Greenwich Democrats suffered bitter defeats on Tuesday as Lin Lavery lost to Republican incumbent first selectman Peter Tesei by a very wide margin- 65% to 35% with one district still to report. Indeed, she was so far behind that she was knocked off the board of selectman as her running mate EMT specialist Drew Marzullo polled more votes to take the third seat on the board reserved for a member of the minority party. In the race for tax collector Bill Grad, a graduate of Princeton with a Stanford MBA, lost to the Republican nominee Laudonia who hadn't graduated from college. Drew Marzullo lost his race against selectman Peter Theis.
"Enough is enough," said Tesei, to a boisterous round of applause. "She's been voted off the board, so thank you Greenwich voters."
At an earlier debate in Riverside with Lin Lavery, Tesei had made the sexist remark that, "we're not running for prom queen". Yet Republicans repeatedly accused Lavery of running a "negative campaign".
The defeats came as a surprise and enormous disappointment to Greenwich Democrats, since Lavery is tremendously well-liked and respected by Democrats, and she stormed onto the political scene two years ago by winning ten of eleven districts in her race for selectman, the strongest showing ever by a Democrat in town. Greenwich Democrats at party HQ were also disappointed because we had all come to truly loath Peter Tesei who proved himself to be the nastiest politician in the state of Connecticut not named "Joe Lieberman".
It shocked everyone at HQ that Bill Grad, an enormously talented and well qualified individual who had started and sold his own telecoms company, was rejected for tax collector. Grad trailed Laudonia by twelve percentage points with one district yet to report. One individual suggested a big reason: that Grad didn't have a last name that ended in a vowel. In other words, the Republicans enjoy rock-solid support in the North Mianus and Cos Cob neighborhoods of Greenwich from Italian-Americans.
I met Frank Farricker at Democratic first selectman Lin Lavery's rally at Armstrong Court in Greenwich on Saturday and asked him more questions about Republican First Selectman Peter Tesei's handling of Greenwich's stimulus request. Frank shed more light on Tesei's abysmal handling of the request, which resulted in the town's being awarded just $4 million, a fraction of what other municipalities received.
I asked Frank Farricker why he was invited by Tesei to that last-minute Christmas Eve 2008 meeting on the stimulus, when Frank isn't a selectman or in line to participate. Farricker, a former candidate for first selectman in 2007, serves on the town's Planning & Zoning Committee. In fact, according to Farricker, it was he and not Tesei who called that meeting. Farricker had received data from a friend in state government about requests from other towns and Farricker was appalled that Greenwich was missing out on a lot of potential federal funds. He called Tesei and urged him to submit a bigger request. According to Farricker, Tesei had asked the head of the town's public works department to put in a request, and it came to less than $4 million. In contrast, Bridgeport's mayor Bill Finch requested over a billion dollars from the bill, and had already submitted his full detailed request.
Greenwich's incumbent Republican first selectman Peter Tesei has been trying to make hay with accusations in a mailer by Democratic challenger Lin Lavery. Lavery listed among three charges that Tesei was engaging in cronysim in actions regarding the town's harbor master. Tesei's campaign went ballistic, accusing Lavery of lying and getting the facts all wrong. But Tesei then went out and demonstrated that he is most certainly engaging in rampant cronyism by having a committee whose members are almost all Republicans hand-picked by him call a press conference to attack Lin Lavery.
But you know Tesei has a problem when Hearst Newspapers Senior Vice President and Greenwich resident Lincoln Millstein, who spends most of his time slamming Democrats, backs Lin Lavery to the hilt on this issue. If Peter Tesei learns nothing in this campaign, he should learn that one should never- ever!- triple the docking fees on a newspaper executive in an election year! Lincoln Millstein writes on his blog, titled "No Denying the Ham-handed Handling of the Harbor Master Apointment in Greenwich", that the
"so-called Coastal Resource Advisory Committee (wanted) to keep this piece of public business out of public scrutiny. Why else would you stack the committee with members who resemble a Republican fund-raising dinner?"
He goes on to write that after his mooring fees were nearly tripled:
"Peter Tesei assured us all that nothing will be done this year and that the selectmen would delay enforcement of the new policies recommended by the committee. One week later, the new mooring fees went into effect. Huh?
"But this really isn't about the $100 mooring fee...This is about representation, which I believe is the core issue being raised by Lin Lavery. Yes, yes, she confused harbor master with dock master....But she is not wrong that there was a process of insider politics that infected the coastal advisory committee. It's insiders calling insiders with virtually no public oversight. And the guy we trusted to watch over this, Peter Tesei, was nowhere until the lid exploded."
Millstein ended by seconding Greenwich Time's endorsement of Lin Lavery with his own personal endorsement (again, Peter, never raise a newspaper executive's mooring fees in an election year. This is what can happen!):
I believe Lin Lavery will attempt to broaden engagement of the public in Greenwich across a significantly wider constituency. And I believe that engagement will be a good thing for Greenwich. She may not succeed. And I already know she doesn't know the difference between a harbor and a dock. But given the declining state of the town and its schools, I think it's worth a try - for a change.
Tuesday could definitely be Lin Lavery's day in Greenwich. She has the momentum, Greenwich Time has endorsed the entire Democratic slate for the first time in living memory, and even Hearst executive Lincoln Millstein has soured on the incumbent Republican, accusing him of "insider politics" and being nowhere until it all exploded. And if voters understand how badly Tesei botched the town's request for federal stimulus funds, Lavery could come out on top!
Republican cronyism was on full display on Friday afternoon at Greenwich Town Hall as Peter Tesei's hand-picked Republican "First Selectman's Committee on Coastal Management" held a press conference to denounce Democratic challenger Lin Lavery for her accusations of cronyism against Tesei. The problem was that of the committee's nine members, eight were Republicans put there by Tesei. One was unaffiliated; none was a Democrat. The committee even included John Raben, the chairman of Greenwich's Republican Town Committee. Four of the eight Republicans were listed as Tesei supporters on his website. And to show how the town's volunteer committees have been politicized since Tesei took over two years ago, it was Tesei's secretary who called the press conference for the committee.
The committee called a press conference to refute Lin Lavery's charge in a mailing this week that the Republican incumbent had engaged in cronyism. Indeed, it was Tesei who changed the job of harbormaster so that he would no longer be the director of parks and recreation. He then transferred money to his control and had a well-known local politician put on his payroll.
In fact, the coastal management committee displayed for all that cronyism in which Republican incumbent Tesei has been indulging for the past two years. While his Republican predecessor Jim Lash had been scrupulous in keeping sitting Republican and Democratic town committee members off the "Selectmen's Nominations Advisory Committee", which had been chaired by Lin Lavery, the very first nomination to that committee that Tesei made was David Theis, the vice chairman of the RTC. That led the SNAC's chairwoman Mary Ellen to protest the slide into partisanship.
Lin Lavery also sharply criticized Tesei for politicizing SNAC. Tesei contended that he was only putting Theis there because he was qualified for the job. Right!
Since Tesei came in, he's appointed sixty two people to town committees. Guess how many were Democrats? Three. Yep, in a town whose voter registration figures show Republicans with 38% and Democrats at 26%, virtually all of the members of the critical volunteer committees that do yeoman's work for the town are Republicans. And David Theis? He's Peter Tesei's running mate for selectman!
Tesei thought his crony-laden committee could get away with criticizing Lavery and pretending to be a town committee of concerned citizens indignant at her criticism. But thankfully Frank Farricker and Dave Roberson, Democratic Town Committee member and chairman respectively, got wind of it, showed up at the Gisborne Room of Town Hall and verbally cut loose with a flood of criticism. For all the reporters in attendance, Farricker unleashed a torrent of outrage on the assembled Republicans, exposing them for the cronies they were, recited how many of them were major Republican campaign donors, how many were participating in Tesei's campaign and left no one in attendance in any doubt that this was a cheap stunt by Tesei to use what was supposed to be a non-partisan volunteer committee to score political points against his Democratic opponent. Dave Roberson pointed out that this was an attempt to divert attention away from Tesei's having lost Greenwich a $1.5 million earmark for flood control, which he blamed on a town employee who wasn't even remotely responsible for that earmark or flood control. He's also trying to deflect criticism for having botched the town's request for federal stimulus funding. He only intended to ask for $17 million, while Bridgeport, with twice the population, asked for over a billion.
Since the mainstream newspapers no longer report on DTC meetings in Greenwich, it makes sense for the internet to pick up the slack! Here goes!
At last night's meeting of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee at Town Hall, Democratic Selectwoman Lin Lavery reported that the town had contacted Congressman Jim Himes (D-4CD) to help request federal funds from the federal stimulus package. Himes told her that Greenwich was the last town in his congressional district to contact him about federal help. Himes arranged to meet town officials to discuss eligible projects and to decide on those that would qualify. At first, Lin Lavery was excluded from the meeting by the Republican First Selectman Peter Tesei, only inviting Democrat Frank Farricker, who serves on the Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission. But Himes requested that Lavery be permitted to attend, and she was brought in to the meeting.
Mr. John Dunster
Publisher- Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate
Dear Mr. Dunster,
When Greenwich Time cleaned house a few weeks ago, we Democrats in this town hoped that the long era during which the newspaper actively denigrated and insulted Democrats might just come to an end. Sadly, we were wrong. One had only to glance at the December 3 edition of Greenwich Time to understand that dissing Democrats remains an honored tradition at the paper. That edition, under the front page headline "Inauguration day 2007", highlighted large color photos of the new Republican first selectman Peter Tesei and his family and, just below that, Republican selectman Peter Crumbine and his family. Where was Democratic selectman Lin Lavery's photo? Predictably, Greenwich Time buried her black-and-white photo showing her being sworn in by Connecticut's attorney general and Greenwich resident Richard Blumenthal on page four. Never mind the fact that Lavery soundly defeated Crumbine in their head-to-head race, winning in the process nine of the town's twelve electoral districts, and almost winning a tenth. In typical Greenwich Time style, she was predictably dissed by having her photo shunted into the paper's inner recesses.
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