Running for political office in Connecticut as a challenger can be a daunting experience. A good campaigner will walk the district, knocking on doors and introducing themselves in hopes of catching a resident open to meeting someone willing to serve for public office. Invariably though, the tales of the door knocking campaigners include the mythic being chased by a dog, after all dogs view the lone campaigner armed with campaign literature as being from the same species as the US Postal worker, and we all know what that means.

Running In The 61^st

Derek Donnelly, who ran for State Rep in the 61^st district, (Suffield, East Granby and Windosr) got a little more than the usual dog chases candidate story one September day as he walked through a Windsor neighborhood. As he recounts, it was late in the afternoon and as he was walking back to his car, he saw a car parked not far from his with people excitedly looking out the window towards a cluster of trees. Much to his surprise, a huge black bear suddenly bursts out of the trees and starts darting up the street towards the car filled with people. The car of onlookers wisely took off, and the bear raced past the now vacant spot and climbed up a tree to get to a bird feeder. Donnelly didn’t waste any time jumping into his car and drove away too, but then he thought about the neighbors he just met and drove slowly down the street to warn residents of the bear.

Quick thinking also led him to alert the Police and CT DEP, and he later wrote about his experience on his campaign blog, electdonnelly.com. That wasn’t the only memorable part of Derek’s campaign experience, the 6 day a week pace of door knocking from the Democratic primary in August through election day resulted in sore feet and exceeding his goal of over 3000 voters visited. And some of those voters turned out to be people he had known but lost touch with many years ago. “I loved it,” Derek said, of the experience. “You end up doing a lot yourself, the budget is so limited and you don’t have a staff, but at the end of the day I came up 229 votes short, against a 24 year incumbent.”

While he would have preferred winning the race, Derek’s political future is still in high gear. He sits on the town of Suffield’s Board of Finance as an alternate, a position he was elected to in 2005 in a 5 way race. He is also a legislative aide to Hartford’s Mayor Eddie Perez.

Suffield Like Many Towns in Connecticut

Towns like Suffield are grappling with the same issues facing much of the rest of the Connecticut. Derek grew up in Suffield, so he’s seen first hand how the town has changed, and his work on the Board of Finance gives him a keener perspective on the issues that spawn conflict in his town. “The same thing that is going on in a lot of formally rural towns becoming more suburban, is happening here. People aren’t farming any more and farms are being sold off. When you get a rep that you have a good school district, developers start buying up land and taking down forests, which takes away open space. And, every single nice house (mc mansions) are an expense on school district,” he explained.

“It costs 8 thousand dollars per kid a year to educate, whereas a nice 4 bedroom house, on the market for 350k, averages about 5 thousand dollars per year in property tax. You end up with a deficit that traditionally it hasn’t been a problem till the last 5 or 6 years when all this development started exceeding the towns economic base, outgrowing state aide coming back to the town.”

The Common Sense Democrat

Common sense analysis like this is why Derek likes to call himself a common sense Democrat. Actually he credits his mother for promoting the term, as he explains on his web site;

“My mother has a saying that there are “liberal democrats,” there are “conservative democrats,” and then there are “common-sense democrats.” In honor of my mother, I refer to the latter as “Donnelly Democrats” and this campaign aims to appeal to the inner “Donnelly Democrats” in all the voters of the 61st.”

“Too often in campaigns, candidates appeal to hot-button issues and people’s passions. Donnelly Democrats will be about common-sense solutions to real problems. Connecticut has some major problems: high property taxes, affordability of healthcare and skyrocketing higher education costs to name a few.”

At the root of many of these issues, Derek cites the antiquated property tax system. “It doesn’t just affect small rural towns, it effects suburban towns and the big cities. [Reforming property taxes] It would allow the state to be competitive.”

“We spend a lot of money to spend on educating our children in Connecticut, but none of the kids are staying in the state after they go to college, An article a few weeks ago in the Courant showed that young people not staying. As more boomers retire lack of young workforce is a real issue.”

Suffield Like Many Towns in Connecticut

Derek should know about the issue personally, he falls into the young people demographic that studies, like those listed on the partnership for a strong community’s website, show are leaving Connecticut. “In the last decade there hasn’t been either the governor or legislators to take the lead and solve the problem,” Derek said.

But he also recognizes that the balkanization of Connecticut contributes to the hodge-podge of land use priorities determined at the town level instead of a regional level. Until towns grasp that there are efficiencies and cost savings that can be had by regional solutions, including education systems there can never be tax reform.

“Can the size of Connecticut counties govern?,” wonders Derek. “It’s possible. They could budget at the county level, buying in bulk like people do when they buy at Costco, or share human resources for a number of different towns.”

As Derek points out, he voted for Suffield to share a dog-catcher with a neighboring town.

“It could be a huge difference. Let’s lighten some of the laws to allow towns to work together, share human resources directors, or bid on big things like fire trucks or snow-plows, and all this stuff adds up. I advocate a lot in my role in the board of finance, but I find that most people don’t like thinking out of box.”

Hard Work Leads to Priceless Experience

Working hard to promote new ideas is challenging. As Mayor Perez’s legislative aide, Donnelly has driven his performance up a few notches. “Public Service isn’t easy, it’s hard work and it takes someone who wants to work hard, and that trickles down. When you working for some one who is a 24 hour mayor, you make sure you are pulling your weight too, so you don’t disappoint. It’s just like an athletic team locker-room. “

Derek knew what he was signing up for. He has worked on campaigns for eight years, including Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. He’s proud of the fact that Perez works harder for the city of Hartford than anyone else he’s worked for. He has plans to keep the dialogue open with the people who supported him in his campaign, working out the details of how to keep conservations alive in a non election year. One thing might be continuing his blog. Blogs, Derek recognizes are part of the lifestyle of politics.

“Last February, before Genghis Conn did that interview, I could not get a return phone call till that interview went up. It’s amazing what blogs have done, to talk about supporting candidates. So much of campaigns are based on momentum, so [that interview] sparked a lot of it.”

Derek Donnelly is sure to be a rising star, part of a younger generation of Connecticut Democrats committed to making their home state more appealing from an economic and quality of life standpoint.