New Haven Independent

“People were sick of dirty politics,” DaRos told a wildly enthusiastic group of supporters who had worked for months for this moment. Fran Walsh, DaRos’s running mate, won as Second Selectman. DaRos said his priority was first to heal the town and then to heal the Democratic Party, which had been torn apart by Mrs. Morris. She won as a Democrat two years ago but ran in this campaign as an Independent. .



The long election campaign proved two things: one was that the Morris-Marcus team won virtually no support from the electorate. Morris, the incumbent, received a shockingly low total, a mere 6.6 percent of the overall vote. The other is that despite what Opie viewed as a hard-hitting campaign, DaRos won by a surprisingly large margin of twenty percent.

As the results began to be read at the Opie gathering, silence replaced conversation. There were murmurs of “Not good.” There was no word from Morris’s headquarters. Earlier in the day she told officials at BCTV public television in Branford that she would not participate in the station’s coverage of the First Selectman’s race.

The Democrats also swept 21 of the 30 Representative Town Meeting seats. A sense of relief for the town enveloped the room as DaRos once again took the reins of Town Hall. He had served as First Selectman for three terms, from 1997 to 2003.

“I think the public has spoken, and that a clean campaign pays off,” he told the Eagle as well-wishers surrounded him, shaking his hand. He was referring to the campaigns run by both Morris and Opie, he said. “And that gives us confidence in the public, that the citizens of Branford have seen through all this stuff.

“We have a long way to go. We will pick up the pieces and move ahead,” DaRos said. “We have a lot of repair work to do. But the other thing is I know we have an awful lot of people I can depend on to come forward to do it and that is where our strength is.”

DaRos was a popular First Selectman. The first Selectman serves a two year term, and is the only full-time administrator on a three member Board of Selectman. Opie becomes the Third Selectman. DaRos’s annual salary is set at $89,281.

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