman has worked for the Obamacare exchange as a volunteer signing up enrollees, and she’s worked on many campaigns, served on the town council in Newtown and was secretary of the Democratic State Committee.

That’s not enough experience for the person who would be a heartbeat away from the governor’s office, Bysiewicz’s supporters say. They say, quietly for the most part, she’s running on race.

“It’s not about the color of my skin,” Bermudez Zimmerman said. It’s about social justice and about making the middle class work — in cities as well as upscale towns like Newtown, where many of her neighbors own small businesses and struggle with high taxes.

The Rev. Charlie Stallworth, of Bridgeport, is also in the race for lieutenant governor. As an African American, he may split some of Bermudez Zimmerman’s urban support on the convention floor.

At 10 a.m., Bermudez Zimmerman met with four women in the the We-Ha Huddle activist group. “We’ve got to raise that 80 grand,” she told them after a long discussion about government, referring to the $75,000 threshold for public financing for the primary.

Then off to Sirlene’s Salon Brazilian Touch in Parkville, where Bermudez Zimmerman had her hair, eyebrows and makeup done — and chatted in Portuguese, which she learned while living in Brazil in her high school years before attending college in Puerto Rico.

Co-owner Sirlene Ribeiro jabbed at Bermudez Zimmerman, “I have to find out from other people you’re running for office, you don’t want my vote?”

She’s a regular there, but this day’s treatment — 2 ½ hours — was very special — “only for my wedding and campaign video” — ahead of her press conference at the entrance of the Connecticut Convention Center. There, she hugged every supporter and, when pressed, talked about Bysiewicz.

“We are complete opposites. I respect her,” she said, “but at the end of the day, I am someone who represents working people.”

She repeated that it’s not about race, then said it’s embarrassing that Democrats have never nominated a person of color for lieutenant governor. “It’s time to have that conversation,” she said.

Eva Bermudez Zimmerman