Paul Bass Photo
City/Town Clerk Ron Smith isn’t giving up on making the Sept. 10 Democratic primary ballot, even though the registrar of voters has rejected his petitions.
Smith (pictured at an April campaign event) is in a three-way race to keep the position he has held for the past ten years. His two challengers, Sergio Rodriguez and Michael Smart, have collected enough verified signatures, 2,406, to qualify for the ballot in the party primary.
Smith learned Monday that the registrar’s office did not find enough valid signatures on his petitions to put his name on the ballot.
“It was an injustice,” he claimed.
Smith said he’s not going down without a fight. His campaign submitted some 3,800 or so signatures of voters, he said. His campaign plans to look at all the names rejected by registrars to try to confirm that enough are valid to put him over the top.
Meanwhile, he said, he has qualified to have his name on the Nov. 5 general-election ballot as an independent candidate.
“Blackjack” Maneuver?: Objections to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s decision to make an endorsement in a four-way Democratic mayoral primary continued to reverberate in town Monday.
Malloy endorsed state Sen. Toni Harp’s mayoral campaign in a New Haven stop last week.
Monday, as Malloy returned to town alongside Harp to tour Newhallville and discuss crime, the campaign of Kermit Carolina sent the governor an open letter.
“As many New Haven voters know, the Unite Here union has created its own machine in New Haven. The Union’s New Haven machine does not allow the aldermen and women whose campaigns they finance to have their own opinions about any political matters. Union leaders are perched in their cozy suburban cul-de-sacs trying desperately to control New Haven because no Democratic candidate for Governor can win without winning big in New Haven. Clearly, the Union feels that a Harp mayoral victory represents its best chances for success in your re-election bid in 2014,” the Carolina campaign wrote in the letter.
“To be sure, the suburban union leaders are only concerned about New Haven to the extent that it serves their suburban interest.
By endorsing Toni Harp, you have certainly turned many voters of the other three candidates against you – and they will not forget that when it is time to elect a new Governor. Governor Malloy, either you do not understand basic political strategy, are simply too arrogant to care about what New Haven voters think, or you are so obsessed with your re-election that you will take advantage of any perceived opportunity. Perhaps it is a combination of the three. …
“Governor Malloy, you have just decided to play a game of political blackjack in which there are 3 – 1 odds against you pulling a higher hand than Harp’s three opponents. The smart play was to wait until the day after New Haven’s September 10, 2013 primary in order to endorse a candidate. Unfortunately it’s too late; you have already played your hand.”
Click here to read the full letter.
The New Haven Register also weighed in with an editorial criticizing Malloy’s decision.
“It’s worth noting, by the way, that Malloy hasn’t made an endorsement in the Democratic primary in his home city of Stamford,” the Register noted. Read the editorial here.
They Won’t Back Down: In the same editorial, the Register continued to assert that U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy has agreed to become the “next” politician to endorse Harp’s campaign. The paper repeated an unconfirmed report it first published last week, that the Murphy and Harp camps came to that agreement in “conversations,” according to “sources” — even though both the Harp and Murphy camps openly denied that they’d even had a conversation about the subject.
No one will be surprised if Murphy, like practically every other elected Democrat, endorses Harp, if he does make end up making an endorsement.
Murphy and Harp were in the same spot in Newhallville Monday, at a forum on juvenile sentencing laws. Murphy denied again that he had ever had any conversations with Harp’s campaign about an endorsement, let alone agreed to be “next in line to offer his public support,” as the Register editorial put it.
He was asked if he would endorse anyone in New Haven’s mayoral primary. “I haven’t made any decision yet,” he said.
Harp echoed Murphy’s denial. “No, I haven’t talked to him about an endorsement,” she said.
Paul Bass and Melissa Bailey contributed reporting to this story.