Democratic candidates all prevailed in New Britain on Tuesday’s election. Voters handily re-elected Sen. Terry Gerratana (D-6), Rep. Bobby Sanchez (D-25), Rep. Peter Tercyak (D-26) and Rep. Rick Lopes (D-24), and voters sided with Democrats’ position on two of the three Charter revision referendum questions on the ballot.
Unofficial results for State Senate showed Gerratana with 17,711 votes to 9,840 for Republican Charles Paonessa and 2,035 for Sharon Beloin-Saavedra.
Rep. Rick Lopes topped James Sanders 4,571 to 2,502 in the unofficial New Britain vote tally.
Rep. Bobby Sanchez unofficially won re-election with 4,019 votes to 823 for Republican Richard Gadomski and 74 for Green Party candidate Martha Kelly.
Rep. Peter Tercyak was re-elected over Republican Desiree Agosto 4,211 votes to 1,623, unofficially.
Even Rep. Betty Boukus (D-22) won the New Britain part of her district, though she lost to Republican Bill Petit due to his vote total in Plainville, where most of the 22nd State Assembly district is located.
The election was a setback for the Republican Mayor Erin Stewart. Stewart had openly supported a Democratic primary challenge against Gerratana, and Sanders is a close ally who local Republicans had hoped could unseat Lopes.
Much more directly, Stewart and the Republican-dominated City Council were handed a substantial setback on changes they had pressed for to the City Charter. The proposed changes were to extend terms of office for mayor and tax collector and to make other controversial changes. Democrats had opposed all of the Charter changes. Voters appear to have rejected the two ballot questions proposing longer terms of office, but approved the third ballot question.
