Republicans and conservatives in Connecticut may be feeling like all their friends are having a big party, but they are not invited.
While most states in the nation, even some in liberal New England, caught the Tea Party/conservative wave, Connecticut citizens sent all of their incumbent Democratic representatives back to Congress.
And, while Republicans did pick up 14 seats in the Connecticut state house and one in the state senate, the General Assembly will continue to be controlled by Democrats, as it has been for decades.
And, now, the only current, major Republican-held position, that of governor, will be filled by a Democrat as well. Six days after the election, Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Foley, a wealthy businessman, new to politics, conceded the race to Democratic candidate, Dan Malloy, the mayor of Stamford, following a ballot controversy.
The troubled ordeal of the governor's race began in the afternoon of election day, when about half of the city of Bridgeport's polling stations were discovered to be running out of ballots. It was determined that only 21,000 ballots had been ordered for 70,000 registered voters.
The election snafus continued with questionable decisions by Democratic Secretary of State, Susan Bysiewicz, who attempted to remedy the ballot shortage by photocopying blank ballots while waiting for new ones to be printed.
The Hartford Courant story which chronicled the election, indicates that the Malloy team, understanding that the close gubernatorial race could be decided in their favor in heavily Democratic Bridgeport, "arranged an emergency after-hours hearing in Superior Court in Hartford," in order to file a motion for a court order to keep Bridgeport polls open for an additional two hours in precincts where there had been a ballot shortage. Secretary Bysiewicz joined that motion, while Republican attorneys and the state attorney general's office opposed it, arguing that the ballot shortage was the consequence of incompetence.
However, at several minutes before 8:00 p.m. closing time for Connecticut's polls, Judge Mitchell Berger granted the emergency order for the extension of voting hours in Bridgeport.
Following the court order, the mayor of Bridgeport, Democrat William Finch, used the city's 911 emergency system, in reverse, to inform voters that the polls would remain open for an additional two hours in precincts with ballot shortages.
With the race so close, both candidates were expressing confidence well after midnight and into the net day. Secretary Bysiewicz displayed more of what the Wall Street Journal termed, "bizarre" behavior, by announcing "unofficial" election results: that Malloy had won the race by about 3,100 votes.
Two days after the election, a suspicious bag containing 335 photocopied and filled ballots was discovered in Bridgeport. Meanwhile, a video surfaced, taken by the Republican mayor of Vernon, Connecticut, who served as a poll-watcher in Bridgeport, and who observed people voting without identification, voters receiving more than one ballot, and ballots left unsecured at the polling place.
On Friday after election day, Mayor Finch reported that, in Bridgeport, the count showed Malloy had about 17,000 votes to Foley's 4,500. However, Foley was not prepared to concede based on yet another unofficial count, and suggested he might seek a judicial review of the results.
On Friday evening, Secretary Bysiewicz's office made yet another announcement, this one that Malloy had won by 5,637 votes, a margin that would not require a recount. Malloy essentially said the results confirmed what he already knew, but Foley expressed considerable discomfort with the results, and insisted he was not planning to concede until he was "certain that the will of the voters was honored."
At this point, the Republican candidate was sounding strong and decisive, adjectives that did not necessarily cling to him throughout the campaign. While he had been a couple of points ahead in the polls, he had been criticized for not putting out strong conservative views. Foley often appeared weak and ambiguous, with a few bright spots during debates with Malloy. In his literature, however, he demonstrated clear support of merit pay for teachers, school choice, and the need to confront the union pension problem. By contrast, Malloy had been supported by the powerful unions in the state.
Nevertheless, on Monday, November 8th, Foley delivered a somewhat surprising concession speech that was devoid of doubt about the results. Stating that he did not think he could make up a gap of about 6,000 votes, Foley said, "The election on Tuesday was a conclusive victory for Dan Malloy, and this result should not be questioned."
Foley said that his team had explored the possibility of asking for a precinct-by-precinct re-canvassing of the vote, but determined that, in the end, it would not change the outcome of the election.
Meanwhile, as Foley was conceding, Chris Healy, chair of the Connecticut GOP, and possible contender for national GOP chair Michael Steele's position, was referring to the situation in Bridgeport as a "complete farce" and a "circus," and announcing that his team would be asking federal and state authorities to formally investigate the election- in spite of Foley's decision.
In his concession speech, Foley stated, "what happened in Bridgeport should be looked into," but asserted that the rest of the state's counting seemed "very reliable."
However, the Republican candidate for Attorney General, Martha Dean, an experienced attorney with a constitutional law background, who had Tea Party support during her campaign, had a different view. On November 11th, in an interview with Dan Lovallo, a local talk show host in the state, Dean, who lost to a Democratic candidate, questioned the results of the election in Connecticut's other two major cities, Hartford and New Haven. Dean appears poised to investigate her hypothesis that illegal aliens are being given a pass to vote in Connecticut elections.
While Connecticut might be perceived as a "deep blue" state, Peter Raymond cites interesting statistics in an article, in American Thinker, about the questions surrounding the controversial election. In particular, he notes that, in the Bridgeport 2010 election, votes for the Republican gubernatorial candidate plunged by 64% from the ten-year average of Republican votes cast for governor. Even in 2006, the last gubernatorial election, Raymond reports that there were 51% more votes cast for the Republican candidate than this year.
In the wake of the election, it is clear that Governor-elect Dan Malloy is beginning his term amid controversy that is not ending quickly. Public hearings are being held in the city of Bridgeport to determine why the election took the path that it did. A fact that Malloy must also reckon with is that most people in Connecticut did not vote for him. The state actually had three candidates for governor. The third, Tom Marsh, originally elected as a Republican to his local position, announced his candidacy for governor on the Independent ticket in the spring. Marsh received 17,000 votes, enough, had he not triangulated the race, to have given Foley the win, assuming that most of those votes would have gone to the Republican candidate.
