Paul Bass Photo
Congressional candidate Lesley DeNardis at WNHH FM.
The last time a DeNardis ran to claim New Haven’s U.S. Congressional seat from a Democrat, a picture of him and his opponent appeared in the daily print newspaper — and his daughter never forgot it.
The year was 1980. Republican Larry DeNardis was running against Democrat Joe Lieberman for the open Third U.S. District Congressional seat.
“There was a photograph that was on the front page of the New Haven Register. My father and Joseph Lieberman were running in the Labor Day Road Race,” recalled DeNardis’s daughter, Lesley. Lieberman was slightly ahead at the finish line. “He waited for my father to join him. And they held hands.”
Larry DeNardis went on to defeat Lieberman and become the first Republican to hold the Third District seat since Albert Cretella lost in 1958. DeNardis went on to serve one term — and no Republican has held the seat since.
Now another DeNardis — daughter Lesley — seeks to repeat the history her father made. She’s seeking the Republican nomination, unopposed, to challenge 16-term incumbent Democrat Rosa DeLauro for the seat in November.
“I was going through [Larry’s campaign] memorabilia the other day” and came across the newspaper photo, DeNardis, 55, said during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” She had never forgotten that image, she said: It reminds her of a “civil” time in American politics, with respectful debate over issues, that she hopes will guide her own run this year.
Lesley DeNardis said a primary goal she would pursue if elected would be to “rein in federal spending,” which she characterized as a driver of the highest spike in inflation since the time her father ran for Congress.
“I would be a deficit hawk; I know that’s a term you don’t hear nowadays. Inflation is a great ill of our time.”
She will seek to convince voters that DeLauro has been in office too long and become a “career politician.”
DeLauro has repeatedly responded that her seniority has led to great benefits for the district because of the money she can bring back home to support job-creation, crime-prevention, and clean-energy projects, among others (including this event to highlight $2 million for New Haven’s fledgling crisis-response team and this one to highlight $2 million for a manufacturing-sector employment track program for high-schoolers).
She’s currently making rounds of district communities to highlight specific local projects benefiting from federal spending approved this past term, when she ascended to the powerful role of House Appropriations Committee chair.
DeNardis, a retired political science professor who currently serves on the Hamden Legislative Council, acknowledged that advantages come with experience.
“Congress is a complicated place. There’s a steep learning curve. It certainly takes several years to get your feet wet to understand the inner workings of Congress to be an effective legislator,” she said.
“There is a happy medium between gaining experience and serving too long. I personally think 31 years is too long for anyone to stay in office … I would say that of a Republican who held office that long just as much as a Democrat.”
DeLauro “has acquired a lot of power. She chairs the most powerful committee which is in charge of federal spending. In her role as appropriations chair, she has presided over massive spending, which has gotten us, I think, into the situation we are today. Runaway spending has been on her watch,” DeNardis argued.
In the “Dateline” interview, DeNardis, a former Hamden school board member, also said she supports “parents’ rights” to have more of a say in their children’s education, an issue embraced this year by GOP candidates nationwide on subjects ranging from race to gender and sexuality. DeNardis said she doesn’t support measures to criminalize teachers, but rather seeks to encourage more parental involvement and influence in decision-making.
“The Covid era,” she said, “reawakened something in parents.”
“We need to take a much more balanced approach in teaching history. I worry [about] anything that departs from that balanced approach. We have a complicated history. We should affirm our strengths. We should acknowledge our weaknesses. That particular curriculum [on race] went too far in one direction.”
Click on the above video to watch the full interview with Lesley DeNardis on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” during which she addressed issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to the child tax credit.