Candidates Prepare for Senate Special Election

Candidates and the two parties are getting ready for the upcoming special election to fill the State Senate seat that was, until recently, represented by Sen. Terry Gerratana (D-6).

Gerratana recently joined the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) as a senior advisor in the state Office of Health Strategy.

The Democratic and Republican parties will both be holding conventions over the weekend to nominate their candidates for the special election, which will be held on February 26th.

Democratic State Representative Rick Lopes (D-24) announced his candidacy for the Senate seat as soon as Gerratana’s appointment was announced, receiving Gerratana’s support. Lopes said that, “Running to fill the seat of such an accomplished and dedicated public servant as Senator Terry Gerratana will be a truly humbling experience for me.”

Republican Gennaro Bizzarro has now announced that he will seek the seat, as well. He, too, praised Gerratana. “I thank Senator Gerratana for her lifetime of service and wish her well in this next chapter.”

Bizzarro said, “We are facing a budget deficit of more than a billion dollars, we are in the midst of an opioid crisis that is shattering families, we have inequities in how we fund our schools and municipalities, and the list goes on.”

“We cannot afford to continue down the road we have been on for the past eight years,” Bizzarro said, “and that means we cannot keep sending the same people to Hartford and expect a different result. We desperately need an infusion of common sense at the Capitol, and that is exactly what I intend to bring.”

A little over a year ago, Bizzarro made news when he was the one who announced that former Republican Mayor Timothy Stewart would not be terminated from his influential position as President of the Greater New Britain Chamber of Commerce after accusations of racism and calls for Stewart’s removal. Public outrage had followed a comment Stewart that had made online that, “the inmates continue to run the neighborhood,” in a conversation about the North-Oak neighborhood, that has a large Latino and African American population.

The scandal shined a light on Bizzarro’s position of both working in the paid position of Corporation Counsel for Republican Mayor Erin Stewart and being Chair of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce employing Timothy Stewart, Erin Stewart’s father.

Former Mayor and State Senator Donald DeFronzo has said that Lopes, “has dedicated much of his life and career to bettering our communities and being elected state senator will be another opportunity for him to do what he loves, which is serving the people. Rick is a roll your sleeves up and get stuff done kind of guy so I look forward to seeing what he can accomplish in the senate.”

Lopes says that, “Although I will be running to fill a new seat, my convictions are resolute, and I will continue to fight for the values and priorities I have championed throughout my career.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party ‘s State Chair, Nick Balletto, has announced that, “The 2019 Democratic Special Convention for the 6th State Senate District will convene at 1:00 PM on Saturday, January 19, 2019 at the Pulaski Club located at 89 Grove St in New Britain, CT.”

Republicans will hold their nominating convention on Monday, January 21st. The Republican convention will be at Central Pizza in Berlin.

For both of the parties, the delegates who will nominate their parties’ candidates are the same delegates who endorsed candidates for the Sixth Senatorial District in the 2018 election. There are no primaries to nominate candidates in special elections. The choice of each party’s convention will be their party’s candidate on February 26th

Both candidates have announced their intention to run under the state’s Citizen Election Program. “This voluntary public campaign financing program,” State Elections Enforcement Commission says, “was designed to encourage citizen participation and limit the role of private money in the State of Connecticut’s political process.”