Ex-RTC chair vies for Dem’s state House seat
FAIRFIELD — One of the recent figureheads of Fairfield's Republican party has challenged state Rep. Sarah Keitt in the race for Connecticut's 134th district.
Melissa Longo, the former chair of the Republican Town Committee in Fairfield and a member of the Representative Town Meeting, launched her campaign for Keitt's seat earlier this month. She said she's taking a nonpartisan approach with a voter base that's becoming increasingly Democratic.
The 134th district had been a Republican stronghold for 14 years before Keitt's election, dating back to when Republican Tony Hwang, now a state senator, unseated Democrat and former Rep. Tom Christiano in 2008.
“I would just hope that voters kind of look at what I stand for and say, ‘Oh my gosh I can completely relate to that,' or ‘These are the issues that I feel, and she's understanding of what our needs are as a community' rather than ‘She's a Republican,' ” Longo said.
Longo has highlighted lower taxes, more affordable living conditions for senior citizens and veterans, lower crime rates and more funding for smaller school districts in Connecticut towns as some of her key issues.
She also wants to tackle the state's 1969 racial imbalance law, which sets racial composition standards for schools' student populations, and the amount of power that utilities like United Illuminating can levy over local communities like Fairfield — a pair of state-level issues that have respectively trickled into town due to a controversial redistricting process and transmission line rebuild project.
“These problems reach across all party lines,” Longo said. “It has really nothing to do with one side of the aisle, whether you have a D next to your name or an R next to your name. This is about everyone.”
Fairfield's legislative delegation has responded to the UI and racial imbalance issues with multiple pieces of legislation taking aim at the makeup of the Connecticut Siting Council, which regulates transmission line projects, and the unintended impacts of the racial imbalance law on minority families.
Longo said she's heard “a lot of silence” from elected leaders in addressing the racial imbalance law, saying a bill recently proposed in the house lacks fresh solutions. The legislation suggests investigating other strategies to address racial imbalance, but Longo said reform measures should first gather survey data from local families to expose the current law's shortcomings.
“What has been proposed is band aids on an artery bleed from our state delegation because they're afraid of the pushback from Hartford,” Longo said.
Keitt said she and her fellow members of Fairfield's state delegation have been working to help the school district navigate the issue while working “behind the scenes” with the state's Department of Education to devise equitable solutions.
The utility issue has received more of a groundswell of legislation after a version of UI's proposal to build taller monopoles through Fairfield and Bridgeport got state backing. Longo, like many locals in Fairfield, said the company should bury its power lines underground in its work to modernize its transmission infrastructure. She supports tighter regulations limiting utility companies' authority, including their ability to jack up service rates.
Longo, a Fairfield native, has been a local leader in town for the past two and a half years, serving on the RTM since 2021 and heading the Republican Town Committee for over a year until March. She works as an admissions and marketing specialist and has also run a health and wellness company out of Westport, according to a campaign press release.
She now looks to expand her leadership into the southwestern corner of Trumbull that fits into the state House of Representatives' 134th district, where Longo said she's spoken to Board of Education members and family members who teach and live there. She said Fairfield and Trumbull seems to face similar issues involving tax levels, car theft and Connecticut's affordable housing statute, which allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations.
Keitt, who has held the state house seat for nearly the past year and a half, has become a leading voice against child poverty in Connecticut, but Longo said her opponent's focus is "vague" and misplaced within the district. Longo said she plans to push harder for tax relief for veterans and senior citizens and address low student reading levels — issues she sees as more relevant for the Fairfield-Trumbull constituency.
“It doesn't seem to me — and it seems a little out of touch — to say we have severe poverty going on in the 134th when I don't believe that's the case at all,” she said
Keitt said data from the United Way shows that 27 percent of households in the 134th district earn less than enough to afford basic costs from housing, food, health and child care, transportation, technology and taxes. The figure is based on United Way's “ALICE” metric, which stands for asset limited, income constrained, employed — what Keitt calls the “working poor.”
Keitt responded to Longo, saying her challenger lacks the policy solutions to handle the state leadership post.
“To think that poverty doesn't affect the 134th is alarmingly naive,” Keitt said.
The opponents will continue making their appeals to Fairfield and Trumbull voters until their names appear on the general election ballot in November. Keitt won her seat in 2022 by a razor-thin 10-vote margin.