Nora Grace-Flood Photos
Town Clerk-Elect Karimah Mickens with victourious Council candidate Cory O’Brien.
There’s still Marjorie Bonadies: A Republican who can win an election against a Democrat in Hamden.
Bonadies easily won reelection Tuesday night as a member of Hamden’s Legislative Council.
And that was it. At least in this year’s municipal elections, held Tuesday. Democrats won every contested race, from mayor and town clerk down through Legislative Council and Board of Education, pending a handful of recounts. They won 19 out of 20 seats up for election.
And it was a new generation of Democrats: Members of a coordinated progressive slate that last year took control of the party from a centrist/moderate wing and then ousted that wing in Sept. 14 primary elections, promising a government that includes more voices and reflects the town’s greater racial diversity, watches the fiscal books, and promotes accountable community policing. The Democrats made a point of fielding a racially diverse ticket.
Three of the victorious Democrats were endorsed by the Central Connecticut and National Democratic Socialists of America: Board of Ed candidate Mariam Khan; and two uncontested Legislative Council candidates, Justin Farmer and Abdul-Razak Osmanu. They are the first socialist slate to win a Connecticut election in 60 years.
Bonadies: Still winning in Blue Hamden.
Click here for the official tally for all Hamden races, including district-by-district breakdowns.
The Republicans put up a good fight in many races, including the top race for mayor. Democrat Lauren Garrett won the mayor’s race with 6,653 votes, over 1,000 votes more than Republican opponent Ron Gambardella, who received a total of 5,349 votes. Write-in candidates Al Lotto (who campaigned for the part) and Curt Leng (who claimed he wasn’t really running) took in 278 and 57 votes, respectively.
Democrat Karimah Mickens will be Hamden’s next town clerk. (Melinda Saller, a current BOE member and write-in candidate for the role, took in 373 to Mickens’ 7,620 votes.) All four Democratic Legislative Council at-large candidates — Dominique Baez, Cory O’Brien, Laurie Sweet, and Kathleen Kiely — swept their races, as well as all five Democratic Board of Education candidates: Siobhan Carter-David, David Lee Asberry, Melissa Kaplan-Charkow, Khan, and Reuel Parks. Parks was chosen in a special election to fill a vacancy for a two-year term; the others will serve for four years.)
Victorious Democratic Board of Ed candidate Mariam Khan and Council candidate Abdul-Razak Osmanu with Democratic Town Committee member Sana Shaw Tuesday night.
Thanks to the town’s minority-party representation rules, four Republicans who earned the most votes among their party members will join Council at-large and the BOE. Incumbent Betty Wetmore will continue serving after more than two decades on the council. She will be joined by Lesley DeNardis, who will return to the Council this November after having taken a break from previous years on both that legislative body as well as on the BOE.
Meanwhile, Republican social studies teacher Austin Cesare will leave the Council at the end of this month in order to serve on the BOE alongside political newcomer Kevin Shea.
Democrats also maintained power across eight out of nine of the council’s District seats.
Incumbent Adrian Webber easily beat his competition in the seventh district while Osmanu, Sarah Gallagher, Farmer, and Paula Irvin ran unopposed in districts three through six, respectively.
A sign posted by the Bonadies campaign outside polls Tuesday.
Marjorie Bonadies remained the exception to the Democrats’ district stronghold. The Ninth District Republican incumbent crushed her competition, Nancy Hill, with 1,211 votes to Hill’s 804.
In Districts One, Two, and Eight, Democrats were victorious but the races proved tight. After hours of counting absentee ballots, the registrar of voters announced at midnight that transportation planner Ted Stevens won by just seven votes —620 to 613 — in a race against pharmaceutical analyst Pat Destito. In the Second District, incumbent Jeron Alston gathered 562 votes to Nick D’Amato’s 530. Kristin Zaehringer took in 470 votes compared to her first district opponent’s 430.
Republican Registrar of Voters Tony Esposito said that a recount is likely in those races.
The two candidates who ran as third party hopefuls came last in their races. Jay Kaye, an Independent, got the fewest votes of the at-large Council candidates with a tally of 1,289. Nijija-Ife Waters, a Working Families Party BOE candidate, received 602 votes, almost 4,000 votes less than the Republican with the least public support.
A total of 130,589 votes were cast.