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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.
In claiming victory, Peter Tesei was as nasty and condescending as he's been throughout the campaign:
"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.
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