GOP Longshot Says Voters Deserve A Choice

Only one steely-eyed door-opener interrupted Jim O’Connell mid-sentence Saturday, refused his flyer, and declared, ​“Sorry, I’m a stone Democrat.”

An occasional voter even promised to consider filling in his name on the Nov. 4 ballot.

That made it a good day — for a longshot Republican running against a 30-year incumbent Democrat state representative in a city that last sent a GOP candidate to Hartford in 2000.

The Republican candidate, Jim O’Connell (pictured above), said he knows he has very little chance of unseating incumbent Democratic State Rep. Pat Dillon in the 92nd General Assembly District with no money and no party apparatus helping him get out the vote.

But that didn’t stop the 61-year-old Sacred Heart High School science teacher from spending two hours on an overcast Saturday morning ringing doorbells and passing out his self-designed golden yellow flyers.

The district includes the Westville and Edgewood neighborhoods.

“If I skipped all of the houses where there might be Democrats, I wouldn’t handout very many flyers,” he said with a good-natured chuckle, though he did skip houses where there was obvious support for Democrats.

Bypass the house with the signs for U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro in the front yard. Ditto for the house with Obama bumper stickers on the cars.

Most of the time people don’t open their doors for O’Connell. But on Alden Avenue on Saturday, just two weeks and change ahead of Election Day, O’Connell got to make his case.

While most of the doors O’Connell knocked on remained decidedly closed, several people did open their doors, respectfully listen to him introduce himself, take his flyer and agree to give him the consideration he asked for when they head to the polls.

Two times, he was greeted like a long-lost friend.

“You look familiar,” Linda Couden (pictured) said. ​“Wasn’t your father an obstetrician?”

O’Connell’s father was in fact a well-known Westville obstetrician. It also turned out that O’Connell coached Couden’s daughter in softball.

When Couden discovered that she and O’Connell have teaching in the Catholic schools in common — she has taught for 45 years at St. Aedan School — her eyes lit up.

“Well, I can vote a split ticket,” she said. ​“Good luck to you!”

O’Connell said he’ll need that luck, too, even though it still might not help. District 92 is home to 13,000 voters. About 9,700 of them are registered Democrats. Only 460 are Republicans.

One voter gleefully accepted O’Connell’s flyer and promised to vote for him, then requested anonymity — confessing that he was a Republican in a Democrat’s clothes.

Before he moved to New Haven, the new O’Connell supporter was a hardcore local Republican activist, but he gave it all up because he ​“didn’t want to be bothered,” he said. He said he also is a registered Democrat because it helps him maintain relations with his neighbors.

“People look at you funny when you tell them you are a Republican,” he said.

O’Connell knows all about those funny looks. He said he’s running because he thinks voters deserve the option of another choice. His major criticism of State Rep. Dillon is that she has not challenged her fellow Democrats to hold the line on the state budget.

“Spending has increased 11 percent, and the Democrats voted the biggest tax increase [in 2011],” he said. ​“Democrats will try to blame that on their predecessors, but Ms. Dillon was there when these things happened.”

Asked about the criticism, Dillon was unapologetic about state spending, saying that as long as the dollars come back to New Haven, she supports spending. She said the reality is that many taxpaying businesses have moved outside the city, and that the city’s many not-for-profit organizations provide jobs to people who don’t pay taxes in New Haven. The state dollars that come back to the city support the regional role that the city plays and is no handout, she said.

O’Connell said if he were to unseat Dillon his main goal would be to help his fellow Republicans stop ​“one party’s abuse of power.” He also would be a voice pushing back against the full legalization of marijuana and assisted suicide. Dillon supported medical marijuana legislation and marijuana decriminalization, but said it is applied unfairly, resulting in people in some parts of the district being arrested for possession when people in other parts of the community are not. Dillon said she is not a vocal supporter of assisted suicide; she said she wants assurances of patient protection if such legislation gains traction.

No stranger to underdog politics, O’Connell has run for the Board of Alders ​“a few times.” He once ran against Mayor Toni Harp when she was a state senator.

He estimated that since September he’s walked between 15 and 20 miles, knocking on doors and leaving flyers around the 92nd District. By the time the campaign ends, he estimated, he will have left between 4,000 and 5,000 flyers at about 80 percent of the houses in the district.

“The tricky part is knowing where to put the flyer,” he said. Sometimes he can slip it through an old school mail slot, sometimes the screen door handle and other times he slides it as far as he can under the door.

Though he knows he’s a longshot, he said, he has been pretty disappointed that there haven’t been more forums for people to hear from candidates, most organizations already conceding that Democrats have the election in the bag again.

Nevertheless, O’Connell said, he will press on until the bitter end. He has lived in Westville much of his life. He said it would be fun to represent the neighborhood he grew up in.

But he’s not holding his breath.

“On election night, I will probably be standing out in front of a polling place,” he said. ​“But I haven’t made any plans for a victory party. By 8:05 p.m. I will be back in my house.”