‘He needs to be removed:’ Stratford reacts to impeachment
STRATFORD — As Congress debated President Donald Trump’s impeachment on charges he instigated a mob to attack the Capitol, last week’s events continued to reverberate 300 miles up Interstate 95.
While local Republicans look to move on as the clock runs out on Trump’s presidency, Democrats said the impeachment is about more than Trump — and that a lack of condemnation from the GOP speaks volumes.
Stratford Republican Town Committee Chairman Lou DeCilio said Congress should be addressing other priorities.
“The last one wasted a bunch of taxpayer money and time,” he said. “You hope they would be focusing on what’s important to the people and not getting a president out whose days are limited.”
“I have a personal opinion but as you can see from the community, people are all over the place on this. I wish we would stop playing politics and get back to managing the government and managing our towns, cities, states, that are in the middle of a global pandemic. I just feel that our focus is being diverted. It’s disheartening to see.” Stratford Mayor Laura Hoydick
“He needs to be removed,” said Town Council member Paul Tavaras, D-3, dismissing the fact that the president’s term is due to end next week. “If he was out of office this Friday, I’d still say you have to go through the process.”
Moments after 10 Republican members of Congress voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday, Tavaras said he wished he heard more on the matter from local GOPers.
“I just wish a handful of Republicans here were a little more active,” he said. “They’ve been very silent. To me, silence is complicity.”
The town’s top Republican elected official — Mayor Laura Hoydick — did issue a statement last week condemning the violence, and the president, but had to revise it after a social media backlash.
After Trump supporters stormed the Capitol last week resulting in five deaths, the mayor’s office put out a statement calling what happened “a shameful and disgraceful display the likes of which I never imagined I would see in my lifetime.”
“It was nothing less than insurrection unfortunately escalated by the president,” she said. “In this, the president is accountable for his actions and his words which contributed to these events.”
Her statement went on to say the right to protest peacefully is unquestioned. “Yet, when protests turn to violence, as we witnessed during some of the protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder last year, we must take a stand a denounce it. Mob violence must be repudiated, and those responsible should face full legal accountability.”
After a backlash from those who questioned the equivalency, the mayor sent out a revised statement deleting the George Floyd reference.
“It was not my intention to suggest any moral equivalence between protestors in the wake of those events, and the disgraceful events of yesterday,” she said. “I support Black Lives Matter, and the objectives of those protests. I meant only to condemn all violence. I have heard the criticism of the remarks of those who expressed it to me, and recognize it detracted from the intended message of unity.”
Hoydick said Wednesday afternoon she hadn’t been paying much attention to the impeachment debate, but instead on the COVID-19 vaccination effort.
The mayor, a former state legislator, said she thought of her time as a lawmaker in Hartford, where contentious protests were commonplace during her time there, as she watched events unfold at the nation’s capital last week.
However, she said she doesn’t want to share her opinion about the impeachment.
“I have a personal opinion but as you can see from the community, people are all over the place on this,” she said. “I wish we would stop playing politics and get back to managing the government and managing our towns, cities, states, that are in the middle of a global pandemic. I just feel that our focus is being diverted. It’s disheartening to see.”
Former Town Council member and Democratic Town Committee Chairwoman Stephanie Philips said the mayor’s revised statement “is muted and still falls severely short of what is needed.”
In a Facebook post, Philips said the mayor’s statement also “failed to acknowledge the unequal treatment by our federal law enforcement agencies against these organized rioters” and BLM protestors in Washington over the summer.
Tavaras called the comparison “ridiculous” and drew a distinction between the president inciting an attack on the Capitol building and “unarmed people of color being murdered by police and police not being held accountable for it.”
“I’m against violence, I’m against looting,” he said. “I’ve condemned that.”
Tavaras referenced an anti-racism resolution proposed by District 2 Democrat Kaitlyn Shake of the Town Council last year.
The council passed an anti-racism resolution last November, but without the support of Shake, Tavaras and Greg Cann, D-5, because they said Republicans who hold the council majority watered it down at the 11th hour by removing the language declaring racism a public health crisis and proposed improvements to local data collection in order to better address racial disparities.
“When it comes to putting words to policy or power, it either doesn’t happen or you water it down or neuter it until it’s a joke,” Tavaras said. “I hope people are listening to where the folks in Town Hall stand. And they’re not standing very strong as far as I’m concerned.”
DeCilio also said he wasn’t paying too much attention to the impeachment debate Wednesday.
“Any time violence is put into any march, it does disservice to the march or cause,” he said of last week’s events at the capital. “Everyone has a right to protest. No one should resort to violence.”
Jim Connor, a Republican who represents the 8th District on the Town Council, said he remembered being in line at an Air Force chow hall in Osan, Korea, when President Richard Nixon resigned and said the turmoil back then is no comparison to the “craziness” now.
“It was a shock. But life went on. This just seems to be going on and on and on,” he said.
Unlike some other Republicans, Connor hasn’t been an outspoken supporter of the president — nor has he been vocal in opposition.
“I’ve had concerns about his leadership and where he’s taken the country the last four years,” he said Wednesday.
He noted he knows many nonGOPers who have supported the president among Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
“He didn’t get 75 million votes from just Republicans,” Connor said.
Democratic Town Committee Chairman Steve Taccogna said the impeachment is about more than Trump.
“It’s not really about removing Trump, it’s about accountability for bad faith actors who incite revolt against the U.S. government,” he said. “It’s about precedent. It’s about what happens going forward.”
He said he shakes his head when Republicans try to deflect attention from last week’s events.
“I don’t understand a reticence to just openly condemn it,” Taccogna said. “That’s the biggest thing that I have found troubling in the course of all this. There’s been plenty of people who have stood up and said the right thing, but there’s just that constant ‘Well, but,’ and that’s been unsettling.”