Republican Mayor Erin Stewart says that she is seeking re-election, facing voters for the first time after being found to have violated state election law.
“It’s official, I’m running for Mayor!,” Stewart said, kicking off her 2019 re-election campaign.
It was in Stewart’s 2017 re-election that the Republican Mayor was found to have illegally used taxpayer funds to mail a brochure promoting her re-election within ninety days of that election.
The State Elections Enforcement Commission decided in late 2018 that Stewart illegally promoted her candidacy through a brochure inserted into an official mailing delivering tax bills to city residents during the 2017 municipal campaign.
Even before that finding of violation, Stewart had already had a tumultuous and controversial term of office.
Just as 2018 began, Stewart introduced her controversial proposal to borrow $115 million to push city debt into the future. The proposal was widely seen as the result of Stewart’s practice of pushing millions of dollars of debt into the future to artificially lower costs during her administration at the expense of higher future debt payments for city taxpayers.
In February of that year, Stewart angered many people in the New Britain community when she appeared at a public event with Republican President Donald Trump. Many people did not, in the case of Trump, accept Stewart’s reasoning that, “When the White House calls….you go.”
Later, in November of 2018, Stewart was soundly defeated in the statewide Republican primary for lieutenant governor. Stewart’s previously ballyhooed candidacy for governor had already fizzled away before the Republican state convention. She backed out of the governor’s race and ran for lieutenant governor, instead, only to fall in defeat for that office, too, receiving a fraction of the statewide Republican votes.
Then, in August of 2018, Stewart was finally forced to abandon her proposal to allow the strip mining of New Britain’s protected drinking watershed land. She withdrew her plan just two days before the state Water Planning Council (WPC) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) were set to release damning a report about it, calling it an unnecessary, environmentally damaging risk to the city’s water supply.
Stewart’s announcement of her 2019 mayoral campaign was widely expected. A fourth term would make Stewart mayor for eight years, matching her father, former Republican Mayor Timothy Stewart, and bringing the number of years in which New Britain’s City Hall has been under the Stewarts to sixteen.
Democrat Christopher Porcher recently announced that he is running for mayor this year. After receiving the support for the New Britain Democratic Party’s Nominations Committee, Porcher formally began his campaign in front of a large crowd in front of City Hall.
Both Democrats and Republicans are expected to nominate candidates for mayor and other city offices in July.
