Valentine vying to win voters’ support: ‘I’m connected’
STAMFORD — A man pokes his head into the doorway of an art gallery-turned political campaign headquarters, tucked between a smoke shop and a Chinese restaurant on Bedford Street.
“Hey Bobby,” he says. “You’re going to be my last vote as a Stamford resident.”
“Where you moving to?” Bobby Valentine, the former Major League Baseball manager and restaurant ownerturned unaffiliated mayoral candidate, asks the man. “Washington,” he says.
“Are you going to do the absentee or inperson?” Valentine asks, seated in a cognaccolored leather chair in his campaign office. “I’ll be in-person,” he says.
Asked about his support for the 71-yearold Valentine, the middle-aged man, who did not give his name, says: “He’s a great guy, been involved in business around here forever.”
“Thank you, bro,” Valentine tells him. “I need your support.”
On the street outside his campaign office about an hour later, Valentine is approached by a young man who said Valentine’s niece had tutored him in math.
This is what Valentine hopes will deliver him a win on Election Day: his reputation as a hometown figure, a former high school sports star and longtime business owner in Stamford who has worked and volunteered in the community for decades. On the campaign trail, he often talks about being the grandson of Italian immigrants who came to the city more than 100 years ago, not knowing a word of English.
“I’m connected,” Valentine says. “Three degrees separation from everyone around here.”
His opponent in the race to lead Connecticut’s second-largest city is Caroline Simmons, 35, a fourth-term Democratic state representative who worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration. She grew up in Greenwich and moved to Stamford as an adult, a fact Valentine’s campaign has repeated early and often.
‘The political system just divides people’
Despite his community inside status, Valentine, seated in his campaign office less than two weeks before Election Day, says he hopes being a political outsider will help him at the polls.
“I think most people think the political system just divides people,” he says. “It makes good people less than good.”
His campaign office in downtown Stamford is filled with relics of his decades-long career as a baseball manager: a large movie poster for “The Zen of Bobby V,” which chronicles his time as manager of the Japanese professional baseball team, the Chiba Lotte Marines; framed pictures of him in a New York Mets uniform posing with President Bill Clinton and in a suit shaking the hand of President Ronald Reagan.
On the walls are rows of paintings by local artists who are selling their work.
Asked whether he thinks people still see him as the bombastic Mets manager known for his feistiness and occasionally getting thrown out of games — at least once, famously, wearing a disguise to sneak back into the dugout — Valentine is measured. Some will, he says. Not so many. “It’s been 20 years … so it takes that vintage.”
Valentine has name recognition that’s rare in a mayoral election, certainly for a challenger who has not sought a major elected office before. That is likely to boost him despite his low position on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate, below two lines for Simmons — Democrat and Independent, the minor party that endorsed her after he declined to seek party endorsements.
In Stamford, the state’s fastest-growing city, with 135,000 residents, there are more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans. As of Oct. 27, 2020, there were 13,638 active, registered Republicans compared to 31,177 active, registered Democrats, according to data from the Secretary of the State’s Office. But there are also 27,499 active, registered unaffiliated voters.
“I identify with a lot of people,” says Valentine, who was registered as a Republican from October 2002 until April of this year when he switched to unaffiliated, and worked briefly in the administration of former Republican Mayor Michael Pavia.
Housing and other flaps
The race between Valentine and Simmons has become increasingly contentious in its final days, but late last week in his campaign office after a debate hosted by the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, which drew about 185 people, Valentine pointed to similarities between the two campaigns.
“There’s not a policy that divides us, separates us,” he says. “It’s just who do you want to turn the keys over to?”