Over before it began
Women remain 0 for 4 in runs for Stamford mayor
STAMFORD — Last year set records for the number of women taking seats in the U.S. Congress.
The same is true for governors’ offices and state legislatures.
Today the mayors of some of the nation’s major metropolises — Baltimore, Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, Las Vegas — are women.
Stamford is woefully off pace.
The city, which has been around for 378 years, has never elected a woman as mayor.
In fact, only four Stamford women have ever run for mayor; the last was 28 years ago.
Women now govern 10 Connecticut cities with populations of at least 30,000, including New Haven, Stratford, New Britain, Bristol and Groton.
Three other cities — Norwalk, Bridgeport and Hartford — have at least one female mayor in their histories.
Beyond women, Stamford has never elected any member of a minority group, except for Julius Wilensky, who was Jewish, in 1969. All the rest have been white Christian men, even though Stamford has been ethnically diverse for many generations.
What’s going on?
‘Not the time’
“I won every election for my seat on the Board of Representatives — I was always the highest votegetter in the city — but when I ran for mayor, it didn’t translate,” said Sandy Goldstein, the last woman to seek the seat in 1991. “I was told by a number of people that it was ‘not the time for a woman.’ ”
Ten years earlier, Goldstein became the first female president of the Board of Representatives, the city’s 40-member lawmaking body.
“I was told by a number of people that it was ‘not the time for a woman.’ ” Sandy Goldstein, 1991 Stamford mayoral candidate
“I broke considerable ground for that,” she said. “I remember we had to change the board rules to read ‘he/she’ when they referred to the president, because everything was ‘he, he, he.’ ”
After a decade as board president, Goldstein felt she was ready for a mayoral run, inspired by other women’s strides. Connecticut elected Ella Grasso, the first woman in the United States to win a governor’s seat of her own accord, in 1975. And New Yorker Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States in 1984.
Goldstein knew other women who’d attempted to win Stamford’s top post.
The late Lillian Filardo, an accountant long active in city politics, was the first woman to run in 1973. Filardo lost then and on her second try in 1975.
The late Pobie Johnston, a World War II veteran, executive aide to Mayor Fred Lenz in the 1970s, and a powerhouse on government and civic agencies that tackled the most pressing issues of the day, ran and lost three times, finally in 1988.
The late Lynn Laitman, who served as a city representative, member of the Board of Finance, and civic leader for causes such as affordable housing and school desegregation, tried and failed in 1981 and again in 1983.
Goldstein, though, felt she had a shot in 1991. Dannel Malloy, who would go on to become Stamford’s longest-serving mayor and a two-term Connecticut governor, was her campaign manager.
“I knew Lynn and Pobie. They were both so qualified, but they couldn’t get past the primary,” Goldstein said of her fellow Democrats. “I had a primary, and I
won in a landslide. In the general election I raised and spent more than anybody until that time — $150,000. And it didn’t matter.”
In a city dominated by Democrats, she lost to a Republican, Stanley Esposito.
‘A woman’s place’
Goldstein said ethnic groups dominant in city politics at the time “were very male-dominated.”
“Many believed a woman’s place was in the home,” she said.
She had two other strikes against her, Goldstein said. She’s a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., not Stamford, and she’s Jewish.
Stamford’s 1991 race for mayor “was very close, but no cigar,” Goldstein said. “After I lost, I knew I could never run again because I couldn’t change my sex or my religion, and I felt both those things played into my defeat.”
She believed, though, that a woman would become mayor within a few years. It didn’t happen.
Will to run
“Not many other women were actively engaged in wanting to run,” Goldstein said.
Two women were particularly deserving, she said: fellow Democrats Carmen Domonkos, who served 13 years on the Board of Representatives, including six as president; and Mary Lou Rinaldi, who has spent decades as a member of the Board of Representatives and Board of Finance, including terms as president of the first and chairwoman of the second. Rinaldi still serves on the finance board.
Domonkos said she and many women worked hard on Goldstein’s mayoral campaign.
“It was not a foregone conclusion that women could run,” Domonkos said. “There was always a consciousness of what a woman needs to do to win. I don’t think we found the answer.”
Domonkos — whose challenger in her bid for Board of Representatives president was David Martin, now in his second term as mayor — said she never developed a desire to run for the city’s top elected post.
“I saw Sandy work so hard, and so many women worked really hard to support her. It was like Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016 — we just couldn’t believe Sandy lost,” Domonkos said. “After you put all that effort in and lose, it’s really dispiriting.”
Over before it begins
It’s difficult to say why no woman has given it a try since Goldstein, Domonkos said. Political leadership in the city has been “pretty male-dominated,” she said.
“It may be that there’s a kind of role-playing that still goes on,” she said. “It’s strange. Having a woman run is not discussed.”
The party’s selection system has become closed, Rinaldi said.
“I wanted to run when (Martin) was running for the first time in 2013, but the nomination was pretty much sewn up by February, even though the party usually does endorsements in June or July,” Rinaldi said.
The late Bill Callion, who if he had been successful would have been the city’s first black mayor, also was interested in running that year, Rinaldi said.
“Bill and I were just out of the process. It had already been worked out — (Martin) had all the party votes,” Rinaldi said. “It was a little odd that it was all sewn up so early.”
But Josh Fedeli, who was a member of the Democratic City Committee at the time, and now is chairman, said selection of the mayoral nominee for the 2013 election was the most inclusive he’s seen.
“The process began over a year prior to the election, with a straw poll done for the first time ever,”
Fedeli said. “The poll included close to a dozen candidates who indicated their desire to run and measure their political support.”
Candidate interviews and the poll “produced a clear picture of the candidates with the most support,” Fedeli said. “All candidates, regardless of gender, race or demographic, were included in the process.”
He pointed out that for years the DCC was chaired by a woman. The late Ellen Camhi ran the party from 1983 to 2011.
“Ellen was an extremely powerful voice in politics, not just in Stamford, but in the state and the country. She was a consistent voice for women candidates,” he said.
Half the DCC members now are women, he said, and “we welcome any candidate who would like to run and serve the city.”
Rinaldi said she’s not sure that women get “a fair shot.”
There are “many gifted women who could do an excellent job in these offices,” she said. “But the race is over before the gate is open.”
Goldstein, who for 26 years has been president of the Downtown Special Services District, which transformed the city’s core, said real changes for women began only in the last decade, and the country has a long way to go.
The Center for American Women and Politics reports that, even though women make up more than half the U.S. population, they occupy about a quarter of elected offices. Despite the strides of the 2018 election, for example, women now fill nine of 50 governor’s seats.
Change would be good, Goldstein said.
“I guess I was a little before my time,” she said. “I couldn’t break through the mindset.”