New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Independent Party fights for identity — again
To fully understand why the chairman of the Independent Party of Connecticut is so firmly rejecting a nominating challenge from Bob Stefanowski, it helps to know where he’s been these last two decades.
Mike Telesca finds himself defending his actions from last week against Stefanowski, the Republican nominee for governor who tried hard to keep the coveted Indy cross-nomination that he had in 2018. After a contentious battle and tie vote at the Guilford Community Center on Aug. 23, Telesca decided in favor of the candidate that the Independent Party’s central committee had endorsed — Robert Hotaling, a Webster Bank executive from Cheshire.
Telesca had already voted for Hotaling in the regular balloting. Hotaling was listed on the nominating ballot along with another candidate, Ernestine Holloway — but Stefanowski was not on the ballot.
Stefanowski cried foul, formally threatening a lawsuit. Although some of his points ring true, the lawsuit might never happen. State law appears to say a minor party can do pretty much whatever it wants when it comes to nominating candidates.
“I just want to see a fair process,” Stefanowski said when I ran into him at a Wethersfield event over the weekend.
“He’s not a member of the party,” Telesca said to me a few days ago, aiming a barb at Stefanowski: “Don’t bother me.”
Right or wrong, Stefanowski
will most likely give up his hopes for the Independent line on the ballot — which yielded 25,388 of his 644,000 votes in 2018. He declined to tell me how important that is to his chances of beating Gov. Ned Lamont, the Democrat and apparent frontrunner.
This seems like the sort of political spat over the rules that we see at every close nomination, along with funny hats. But looking deeper at the history, this nomination of Hotaling culminates 19 years of effort by Telesco and others who helped him launch the Independent Party of Connecticut in 2003.
To Telesco, 71, a former Democrat and longtime Waterbury politico who owns and manages multifamily rental houses, a successful Hotaling run could move the party closer to his longtime dream of major party status.
Ranked-choice voting is the key goal, as voters could back a third party and still say which majorparty candidate would get their votes if the long shot didn’t succeed.
“Getting that major party, it means a lot to us,” Telesca said. “The state of Connecticut could use a third major party. I think the country needs a third major party.”
The perfect match
Hotaling, who goes by Rob, approached Telesca back in early 2021 — when we were debating who should get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Who exactly is the Independent Party of Connecticut? One of four of five recognized statewide minor parties, it has barely more than 30,000 registered voters unified behind a belief in a centrist path that eschews what it calls the extremes of the two major parties.
It’s not affiliated with a national political group. It has just a few hundred dollars in the bank. It spent most of the last 12 years fighting against a rival faction from Danbury for the right to the statewide party name.
With his group finally in control of the identity, Telesca was thinking about how the party might grow and assert itself when Hotaling came calling. That means running its own candidates where possible, not cross-nominating the Republican candidate for governor, as the party did in 2014, with Tom Foley, and again in 2018 with Stefanowski.
“We had lunch, we talked about the possibilities,” Telesca recounted. “The more I looked at him, the more perfect he seemed to me to be.”
Telesca and Hotaling worked for months, mapping out what a truly independent Independent run for governor could be for Hotaling — a senior vice president at Webster overseeing digital banking services who has been both a Democrat and a Republican.
Hotaling, who is of mixed race, born in East Africa, has four children; his wife’s family is from Puerto Rico. “It’s an allAmerican family,” Telesca said. “Maybe a lot of minorities don’t see somebody that is representing their point of view. Lately it’s been a lot rich white guys.”
Lamont said ‘OK’
By 2008, five years after launching the party, the CT Indies gained a boost when they nominated Ralph Nader, the Winsted native, consumer advocate and perennial presidential candidate in the election won by former President Barack Obama.
Two years later, Telesca and the party nominated Thomas Marsh, who had won the Chester first selectman seat in 2009 as a Republican for governor. Marsh gained 17,629 votes, more than the required 1 percent of all votes to assure the party a line in the following governor election.
But amid a legal battle that went to the state Supreme Court, the party was unable to nominate its own separate candidate in 2014. Four years later, Stefanowski mobilized and won a five-way nomination battle.
This time around, Lamont inquired about the nomination. “We told him we had our own candidate and he said ‘OK,’ ” Telesca said.
Stefanowski pushed ahead despite Telesca’s early rebuff. “He scoured the state in order to find roughly about 80 people that would support him,” Telesca said. “We just don’t have those resources. … We’re a small party, we have no money, we have like $600 or $700 in the bank, barely enough to avoid service charges.”
That was the backdrop last week when Hotaling and Stefanowski reached the tense, 79-79 tie that Telesca settled by picking Hotaling.
“This battle with Bob Stefanowski has been very draining of our energy and resources,” Telesca said. “He’s going to be on the ballot but he wants us off the ballot. It’s sad because that’s not democracy. Let the people have a choice.”
No clear rules
Stefanowski, who rose through the ranks in the old, performance-based General Electric system, just wants to see clear rules in place that everyone follows. On the night of the vote, his spokesman told my colleague Ken Dixon, “Mike Telesca, come hell or high water, was going to try to stop Bob from winning this nomination. We are going to challenge it.”
Unfortunately for Stefanowski, despite Telesca referring to the bylaws as he decided for Hotaling, the party’s bylaws don’t directly address how a tie vote is to be broken. Moreover, the State Elections Enforcement Commission ruled in a 2016 decision that state law does not require minor parties to follow their own nomination rules — ironically, in a complaint made by Telesca.
“If a minor party does not follow its bylaws, there’s no remedy apart from an internal appeal within the party,” said attorney William Bloss of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, a party member and Guilford Board of Education member working on this case.
“He had his shot,” Telesca said. “We could have told him, ‘You’re not a member of the party and we’re going to do what we want to do.’ ”
Stefanowski’s lawyer at Hinckley, Allen in Hartford did not return a call from Dixon on Monday seeking comment on the case.
In the end, the Independent Party nominated its own separate candidates for every statewide office except comptroller, where it backed Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford. The party also nominated former state
Sen. George Logan, a Republican, in the 5th U.S. House District against Rep. Jahana Hayes, the incumbent Democrat.
John Fahan, the party treasurer, told me the drama of last week “reminded me of the raucous American political conventions of the 19th century I used to read and dream about.”
In the social media age, it’s about “positioning, strategy and outsmarting your opponent,” Fahan said.
But it’s daunting. In all, the party has some 120 lines it’s entitled to fill this year on races around the state. That’s more than it can manage as it works to build itself up.
“People are saying, well, the Independent Party is showing some independence now,” Telesca said. “Yes, that’s what we’re trying to do.”