Lamont questions Ganim’s petitions

Half of mayor’s names axed, raising concerns, scrutiny

With a confident flourish, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim earlier this month submitted primary petitions totaling 32,000 names, more than twice what was required to challenge Democratic nominee Ned Lamont in an August primary for governor.

But about half the names were disqualified, mostly because the people who signed the petition forms were not registered Democrats.

Now, Lamont’s campaign is closely reviewing the huge stack of names, addresses and 16,929 signatures, to see whether all the names were filled out by the registered voters and not those who circulated the petitions.

“The campaign is carefully reviewing the petitions and what our options are,” said Patty McQueen, Lamont’s spokeswoman.

Ganim on Friday charged that Lamont is attempting to take away the power to vote from “tens of thousands” of state voters.

Ganim needed 15,458 valid names and signatures of Democrats to force the primary, so if an additional 1,472 are thrown out, he could become ineligible. But there is apparently no mechanism, short of filing a lawsuit in Superior Court, for further challenges.

Local voter registrars, mostly in the major cities of Hartford, New Haven and Ganim’s home base of Bridgeport, screened the petition signatures. Fewer than 1,000 signatures were collected outside of the big cities, according to a review of the six bulging, brown accordion files stuffed with the two-sided lists of petitions on file with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.

Courts are an option

“The local registrars are responsible for determining the validity of the petition signatures, and my office tabulates the signatures that the registrars validate,” Merrill said Friday. Merrill’s staff double-checked the arithmetic of the local registrars, who invalidated those not registered as Democrats. Among the thousands of names rejected locally were those who are not registered voters, are unaffiliated or are registered Republicans.

“The only remedy for a candidate who wants to challenge some aspect of the petitioning process would be to take their case to court,” Merrill said.

Michael J. Brandi, executive director and chief counsel of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, said Friday the agency is limited to investigatory authority, with the power to penalize candidates for violations of election law and refer possible criminal cases to the chief state’s attorney.

“The courts are really the only place to go for a challenge to the ballot,” Brandi said.

The SEEC recently began an investigation into at least one allegation of forgery in the Ganim petition drive, filed by the mother of a New Haven woman whose name appeared on a petition but who has lived outside the country for nearly a year. The SEEC does not comment on active investigations.

In a statement from his campaign, Ganim, who served seven years in federal prison for municipal corruption, said he would welcome any review of the petitions. “With a recordsetting 32,000 petition signatures submitted, it’s always possible there may have been some errors in collecting the petitions,” the campaign said in an email response to questions from Hearst Connecticut Media.

“That’s why double the number of needed signatures were collected. No doubt Greenwich multimillionaire Ned Lamont is scared at this outpouring of grassroots support for Joe Ganim and is behind this effort to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Democratic voters.”

Ganim has ‘a pretty steep hill’

Ronald Schurin, associate professor of political science at UC onn, said Friday that even if Ganim remains on the Aug. 14 primary ballot, Lamont remains the clear favorite.

“Can he win?” Schurin said of Ganim. “I suppose anything is possible. Will he? I don’t think so.”

The petitions show that while Ganim’s support emanates from Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford, the general lack of interest from the rest of the state is telltale.

“There will be a fairly high turnout,” Schurin said. “In Stamford, he will not do well. Lamont will draw from the suburban towns, where he did well in 2006,” in a surprise defeat of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who was re-elected later that year as an independent. Schurin believes Lamont will do well in rural communities as well.

Schurin doubts Ganim will have much Primary Day support beyond Bridgeport. “I would say he has a pretty steep hill to climb.”