The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Smith and Stallworth: a short-lived ticket
After just five days, the partnership between petitioning gubernatorial candidate Guy Smith and his running mate state Rep. Charlie Stallworth, of Bridgeport, has ended.
But the loss of a teammate has not deterred Smith from his outsider’s bid for state office, he said.
“I look forward, when I am governor, to (Stallworth) being in the legislature and helping to fix the state,” said Smith, a Democrat and retired Greenwich business executive.
After he lost his party’s nomination to keep his state representative seat for the 126th District Tuesday, Stallworth said that he was ending his run for lieutenant governor. He would have had to gather signatures from 15,458 signatures from registered Connecticut Democrats by June 12 to qualify for the lieutenant governor primary.
Instead, Stallworth, a former loyalist to Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim — another Democrat petitioning his way onto the primary ballot for governor – has to launch a separate petition drive if he wants to try and hold onto his House seat.
Stallworth did not return messages seeking comment.
Mum on signatures
Smith, too, is crisscrossing the state to collect autographs from registered Democrats, though he would not say how many signatures he had collected. His only choice is to try and petition onto the primary ballot, since he declined to participate in the Democratic convention, calling it “rigged” for Ned Lamont.
“The system was not designed to give Democrats of Connecticut choice,” Smith said. “It may be time for the conventions to evolve into something more broad.”
Smith has never held or run for elected office, but he has called for more diversity in the Democratic party. A consultant on his campaign’s payroll, Rev. Boise Kimber, is the leader of a New Haven organization of clergymen that demanded the resignation of the party chairman in April, charging state Democrats were ignoring people of color.
“Where do people of color fit into the fabric of the Connecticut state party?” Kimber said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media in April, stressing that he is only one of about 40 members of the Joshua Generation Clergy Association.
Chairman Nick Balletto did not resign and Smith said Tuesday he was not involved the effort of Kimber and the Joshua Generation Clergy Association’s to ask for Balletto’s removal.
Smith has been speaking at African American churches on Sundays, engagements organized by his consultant Kimber. He said that his lifelong NAACP member and support for policies such as legalizing recreational marijuana and releasing inmates held for nonviolent drug charges could win him the urban vote.
At their convention, some Democrats pushed for a more diverse ticket: gubernatorial nominee Ned Lamont and lieutenant governor nominee Susan Bysiewicz are white. Insurgent lieutenant governor candidate Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, a union organizer from Newtown who is Latina, took 40 percent of the delegate vote and will go on to the primary. Also in the statewide ticket is Asian-American attorney general nominee William Tong, African American treasurer nominee Shawn Wooden and state comptroller Kevin Lembo, who is gay.
A one-time adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Smith is a former executive at Norwalk-based beer and liquor producer Diageo. He is not using public campaign financing. His campaign raised a total of $302,606 by April, buoyed by two $100,000 checks Smith wrote to his own campaign, State Elections Enforcement Commission filings show.