Missing: enthusiastic candidates for both parties. Last night both the Democratic and Republican parties met for their town committee meetings. I opted to cover the RTC meeting. With the July 25th deadline for submitting party nominations not that far off, but don’t expect to hear much about that just yet. For the Republicans, while some districts have more candidates than slots, the Republican A and C district committees acknowledged last night, others like B are still looking. Finding BOE candidates is also proving to be difficult.
The rumored problem in District A centers on whether Diana Palladino will get the support of the district committee, or whether certain members will support another candidate.
Art Scialabba made the report from the Republican State Central Committee. The RSCC meets tonight to elect its party chair and officers. Despite the recent DWI arrest of Christopher Healy (in North Carolina), there’s no opposition to him and Governor Rell plans to support him.
There was some discussion about the potential development of a registered Republican running as an endorsed candidate of the Democratic party. Jeff Konspore explained that while the party was obligated to support its own endorsed candidates, and that it would be difficult to remove a person from the party just because they were running in an election and endorsed by another party. The potential candidate, rumored to be Gail Wall, would likely have to run as a third party candidate in order to be cross endorsed by the Democratic party. At this time it is unclear whether the Democrats could nominate a Republican as their own candidate.
The Bridgeport Republicans decided not too long ago to oust their party chair, and former mayoral candidate, Rick Torres. That occurred because Torres decided to actively support Democratic mayoral candidate Chris Caruso, and encouraged Republican voters to switch parties in order to vote in the Democratic primary this September. Torres, was removed as party chair, but had planed to fight the ouster as chair, but yesterday withdrew his lawsuit.While he plans to remain a Republican, not everyone is happy with the events. Last weekend someone threw bricks through the glass at Torres’ Harborview Market, the site where he held a rally for Republicans to switch party registration.
No mention or discussion of the fighting 44, led by Minority Leader, and Norwalk Republican, Larry Cafero. With the recent budget agreement that scuttled an income tax hike, progressive or otherwise, I expected that there might be discussion of that last night. Nor was there any discussion of the recent issues swirling around State Senator DeLuca. Konspore answered questions about the status of the RTC web site, which is still being worked on. There appears to be no candidate web sites up just yet either.
The rest of the meeting was conducted quickly, adjourning before 8pm.
Karen Lyons demonstrated the new voter machines to committee members afterwards.
