Special election set for Tuesday
Who will voters choose to fill 36th District state Senate seat?
The mad dash in the race for the 36th District state Senate seat is nearly at the finish line with polls set to open at 6 a.m. Tuesday.
Voters throughout the district, which includes all of Greenwich and portions of Stamford and New Canaan, will be looking to fill the remainder of the term of former state Sen. Alex Kasser, who resigned unexpectedly in June. They will be deciding between three candidates: Republican Ryan Fazio, Democrat Alexis Gevanter and petition candidate John Blankley.
All three candidates were focused this weekend on getting the last voters on their team before polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Volunteers were expected to fan out all over the district doing door knocking, calling and building up support for what is shaping up to be a close election.
At the final of three candidate forums and debates Thursday night, all three laid out their cases about why they would be the best candidate to fill the now open seat.
Fazio, a member of Greenwich’s Representative Town Meeting and an investment analyst for small businesses, said at the Round Hill Association forum that he was running “to create a positive change in our state government and a brighter future for everyone in our community.
“I grew up in this district,” Fazio said. “It’s my home. I volunteer here. I’ve served in local government. I’ve worked in business locally in the renewable energy sector. I think it’s the greatest place imaginable to build a life. We have good people, strong community, perfect location and natural beauty. Yet our community and our state are facing enormous challenges.”
Fazio ran for the seat last year but lost to Kasser.
Gevanter, a business attorney and the former Connecticut Chapter leader for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said she has “spent my life advocating for others.
“As a Connecticut state leader, I did what I have always done,” Gevanter said. “I listened. I built coalitions. I worked together to find common ground and I delivered results. That is not always easy because even here in Connecticut, the gun lobby is fierce; but I did not back down…Now I am stepping up to run for the State Senate so I can take the same approach to protecting our quality of life.”
Blankley, a former member of the RTM and Greenwich’s Board of Estimate and Taxation, founded and runs an IT firm in the state.
“There is a heightened degree of partisanship and it is for that reason I am running as an independent,” he said at the forum. “I am looking for your vote to send an independent candidate to Hartford…My appeal is to independent voters and my slogan is, ‘Make a statement. Send an independent to Hartford.”
Blankley, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat in 2016, had originally sought the Democratic nomination after Kasser’s resignation but filed to run as a petition candidate after the party backed Gevanter. He has said that he would not caucus with either the Democrats or Republicans if elected, and called himself “the man in the middle” with a campaign targeting unaffiliated voters.
Gevanter has received the endorsements of key Democrats, as well as district residents Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep Jim Himes along with Kasser herself. She has also been endorsed the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, the Stamford Professional Fire Fighters union and several gun violence prevention groups.
Fazio has been endorsed by the Greenwich and Stamford police unions, the Connecticut Realtors and Stamford mayoral candidate Bobby Valentine, Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo and Selectwoman Lauren Rabin, as well as New Canaan State Rep. Tom O’Dea, R-125.
The seat had been a secure Republican seat for more than half a century until Kasser was elected in 2018, defeating incumbent Republican L. Scott Frantz. Prior to that, a Democrat had not been elected to the seat since 1930 when H. Allen Barton held it.
Kasser showed the ability to turn a red seat at least purple with strong support from Stamford.
In 2020, when she was reelected over Fazio, she increased her support in both Greenwich and New Canaan, even though Fazio won both towns, and was able to defeat him by a larger margin overall than she beat Frantz by in 2018.
Gevanter will be looking to replicate that success.
Republicans have pushed hard to get the seat back in GOP control. The 2020 election had the headwinds of a high turnout presidential election with strong feelings about the future of the party.
There has been strong interest in absentee ballots with the same rules in place for the 2021 elections that allowed for absentee ballots in 2020 for any registered voter who requested them over concerns about the pandemic.
In Greenwich, as of Friday, there had been 3,505 absentee ballots requested with 2,727 returned. Registered Democrats in town had requested 1,674 ballots and had returned 1,306. The town’s registered Republicans have requested 1,213 ballots with 965 returned. Unaffiliated voters, who make up the town’s biggest voter bloc, have requested 1,213 absentee ballots and returned 965. There have also been 35 requested and 28 returned by those registered with other parties.
People will be able to request an absentee ballot in Greenwich until 4 p.m. on Monday. People will not be able to request absentee ballots on Tuesday when they can vote in person at their polling places.
Stamford’s numbers on Friday showed that a total of 1,392 absentee ballots had been requested so far with 1,018 returned. The partisan breakdown, according to the Town Clerk’s office, was that 893 had been requested by registered Democrats with 681 returned, 307 issued to registered Republicans with 219 returned and 180 issued for unaffiliated voters with 110 returned.
Stamford Town Clerk Lyda Ruijter said that 12 ballots had been issued to voters registered for the Independent Party and eight had been returned. Absentee ballots can be requested from Stamford until the office closes at 3:45 p.m. Monday. Ruijter said that due to the pandemic they prefer people make appointments before coming in but walk-ins are allowed.
For New Canaan, there had been 485 absentee ballots requested as of Friday morning. The Town Clerk’s office there said that 237 of those requests have come from registered Democrats, 188 from Republicans, 59 from unaffiliated voters and one from a voter registered for a minor party. Of the 386 that had been returned, 179 were from registered Democrats, 163 from Republicans, 43 unaffiliated and one from the minor party voter.
The cut off in New Canaan to request an absentee ballot will be 3 p.m. Monday.
All parts of the district have secure drop boxes where people can drop off their completed absentee ballots. Last month, Greenwich’s Democratic Registrar of Voters Mary Hegarty advised people that if it was getting close to the Aug. 17 election date, people should not mail their ballots — they should instead drop them off in the secure drop boxes or at the Town Clerk’s office.
Any ballots received after Aug. 17 will not be counted, no matter what the postmark on the ballot says, officials said.
Greenwich also issued a reminder to voters in District 7 that they will be voting at Central Middle School for the special election, not Greenwich High School as they traditionally do. Separate polling locations will be set up at Central for District 7 and for District 8, which traditionally votes there.