John Gomes takes on the machine

                                             Opinion

  By Reginald Johnson

   BRIDGEPORT --- John Gomes, who hopes to unseat incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim in the city's special mayoral election on Tuesday, has written a powerful letter to the editor of the Connecticut Examiner, and everyone in Bridgeport should read it. https://ctexaminer.com/2024/02/24/more-coerced-endorsements-courtesy-of-party-boss-mario-testa/

 Gomes references the pressure that Bridgeport Democratic party boss Mario Testa placed on Connecticut's top elected officials, including Governor Ned Lamont, to secure their endorsement of Ganim. It’s alarming and depressing at the same time.

                   

Billboard for John Gomes, running for mayor of Bridgeport in Tuesday's special election. (Reginald Johnson photo.)

 The Ganim-Testa machine has been running things in Bridgeport for far too long. The results haven’t been good. It’s time for a change.

  Vote for Gomes on Tuesday. It will help not only Bridgeport, but Connecticut as well.

(For a more detailed look at why Gomes should be mayor, read my post "Bridgeport election: Time for a change" on January 21 in this blog).

Bridgeport election: Time for a change

 

                                                Opinion 

     By Reginald Johnson

       BRIDGEPORT --- The special primary election between incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim and challenger John Gomes will take place this Tuesday, January 23.

 The election is a do-over at the order of the court after a judge found numerous irregularities relating to absentee ballot usage in connection with the original primary in September.

 Given the overwhelming Democratic Party enrollment advantage in Bridgeport the winner of this primary will likely become the mayor for the next four years.

 It is the opinion here that John Gomes would be the better person to run the city for the next four years over Joe Ganim.

  I can’t say that I’ve followed every in an out of Bridgeport governmental actions and budgetary matters in recent years, nor do I know every detail about Gomes vs Ganim in terms of what they’ve done and what they stand for. But I do know a lot and, as B.B. King would say, I’ve been around, so I can talk credibly about some broad themes that I think are important.

 First, just in terms of the number of years Ganim has been leading the city, it's time for a change. Between the years in his first go-round, before his legal problems landed him in prison, and his last eight years that he’s been serving since his comeback, Ganim has been mayor for about 20 years. That’s a long time. It really shouldn’t be that long for anybody.  You need a fresh face from time to time with new ideas and new energies.

 New York City has a two-term limit on how long a mayor can serve and I think that’s a good idea. Presidents can serve no more than two terms. Elective positions in government are not supposed to be life-time jobs.

 But aside from that general principle of the need to have turnover after a certain period of time, there’s other reasons for saying it’s time for a change.

  While Ganim can point to some accomplishments in the city, and there have been some that he was responsible for, there’s a lot of areas during his long tenure where his performance has not met the mark. In fact in some respects, the record has been very poor.

 First, let’s talk about something that’s important to a lot of people in a working-class city like Bridgeport, which is as everyone knows is not a high income town. That's affordable housing.

 During the Ganim years a lot of housing has been torn down, both public housing and single-family housing, to make way for some hoped-for development or possibly new housing. Hundreds and hundreds of housing units have been wiped out. Very little has been built to make up for what has been lost.

 Now part of the problem there, is that vis a vis public housing, the federal government is not putting much money into public housing and the Bridgeport Housing Authority doesn’t have the resources to build a lot of new housing. They are building some but it doesn’t make up for what’s been lost.

 Now people may say that the mayor doesn’t have much to do with that, that’s a federal program. But he can be an advocate for more federal funding and push for more action by the public authority to do more with the resources available, and he really hasn’t done that.

  In the late 1990’s  Ganim, in the interest of building the baseball stadium (now gone to make way for the ampitheatre) and the arena and a possible hockey rink in the South End, had the old Marina Apartments worth of 100 units torn down. A short while after that the Pequonnock Apartments, a state run facility with 250 units, was razed. There was talk at the time that something would go in at the place of Pequonnock, possibly new housing or a mixed-use development.

 But here it is 20 years later and there is nothing on the Pequonnock site and nothing on the Marina site. In fact, the Pequonnock site, which I think is still state owned is being used as a parking lot for concerts at the ampitheatre. So here you have publicly-owned land where there was once affordable housing now being used as a parking lot for a concert venue and a private person is making money off of this arrangement.  That’s an outrage. Similarly, the Marina site stands empty.

 I have not heard any advocacy by Joe Ganim about building new low-income or affordable housing at those sites and not much anywhere else to make up for what was lost which is about 350 units there and hundreds more elsewhere.

 Some new housing is coming into Bridgeport, but it is almost all market rate. Translation --- it’s not affordable for most people in Bridgeport. New market rate housing usually means you start at $1900 for a one-bedroom unit and you go up to $2000, $2100 and often higher. Let’s say you’re a single person and you want to rent a new $2,000 apartment. Using the old rule of you pay 25% of your monthly income for housing that means you have to be making $8,000 a month. That means you have to be earning about $96,000 a year to afford one of those apartments as a single person.

  How many people in Bridgeport are making $96,000 a year? Not many.

 The average median income for a single person in Bridgeport is about $25,000. That’s far short of what’s required to pay for a new market rate one-bedroom unit. It’s also far short of what’s required to pay for even older, cheaper market units in the city.

  Even if you go by household income, most Bridgeport residents are going to find it very hard to buy the new market rate housing coming online. The median household income in Bridgeport is $47,000. With that kind of income you’ll have to pay 50% of your monthly income to buy one of the new units and that’s a one-bedroom.

So we have a shortage of affordable housing in the city and the question is what’s being done about it. Not much.

A mayor of this city should be raising hell with both the state and the federal government to provide the monies needed to put up this new housing that’s required. Ganim hasn’t done that and I think that Gomes will make an effort in that direction.

A second point about Ganim’s record. This has to do with the city’s heritage and its history. Over the years from what I’ve seen Ganim has not shown a lot of interest in preserving the city’s heritage. Many historic buildings have been torn down and there’s been little effort to restore remaining historic buildings including some that could be real gems for the city. 

 For instance, the old Majestic and Poli theaters in downtown have been sitting there languishing for years, decades really, and there’s been almost no effort that I can see from the Ganim administration to grab the bull by the horns and have these buildings restored and turned into something valuable. Years ago, I was lucky enough to take a tour of the inside of these theatres and they are really so impressive with gorgeous staircases, chandelier lights etc. These theatres could be a showcase for Bridgeport in the downtown. But there’s been very little movement to do anything about them and this is truly a waste.

  I’ve been told that there’s not much state money available to work with but it seems to me that if the mayor and the state delegation pounded the drums hard enough they could get some money. I don’t think there’s any been any effort either, to bring in possible private money to do this work.

 Meanwhile, the city of Waterbury renovated their old theaters, similar to what Bridgeport has, and they have become a mecca for people coming into that city to see various forms of entertainment.

Other historical buildings have been needlessly torn down during the Ganim years. One case that I found particularly irksome and that shows how bad the planning has been during the Ganim years, was the decision to allow an auto parts dealer to come in and buy up the old Sanborn library, a beautiful architectural building in the West End, tear it down and build an auto parts store.

The zoning commission allowed this and of course Ganim said nothing about it. It was heartbreaking to see such a lovely building with beautiful columns in the front and a brick façade just leveled to make way for an auto parts operation. It was particularly stupid given the fact that there’s already an auto parts store several blocks down on State Street. The Sanborn building, with a little creativity and a little drive could’ve been turned into something useful to house either some small commercial offices or maybe make space for some nonprofit. A beautiful piece of architecture could have been saved.

                        

The city allowed the old Sanborn library to be torn down to make way for a new auto parts store, even though another auto parts store is a few blocks away. (Reginald Johnson photo)

  And what has happened to the Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses in the South End? These historic buildings which were part of the early Native American and African-American community called Little Liberia are on the National Register of Historic Places. They were supposed to be restored but nothing is happening. The structures sit there getting more dilapidated by the year.

 Again, if this restoration took place it could be a real draw for tourists coming to the city and would add to Bridgeport’s attractions. But under the present administration there doesn’t seem to be much interest in getting this project done.

So the record on preserving Bridgeport’s history by Mr. Ganim has been very poor.

Onto a third area --- lack of transparency in government.

 As long as I have known him, Ganim likes to operate in secret and behind closed doors. He doesn’t seem to like to work collaboratively with people. I could be wrong on this but I just haven’t seen it. He doesn’t seem to want to get input from the community on anything. He doesn’t go to community meetings. I was following the school board for several years up until the Covid crisis hit and I never saw him attend any of the board sessions. I did see former Mayor Bill Finch attend at least one.

  I did try to reach the mayor on a few occasions about some fairly serious issues that I was writing about on my blog and I could never get through.

 Ironically enough, I did get a call from him the other night asking for my vote on Tuesday. That is the first time that I’ve talked with him in years. I don’t think he remembered who I was and I think he was just going down a list of registered Democratic voters and he decided to give my name a call. Not wanting to get into a long debate with him I told him that I was undecided how I planned to vote. He said “Oh” and that was the end of the conversation.

  I’ve heard other people complain as well that Ganim does not get out to the public enough. He doesn’t seem to want to have a spotlight put on what his administration is doing and that really isn’t good.

 Then there’s the issue of integrity in government and integrity in elections. This has been a problem with Ganim and his administration even though the mayor has not been involved in any criminal illegal activity that we know of, as he was back in the ‘90s. Obviously the prime example of the at least moral corruption of this administration is the way they have apparently been trying to fix elections through absentee ballot fraud.

Absentee ballot chicanery has been going on in Bridgeport for a long time and I believe Ganim and others in the Democratic Party have used the absentee ballot process improperly to win a number of elections.

  Hopefully the state investigations that are underway now will put an end to these improprieties. But it certainly would be very helpful if John Gomes was the mayor because I think a lot of these types of problems would go away. I know there are critics of Gomes who said that he and his camp have played similar games but I don’t think that any of that possible misconduct has risen to the level of what the Ganim people have been doing.

  One other thing and this is a particular beef for me. What is this business of dumping millions of taxpayer dollars into the amphitheater and then not putting "Bridgeport" on the name of the facility? Our city is investing millions of dollars so that this new concert site can be successful and yet and still the name of the venue is called “Hartford Healthcare” amphitheater. Memo to Joe Ganim: we are in Bridgeport not Hartford!

 It is galling to me that so much public subsidy from the hard-pressed taxpayers of this city is going into that facility and the city’s name cannot be at the top of the building. I know the city is making money on these so-called naming rights but I still find it to be an outrage that the administration and the City Council allowed the name of Hartford and not Bridgeport to be at the top of this amphitheater.

****************************************************************

 So I think there’s a need for a fresh start in Bridgeport. Gomes is by no means perfect. Some people have raised legitimate concerns about his record but I think overall, he is a good candidate. I like what I see on his website with the various ideas that he’s pushing, including bolstering education funding and having more transparency in government. I get the feeling as well that he’ll try to be much more in touch with the community than Ganim has been.

  I’m also impressed by a lot of the people who are working with him and trying to get him elected because I know they do care about the welfare of the Bridgeport community. They include people like Maria Pereira, Bob Halstead, Pete Spain and the group Bridgeport Generation Now. That support group speaks well for Gomes.

  So Gomes is my pick for Tuesday and hopefully Bridgeport can turn the turn the page on the Ganim years and move forward.

     

 

  

 

 

 

 

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Ganim is back, and so is Testa

                    

   By Reginald Johnson                  

               

      BRIDGEPORT ---- Fascinating piece recently in the Connecticut Post about the city’s resident kingmaker, Mario Testa.

        At the election-night victory party for Joe Ganim --- who had just completed a remarkable political comeback by winning the mayoral election in Connecticut's largest city --- reporter Brian Lockhart got Testa, the chairman of the Democratic Town Committee, to open up about his long-standing support for Ganim, and how he (Testa) sees a rather large role for himself in running city government.

       When I read the comments by Testa,  the word “hubris” kept coming to mind.

   Testa revealed that despite his public claims about being neutral during the 2015 mayoral campaign, he was working behind the scenes for a full two years to bring Ganim back and unseat incumbent Mayor Bill Finch.

     Ganim had been mayor from 1991 to 2003, before leaving the mayor’s office in disgrace after the FBI found out he was running a wide-ranging corruption scheme. Following his conviction on 16 felony counts, Ganim served seven years in prison, and was released in 2010.

   It’s unusual and not exactly kosher for a town committee chairman to be working secretly to undo the top elected official in the city, a person who is from the same political party.  The actions by Testa are all the more brazen when one considers that he was trying to replace a mayor who was basically pointing the city in the right direction with someone who had been involved in a major corruption scandal and went to prison for it.

   But Mario Testa apparently doesn’t care. He has always believed he has a lot of power, and also believes he can do things other people dare not to.

  Testa maintained that he turned on Finch because the mayor and his staff were not consulting him enough on political matters.

   “If Bill Finch would have respect for the chairman, he would still be the mayor,” Testa said in the Post interview.

   Testa also said he urged Finch to reach out to the minority community more, to party district leaders in black and Latino neighborhoods, and that wasn’t done.

   Testa has a point here; the administration could have reached out more to minorities, and Finch in the end paid a price. Ganim got strong support from blacks and Latinos in the primary election, when Ganim upset Finch.

 

   But the Post story indicated the town committee boss wants to be heard not just on political matters, but on City Hall policy issues as well. This was apparently another source of friction with Finch.

   This is a key point. I know that going back to the years of  Ganim’s first administration, there were a number of people who said privately that Testa was included in a lot of key decisions, including who to hire and who to appoint.

  Testa will surely regain this important behind-the-scenes role now that Ganim is back at the helm in City Hall. Since Testa played a central role in helping Ganim mount his comeback, it’s highly unlikely Ganim would now suddenly keep Testa out of the loop on key matters.

   So what you have here is a man who wields a tremendous amount of influence in how the city is run, although he never got this power through a public election or appointment. And Testa doesn’t have to answer to the public for anything he does. There’s no accountability.

    This is a very troubling situation and one which a lot of people in this city have wanted to change for some time.

   Now, it looks like they’re going to have to wait some more before this situation changes.

  Ganim will be sworn in as mayor on Dec. 1, and has a four-year term.

    

  

Bridgeport Voters: We Want Ganim

  

                                         

  By Reginald Johnson 

    

         BRIDGEPORT, CT ---- Well, there you have it. The voters of Bridgeport have spoken. A majority of them --- about 60 percent --- think it's OK to send a 16-count felon back into the mayor’s chair to handle their tax money, money that’s raised through one of the highest tax rates in the nation.

           Unbelievable, and very dismaying, to put it mildly.

            Joe Ganim completed his improbable comeback by smooth-talking a lot of voters and telling mistruths about how he would do better on taxes and crime and create more jobs. He also may have done some other things to help his campaign, and maybe that will come out in the wash.

           The Democratic Party nominee for mayor trounced his chief opponents in the election, Republican Enrique Torres and Independent Democrat Mary-Jane Foster.

          Ganim, who ran Connecticut’s largest city from 1992-2003 before being driven from office in disgrace following his conviction on corruption charges, will now become mayor on December 1, taking over from outgoing Mayor Bill Finch. Ganim will have a four-year term.

       There’s a lot of things that jump out about this election cycle --- taking in both the main election from Tuesday and the September primary, in which Ganim upset Finch, who served as mayor the last eight years.

     First is the way Ganim was able to fool people with a lot of phony claims about what he did and what he could do. He maintained that “crime is out of control” in the city, which comparatively, is not so. He claimed he could do better. But during several years in the 1990s, gangs were out of control in this city, and shootings and murders were constant. While homicide totals did decline later on under Ganim, they still counted at 19 for the year 2000, eight years into Ganim’s administration. (This year, with less than two months to go, Bridgeport homicides stand at 15).

 Also for the year 2000, there were 1,984 violent crimes in Bridgeport, according to FBI figures.

    Those FBI figures don’t exactly portray a city that was good on crime during Ganim’s tenure.

  It also should be noted that to the extent that violent crime did go down in the Ganim years, much was due to the assistance given local police by the FBI, State Police and ATF in curbing gangs. Crime was also going down nationally, not just in Bridgeport. Ganim’s policies had little to do with cutting crime in this city.

  (The great irony here, of course, is we are talking about stats for violent crime and street crime, not a certain kind of white-collar crime in City Hall, which, it turned out, was going on quite a bit during the Ganim years.)

  Then there’s taxes. Ganim claimed he did better on taxes when he was mayor, and promised that if elected he could help city taxpayers. It is true that Ganim was able to cut taxes in the 1990s, but it was a much better time economically to do it than now. Real estate values in the city were rising, and the state and national economy were strong. It was much easier then to raise revenue than today, and to hold off on any tax increases.

   Since 2007, real estate prices in Bridgeport have plummeted as much as 50 percent due to the national economic slump. Values have still not recovered. So today, city officials have a reduced tax base from which to raise revenue. That’s one of the reasons why the mill rate remains high, around 42 mills (that means $42 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value).

  The mill rate in Bridgeport has been hovering around 41-42 for a number of years. With property values down and a very tight city budget, exactly how is Joe Ganim going to bring down taxes? The best he’s going to do is tweak the mill rate a little bit.

   If the hard-pressed homeowners of Bridgeport are hoping for significant tax relief under Ganim, it ain’t gonna happen.

   It would have helped in this election cycle if the Connecticut Post had done some good issue stories on the mayoral candidates, explaining what their positions were and analyzing the validity of their claims about their record, and weighing the chances of these candidates being able to fulfill their promises. Ganim’s claims on taxes and crime should have been probed.

  Too much of the Post coverage was about the horse race, the chess match, who’s angling for what, blah, blah. Not enough about issues.

   In every election, people always vote a lot out of economic self-interest, but in Bridgeport, this tendency is very pronounced. There’s always a lot of folks who determine their vote based on whether they or a family member are going to get a job in City Hall, or their union or company is going to get a favorable contract from a certain candidate. I think a lot of people saw Ganim as being a benefactor for them with a job or a contract, in the same way he was years ago. Some were hoping to get back what they had lost under Finch.

  Exhibit A for this fact is the Bridgeport police union. You wouldn’t think that a police group would consider backing a person with a serious criminal record to be mayor, but they decided to endorse Ganim. This was due to Finch’s move to cut police union benefits, and the shortage of police staffing in the Finch administration.

   What’s disappointing here is that the police had the option of backing two candidates who had no legal baggage, and might have worked with them on their concerns --- Foster or Torres. Why did their choice have to be Ganim?

   The final thing that jumped out was the turnout for this general election. It wasn’t very good --- about 34 percent.  This is low for a general election. Given the historic nature of this contest, you would have thought about 50 percent of registered voters, possibly more, would have shown up. Instead, about 20,000 people went to cast ballots, out of about 60,000 registered voters in the city (2014 figures).

   Where were the others? Don’t they care?

   So the results show 11,198 people voted for Ganim. That means just over 11,000 people decided the future direction of Bridgeport, which has 150,000 people.

  But this is democracy, and you get what you get. If you don’t get involved, don’t complain later on.

 I always liked Ralph Nader's line: "If you're turned off by politics, politics will turn on you."

  Ganim claims he has turned over a new leaf. I’m definitely skeptical.  But nonetheless, let’s hope he has. He told Channel 12 after his victory speech Tuesday night that he would provide “the most transparent administration” in Bridgeport history. That is quite a promise, given the fact that he ran a very secretive administration the first time around.

    But if Ganim does run an open administration, and makes an honest effort to build a better city, I will be the first to congratulate him. I hope I’ll have that chance.

  

  

 

     

     

   

Ganim Stuns

                                       

By Reginald Johnson

  BRIDGEPORT ---- I’m sorry. This is hard to comprehend.

  Joe Ganim, he of 16 felony convictions for corruption during his time as mayor in the 1990s and an alumni of federal prison, has won the support of a majority of Democrats voting in a primary to be their standard bearer in the general election for mayor in November.

   Huh? Is this incredible or what?

  Ever since Wednesday night when it was becoming apparent that Ganim was going to beat out incumbent Mayor Bill Finch and businesswoman Mary-Jane Foster for the Democratic Party nomination, I’ve been trying to figure this out. It hasn’t been easy.

  I saw the vote totals come up on the board on Channel 12 and I saw Ganim ahead with well over 5,000 votes. Finch also had over 5,000, but was behind by about 200-300. Then I saw the joyous people at the Ganim election party --- at Testo’s Restaurant of course --- people smiling, laughing and hugging Joe Gamin. Ganim had just declared victory.

   I thought, are these people delusional? What are they thinking?

  What is it about Joe Ganim or what did he do or say in his campaign that is so compelling that people would just wipe away his outrageous record as mayor --- being involved in one of the worst municipal corruption scandals in New England history --- and decide to back him?

  I went over in my mind the various possible reasons. Angst over high taxes. Yes, that’s a reason to be upset with the incumbent, though taxes weren’t exactly low during the Ganim years. Another is Finch’s personality.  Finch can be spiteful and sometimes arrogant, which showed during the Board of Education takeover plan. His persona turned a number of people off.

 And then there’s the police union. Police were upset over contract cuts and staffing shortages in the Finch years. OK, those are reasonable complaints, too. That’s a lot of votes there, between union members and their spouses, brothers and sisters.

 But here’s the $64 question. Why, if you’re upset with Finch for those reasons, would you make the leap and go for someone so tarnished by corruption as Ganim, when there’s a viable alternative in the race, in Mary-Jane Foster?

  Foster was a good candidate, no political baggage, and a proven executive and business person.

   Why would so many people just pass her over, and opt for Ganim?

  I don’t know for sure, but I think there probably two key factors.  First is, a lot of the people going for Ganim were angry over having lost something during the Finch years, something they had in the Ganim years. A job, a position, a title, a program that was lost. A good number of people are in this category and some of them had legitimate beefs. It looks as if these folks were willing to set aside the memory of Ganim’s corruption, because Joe was the guy that was going to make things right, because he did it before, not Foster. This was the guy that was going to float their ship.

  The other thing at work, I believe, was that Ganim pandered successfully to the black community, making lots of promises and glossing over his record. He got a lot of votes from the African-American community. He demagogically played on the public safety issue, blaming Finch for crime in black neighborhoods, when actually crime rates in the city are down. Ganim of course conveniently didn’t tell people that violent crime rates were much worse during his years as mayor. (Remember the “Phoenix Barriers”?)

  He also wasn’t about to tell people that his record on affordable housing  --- another issue very important to many blacks --- was terrible. In the Ganim years, hundreds of units of housing were torn down, with minimal replacement.

    Many blacks were apparently sympathetic to Ganim’s plea for redemption. ‘I did wrong, I served my time, now I want a second chance.’ I think blacks related to that because possibly they knew someone who went to jail, and then came out, and needed a second chance to right themselves. During interviews I did around the city, I heard “he deserves a second chance” several times from black residents.

   There may be other reasons that factored in the primary result, some possibly that could come out from investigations. We’ll just have to see.

  In meantime, it’s shaping up for the general election as Joe Ganim, Democrat, versus Rick Torres, Republican, and Bill Finch, who said he will stick it out and run on a third party ticket, and possibly Foster and others on independent tickets as well.

   Ganim, now the Democratic nominee, has to be favored in this city which usually elects the Democratic Party nominee for mayor.

   Whatever Finch’s flaws, I think the city was basically headed in the right direction the last few years. What happened yesterday was a step backwards.


MEDIA NOTES

   A few thoughts on media coverage of the primary race. Basically, it wasn’t very good.

  The Connecticut Post, the main vehicle for coverage, did a fairly good job with breaking news on the campaign. Brian Lockhart is a good reporter, though he tends to over featurize his stories. Everything reads like a column. But overall, not a bad job on regular campaign news.

   My chief complaint is where the paper placed stories related to the campaign and Finch’s administration, and not doing some larger stories on the race. I don’t know whether the paper was bending over backwards to look impartial, or whether they were just teed off at Finch over transparency issues, but they wound up underplaying some news stories that happened to make Finch look good.

  

Recently, the Hampton Inn chain announced they were going to build a Hampton Inn at Steel Point. This is a major development. A top hotel coming to town --- the first in about 30 years --- well, that’s a big story. It deserves Page 1. But instead it was placed inside the paper. Why?

Downtown developer Phil Kuchma also had a major announcement recently that he was beginning a Phase II in his downtown development. That’s also big. But the Post ran it inside.

 I didn’t get every single paper over the last six months, so maybe I missed this. But there should have been a large, blow-out piece on Joe Ganim. He was mayor for 12 years, and so much happened in this period. The Post should have detailed what he did, both legally and illegally, both the good and the bad. The controversial zoning cases, the demolitions, the fight over the Juvenile Detention Center, the construction of the Bluefish stadium and the Arena, the secrecy of his administration, and finally the corruption cases themselves.

 People who weren’t around needed to be informed, and others needed to be reminded.

But as far as I know, no such a piece ever appeared.

  Also, the Post created the feeling in this race that the real battle was just between Finch and Ganim. Foster got second fiddle. There should have been more equal coverage all the way around.

  Finally, the Post should have dug into some of the claims of irregularities going on during the campaign --- issues about questionable petition signatures, absentee ballots, and so on. The Post, owned by the huge Hearst Newspapers Corporation, could have put the resources into play to do this, but they didn’t. Instead, they left it to state investigators to probe the complaints, and there will be no results for months. When results are announced, the election will have come and gone, and the issue will be a moot point for most voters.

  That's too bad, because voters should get critical information about verified wrongdoing before an election, not after.

Bridgeport Primary Battle

 By Reginald Johnson

    

    BRIDGEPORT --- The most hotly-contested Democratic mayoral primary in years will be decided this Wednesday, and by all appearances the vote may be very close.

    Incumbent Mayor Bill Finch, the party-endorsed candidate is trying to fend off a strong challenge from the city’s former mayor, Joseph Ganim, and businesswoman and University of Bridgeport executive Mary Jane Foster.

    Finch has been mayor for eight years and is seeking a third term; Ganim was the mayor for 12 years from 1991 to 2003, and then was forced out following his conviction on corruption charges; Foster is trying for a second time to be elected mayor following her defeat at the hands of Finch in 2011.

    The biggest story in this election has clearly been the comeback bid by Ganim and his attempt to oust Finch, a one-time ally when Ganim was mayor and Finch was a state senator representing part of Bridgeport.

 For someone with such a tainted record, Ganim has shown surprising strength. Ganim has raised over $200,000 for his campaign in a short period and fell just a few votes short of landing the Democratic Town Committee endorsement for mayor in July.

   But Finch has countered with a substantial fundraising effort of his own, amassing over $500,000 for his reelection effort. He also has won the support of the city’s business community and backing of high-ranking state elected officials, like Gov. Dannel T. Malloy.

  Foster has raised about $70,000 for her campaign, far less than her opponents. But she is waging a determined campaign and may be getting some traction with her pledge that she will bring integrity to City Hall, which has been rocked by so many corruption and ethics scandals over the years.

    Whoever wins the primary will be the favorite to be Bridgeport’s next mayor --- given the Democrats’ huge edge here in voter enrollment --- although City Councilman Rick Torres, the Republican candidate for mayor, will certainly have something to say about the outcome of the general election.

  This reporter drove around the city and conducted some random interviews to try to get a feel for how this contest is going.

  The first thing that jumps out is that, despite his prison past, Joe Ganim has significant support. Joe Ganim lawn signs have sprouted in every neighborhood. People who own the homes where those signs are located, particularly black residents, say the former mayor did a lot of good things for the city and shouldn’t be remembered just for his illegal acts.

    “He paid his dues. He deserves a second chance,” said Janet Adams, who is black and lives on Anton Street.  “All politicians do it,” said Adams of Ganim’s illegal activities. “He just got caught.”

   

A Joe Ganim lawn sign near Testo's Restaurant on Madison Avenue. The restaurant is owned by Democratic Town Committee Chairman Mario Testa.

 

    Echoing the sentiment of forgiveness was Jeanette, a black resident on Hughes Avenue in the West Side. “He’ll be on his best behavior,” she said of Ganim, should he be elected.

   The West Side resident said in addition to rolling back high taxes, she wanted a mayor who will be tougher on crime. “Safety means a lot to me,” she said, noting that her boyfriend is a city police officer.

   The Bridgeport police union, angered over contract cuts and staff shortages under Finch, has endorsed Ganim.

   Mark, a white resident of Golden Rod Avenue also thought Ganim would never try any tricks this time because “everyone will be watching.”

  Standing near a “Stop Raising Taxes – Vote Joe Ganim” sign in his front yard, Mark added, “Finch has raised taxes every year since he was elected.”  He also credited Ganim with “getting the city moving again.”

  But the tour also showed considerable support for Mayor Finch. “Bill Finch” lawn signs are as widespread as Ganim’s. People say that Finch deserves credit for finally getting the Steel Point development off the ground and building new schools.

  “For Steel Point alone, he deserves to be re-elected,” said Dennis Scinto, a homeowner on Madison Avenue, about the mayor.

   Scinto, a Democratic Party district leader and city sheriff, rebutted those who say Finch has raised taxes too much. “Taxes haven’t gone up that much. They go up everywhere. I was in Stratford the other day and people are complaining over there about higher taxes,” he said.

Bill Finch, Bridgeport's incumbent mayor, is facing a strong challenge in Wednesday's Democratic primary.

  Scinto, a one-time member of the city council during the Ganim years, refrained from harshly criticizing Ganim. All the same, he said he’s still upset over what happened with the Stop and Shop Supermarket. That store, now an empty hulk, was built in the 1990s opposite his house on the other side of Madison Avenue, in the middle of a residential zone.

  Despite bitter opposition from the neighborhood, the Planning and Zoning Commission under Ganim awarded a special permit to Ganim’s favored developer, Al Lenoci (who later went to jail), to break the zone and build the store. The store lasted about 12 years.

   “Whenever I open my door in the morning, I look out and see this empty building,” said Scinto. “That’s Joe Ganim.”

  John Soltis, a long-time Democrat who lives in Black Rock, said he backed Finch because “he’s done a good job, and he’s the best candidate.”

  

   Soltis, a city employee, said Bridgeport will suffer from a “perception problem” if Ganim becomes mayor again.

  “If you’re a developer and you have a choice between Norwalk and Bridgeport, and Ganim is mayor, where are you going to go?” Soltis said.

   Ed Gomes, a state senator from Bridgeport and a veteran political and labor activist, is backing Foster.

   “Mary Jane Foster has integrity and honesty. She has the best interests of the people of the city of Bridgeport,” Gomes said.

Mary Jane Foster is stressing integrity in her campaign to win the Democratic Party mayoral primary in Bridgeport.

   Finch has failed in some key areas and Ganim is unsuitable as a mayoral choice, due to his record, he said.

   “Finch promised a $600 tax break when he started. It never materialized. The he raised taxes four separate times,” said Gomes.

   He also said that Finch is unduly taking credit for the Steel Point and school-rebuilding program. The groundwork for those projects was done over many years by a lot of different people, Gomes said.

   On Ganim, Gomes said, the former mayor does deserve an opportunity to turn his life around. “But there’s other ways for him to restore his life besides being mayor,” he said.

   “Foster will restore trust in our city government,” he said.

 

   

   

Ganim over Finch? Really?

   Opinion           

   

    By Reginald Johnson

      

   BRIDGEPORT --- It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this city that a lot of people are so dismayed with incumbent Mayor Bill Finch that they are supporting ex-mayor and ex-con Joe Ganim to become the city’s next chief elected official.

     A Monday article in the Connecticut Post said that the contest for the endorsement from the Democratic Town Committee for the Democratic mayoral nomination was now a “dead heat” between Finch and Ganim. The DTC holds its endorsement session Tuesday night.

   This is incredible. The idea that Joe Ganim could secure the Democratic nomination and then be the odds-on pick to be elected as mayor of Connecticut’s largest city (due to the overwhelming Democratic Party edge in enrollment in Bridgeport) is mind-boggling.

  Let’s be blunt. Joe Ganim cheated this city, badly.  In the 1990s, he ran a sickening “pay to play” scheme in City Hall, was convicted for his crimes, and spent seven years in prison as a result.

  Contrary to a widely-held view that, despite the corruption, Ganim got the city moving again with the construction of the Bluefish stadium and the arena, Ganim actually held the city back. Because of his conniving, favoring certain developers and turning off others, a lot of development that could have taken place, did not.

  Remember that the 1990s, unlike now, was a much better time economically. There was more money available from the state, and more money to leverage with banks for different projects. A lot of that potential was squandered.

   Ganim also ran an administration that ran roughshod over people in the neighborhoods. Public housing was torn down in the South End --- worsening the city’s affordable housing stock --- to make way for the stadium and arena. The plans for those projects were rushed through and the public had little input.

  Going businesses were rudely forced out of their downtown locations, in the name of some future development, development that never came.

   Zoning principles were violated in the North End, when an application by favored developer Al Lenoci to construct a Stop and Shop in the middle of a residential neighborhood, was rammed through the planning and zoning commission. (That store is now closed, and sits as an empty hulk off Madison Avenue).

  I could go on, but you get the point. There’s a lot on the negative side of the ledger when it comes to Joe Ganim as mayor.

  If  Joe Ganim has “found religion” since his incarceration, I’m not aware of it. I am not even sure if he apologized for his crimes, if he ever showed contrition. If he did, I missed it.

 This is not to back-handedly paint Bill Finch as some kind of saint. He’s not. He also has a sensitivity issue, not listening to people and turning on those who oppose him with a vengeance.  

  

 His drive for mayoral control of the school board was a sorry chapter and I think turned a lot of people off. That plan, plus the support for more charter schools, is bad educational policy. But it should be noted that the idea of overhauling public schools and moving to more charters is something that is being pushed nationally by the leaders of the Democratic Party. Finch didn’t cook up this idea on his own.

    Finch has done some good things environmentally, such as supporting fuel cell development in the city. But there’s the bad, too. Community gardens --- which are thriving in cities like New Haven --- are languishing here, due to lack of funding and lack of direction.(By way of disclosure, I am a member of one of the gardens).

  Finch this year brought in a firm from Westport to oversee the gardens, but not much is happening. It was a slap in the face to Bridgeporters that an out-of-town group had to be brought in to tell us how to manage gardens. The head of the Westport firm reportedly gave a donation to Finch’s campaign.

   It’s clear that Finch has some real issues as mayor, and I don’t blame people for being upset for different reasons.

  But to be so upset to the point of backing someone who cheated the citizens of this city, engaged in illegal acts and hurt Bridgeport badly, I don’t get it.

  Joe Ganim? Come on.

 This may be one of those years, and they don’t come along very often in Bridgeport,  when a Republican should get a look for mayor. While I have little use for GOP policies nationwide, sometimes a local Republican can do a good job here. Leonard Paoletta, who ran the city very well in the 1980s, comes to mind.

  Enrique Torres anyone?

    

  

No Time for Political Posturing

Commentary

                                       

By Reginald Johnson

       

    BRIDGEPORT ---- It was about 12 hours after the horrific act of violence on Thursday morning, in which nine people were shot, one fatally, at the Trumbull Gardens low-income housing project.

   I had heard about the shooting after I got up on Thursday, and was watching Channel 12 for updates. I saw Mayor Bill Finch at the scene expressing his sympathy for the victims and their families and talking about what steps he was taking to curb crime.  Police Chief Joseph Gaudett was also on hand to give a statement, and housing officials gave comments as well.

   This is all entirely understandable that the chief elected official of the city, his police chief and other key officials would show up on the scene after such a terrible incident had occurred.

   This is one of the worst cases of violence in Bridgeport in a while, and the mayor in particular had to reassure people about what was happening to stop further violence. I thought Finch was good, although he went on a bit too long about the value of one of the the violence prevention programs he set up, the “Street-Safe” program whereby older men, some reformed convicts, work with young men in the neighborhood, counsel them, and steer them away from crime. I thought, if this program is so good, it sure as heck didn’t work in this case.

The Trumbull Gardens housing project in Bridgeport. One person was killed and eight people wounded in a mass shooting last week outside one of the buildings.

   But what really threw me off was what I saw when I decided to ride up to Trumbull Gardens a couple of hours later and take a look around.

  Driving down Trumbull Avenue through the center the complex, I saw a crowd with TV cameras all around. There was a guy in the middle, white shirt and tie, waving his hands and talking as if he was holding a press conference. Then I felt sick to my stomach. It was Joe Ganim, former mayor Bridgeport.

   This is the same Joe Ganim who about 15 years ago was engaging in a variety of corrupt schemes, making deals with friendly developers at the expense of people in the neighborhoods, tearing down acres of affordable housing and running a very secretive administration throughout.

   Fortunately, the feds were onto Ganim’s antics, he was nailed for his crimes, and went to prison. Served a good long term, I think about eight years.

  Now, a la Buddy Cianci down in Providence, Ganim wants to make a comeback. He’s running for mayor again. A disbarred lawyer, he tried to get his law license back after leaving prison, and was most appropriately turned down. (The idea of a lawyer turned felon being given his license back after serving time is truly absurd).

 But now lots of years have gone by, and I suppose Ganim is counting on the people of Bridgeport forgetting his bad deeds, and remembering some of the successes --- including the construction of the baseball stadium and the arena -- and also on a certain amount of anti-Finch sentiment out there.

  Ganim certainly has a right to run. He has paid for his crimes, and by all accounts, serving time in prison is a miserable experience. I’m not questioning his right to run or to have a decent livelihood. But I am questioning whether he has changed.

  I didn’t like what I saw yesterday. It seemed like classic Ganim, while the cameras are rolling, you make a splash. The mayor of the city had just been there, the crime was still only 12 hours old, and all the press was there.

   It wasn’t as if Ganim said, ‘after this has settled down, maybe in a couple of days, I’ll come out and talk to people about possible ideas for combating crime.’ I would have respected that. The problem is, there would have been no cameras.

  Ganim told the Connecticut Post he knew some of the victims, and wanted to set up a vigil that day. Really. Two hours after the mayor was there.

  There were vigils at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Bridgeport Hospital, and I don’t have a problem with Ganim attending them.

  But for candidate Ganim to set up a vigil at Trumbull Gardens not long after his rival the mayor had been there --- only 12 hours after a terrible tragedy --- struck me as not sincere, politically expedient and inappropriate.

  I’m particularly skeptical about Ganim’s intentions, since he did so precious little for low-income neighborhoods like Trumbull Gardens when he was mayor. I know it’s said some black leaders liked him, but I knew some community activists who didn’t like him and felt he didn’t listen to them. As said, he razed hundreds of low-income units to build projects that quite frankly, the public had little say in.

  But now he’s got religion.

 I’ll conclude by saying I am not a great fan of Bill Finch as mayor, although he’s a decent guy in person. I am open about who to like for mayor, and could support an independent or even a Republican.

   But unless Joe Ganim starts making people walk on water, I know that’s one person I won’t cast a ballot for.