Republican candidates pose triple-threat

The three Trump Republicans vying to represent the 5th District each propose to be the key to what westcentral Connecticut voters need in Washington, D.C.

Front-runner Manny Santos, a former mayor of Meriden, is being challenged by Ruby Corby O’Neill, a retired psychology professor from Southbury, and Rich Dupont, a Watertown businessman, in the Aug. 14 Republican primary.

Santos, who won the Republican endorsement at the party convention in May, says obstruction by Connecticut’s all-Democratic congressional delegation to President Donald Trump’s economic agenda is keeping the state from recovering as quickly as other parts of the country from the Great Recession.

“The majority of voters see representatives from Connecticut to Washington, D.C., obstructing the good work of this administration,” Santos said at a recent GOP debate. “The condition this state is in now was created by Democratic policies.”

O’Neill, who has raised more money than her male rivals and has charged that neither of them can beat the Democratic candidate for the 5th District in November, says she connects best with the Connecticut voter. An immigrant who fought through a crisis marriage and earned advanced degrees as a single, working mom, O’Neill said she is a staunch defender of conservative principles.

“I am what the American dream looks like,” O’Neill said at a debate in late July. “I am the best choice for our Republican Party.”

Dupont, the former director of the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, who runs a consulting firm for manufacturing, health care and municipal clients, says creating jobs are the key to Connecticut’s recovery, and he knows how to create them.

“I am a collaborator with a record of working with people to get things done,” Dupont said at a July 31 debate. “We can break the cycle of poverty in our cities – there is a way out.”

The Republican race has unusual energy this year because 2018 is considered the best chance the GOP has had in three elections to capture what has traditionally been Connecticut’s most competitive Congressional seat.

The Republicans considered their chances improved in the spring when U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, a three-term Democrat, dropped her plans for re-election after admitting her role in covering up an office abuse scandal.

With Esty and her $1.5 million out of the picture, the only candidate in the race was Santos. Both parties scrambled for candidates, and at least one Washington, D.C., election forecaster upgraded the GOP’s chances for an upset in November’s midterm elections.

But following a narrow victory at the Democratic convention by former longtime Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman over 2016 National Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes, the primary race was on for the Democrats as well. The Democrats went on to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the Republicans, prompting the Washington, D.C.-based election forecaster, Cook Report, to downgrade the GOP’s chances of winning the 5th District.

The GOP candidates responded that observers did not understand voter anger with Democratic policies in the 5th District, which stretches from greater Danbury to Massachusetts and includes parts of central Connecticut.

Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media Rich Dupont, right, at a campaign fundraiser in Watertown in June.

Bob Luckey Jr. / Hearst Connecticut Media Ruby O’Neill, of Southbury, at the Republican State Convention in May.

Bob Luckey Jr. / Hearst Connecticut Media Manny Santos, center, at the Republican State Convention in May.