Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Bonadies at a local RTC meeting: Vows to "go out speaking my truth."
Hamden’s leading Republican official is bolting town, in search of lower taxes and redder colleagues.
The elected official, Legislative Council member Marjorie Bonadies, said she plans on resigning her position in order to make that move. She is the council’s only Republican elected to represent a district. (The council includes two at-large spots reserved for members of minority parties.)
The Republican Town Committee will select Bonadies’ replacement to represent the Ninth District.
Bonadies said she intends to go to North Branford, where the taxes are lower and the politicians are more conservative.
She has served on the Legislative Council since 2013 as the main minority voice in a town with almost five times as many Democrats as Republicans. On Monday, Bonadies told the Independent that soon after she completes her last round of budget deliberations, she will retire from the council and focus her energy on finding a new home outside of Hamden.
She hasn’t sold her house or found a new place yet, she said. And she hasn’t set a solid date by which she plans to depart from council, though she said she intends to leave within the next month.
“I wanted to finish the budget,” she said, referring to the intensive process council members undertake to fine-tune the projected revenues and expenditures put forward by the mayor for the fiscal year beginning July 1. “Tomorrow (Tuesday) night is the last night.”
Bonadies said she has realized that a hike in her already high taxes is inevitable.
“We’re looking at retirement,” she said of herself, a private nurse by trade, and her husband; their kids have grown up and left the nest. “We don’t want to spend our retirement on taxes.”
In her presentation on this year’s budget, Mayor Garrett said Hamden will see a jump in the mill rate this year as leadership attempts to pay down accrued debt and confront years of fiscal mismanagement. Read more here. Garrett claimed more recently, if a financially responsible council and administration continues to take charge, the town could see mill rate stabilization and even a decrease in taxes over the next five years.
That’s not how Bonadies sees Hamden’s future.
Bonadies campaigning for Hamden's Republican candidate for mayor last year.
“We’ve had some really poor management, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” she asserted. Like many lifelong Hamden residents who have promised to move to Cheshire, Branford, North Haven, and other surrounding towns if Hamden doesn’t decrease its tax burden, Bonadies said her family is “voting with our feet.”
“We’re saying, hey, we’re not gonna pay these outrageous taxes!” Bonadies estimated that in the coming year, she will be responsible for paying an additional $1,000 in taxes. Unlike Garrett, she doesn’t see that number going down in future years.
In North Branford, she said, she hopes to join a new Legislative Council made up mostly of Republicans (including the town’s Republican mayor.)
“It’s a majority Republican town, and it’s very well run,” she said.
“My voice and my dynamism will be valued instead of vilified.”
Bonadies has been a vocal and controversial figure on the nearly entirely Democratic council. She represents northern Hamden’s rural Ninth District, one of the most conservative areas of town, though she has still had to beat the numerical odds every two years to get elected (with the exception of the two years she served as in a town-wide at-large seat).
She has opposed mask mandates in school and out during the pandemic; invoked critical race theory in criticizing the town’s revision of their charter; and has inspired people like Justin Piper, a vaccine conspiracist and Jan. 6 supporter and attendee, to run for office.
“Everyone’s always saying we have to have these uncomfortable conversations,” she said of the other Democratic council members. “I’m willing to have them.”
Bonadies also argued against the council’s decision to ban plastic bags. She campaigned with other council members to create an animal shelter in town. (She said the fact that Hamden has yet to officially establish a shelter is one of her “biggest disappointments.”) She has served as a challenger to any expenditures she deemed fiscal extravagance.
“I’m a straight shooter. I don’t hold my punches. I transcend political correctness, and I’m not afraid to say what I’m going to say,” Bonadies said.
As the minority party leader on the council, Bonadies is concerned with ensuring that Republican voices and views are factored into political decisions and publicly heard.
The Legislative Council is made up of nine district representatives and six at-large members. Only four Democrats and four Republicans are allowed to run for at-large positions according to the charter, so typically two Republicans are guaranteed at-large spots by default (though other minority party candidates could theoretically beat them out).
Bonadies at a fundraiser to build a Hamden animal shelter last year.
Bonadies said that she is primarily proud that throughout the past nine years, she has been able to serve as vocal opposition to the majority party.
“I get handwritten letters, direct messages, saying you’ve got more support here than you realize. You’re a voice for all of us. And I’m very proud of that.”
Republican Councilwomen Lesley DeNardis and Betty Wetmore are currently serving alongside Bonadies. But Bonadies is the only representative who managed to actually garner more votes in the election than her Democratic counterpart last year.
As she leaves town, she said she is concerned about the fate of Hamden’s Republican Party.
“Honestly, I don’t know how they will fare.” As a Republican, she said, “you can try to make a point, but you’re not gonna win anything. You’re not gonna have any legislative wins.”
“It’s not a secret that our numbers have shrunk,” she said. “It’s a scary thought that our numbers are shrinking and that Hamden never may have a vibrant opposition party again.”
“What I really think needs to happen is that unaffiliated voters, moderate Democrats and right-of-center Republicans need to coalesce, and they need to come together and find that common ground where we can all live and build a party.”
Though Bonadies was one of the council representatives who vetoed a revised charter proposed by a volunteer commission last year (naming it a “left-wing manifesto,”) she has supported a request for a restored commission with the power to alter the town’s governmental structure.
Strip the council of at-large positions, she suggested, and have the public only elect district representatives. Limit each town party committee to nominating two candidates, and have the public elect three district reps. That way, she said, at least five of 15 positions would be dedicated to minority party representation.
In the likely case that such a change will not occur in town, she has a message for other Hamden Republicans: “Hang in there.”
In the meantime, she said, “I’m gonna go out speaking my truth.”