Marcia Chambers Photo
Under breezy, sunny skies Democrats Mark Rabinowitz and Jack Ahern kicked off their first major campaign event for first selectman and selectman yesterday as the Dems went door-to-door introducing themselves to potential voters.
Rabinowitz, a longtime former elementary school principal, and Ahern, the town’s recently retired fire chief, are each running for public office for the first time. They were joined on the campaign trail by more than 35 Democrats who fanned out across the seven electoral districts.
At their destinations the candidates met the voters and, if home, gave them a card introducing themselves. If no one was home, they left the card for voters. Their motto: “Proven Leadership for Branford.”
They are running against Republican incumbent First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove and Selectman Joe Higgins, Jr. in the Nov. 3 municipal election and Jacey Wyatt, an Independent, who is seeking the town’s top spot. Click here to read about Wyatt.
Cosgrove’s team roundly defeated the Democrats in the last election, taking control of Town Hall and the Representative Town Meeting.(RTM) The Eagle plans to accompany Cosgrove and Wyatt as they meet voters in upcoming weeks. Click here to read about Cosgrove’s nomination.
The aim of the Democratic Party is to give Cosgrove and Higgins only one term in office.
“Change is good,” A.J. Milici, the campaign chair, told the Eagle before the meeting began. He said he was referring to Higgins’s response in joining Cosgrove at a recent Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting to remove two longtime members of the Inland Wetlands Commission, including one who is an academic Wetlands expert. They were replaced with two new commissioners, thereby bypassing long-serving IWC alternates. Democratic Selectman Bruce Storm voted against the move at the August 19 BOS meeting. Click here to read the story. Costco plans to submit its application to the IWC in Sept.
First Voter Canvass
Marcia Chambers Photo
The volunteers showed up at Democratic headquarters at 173 Montowese St. Saturday morning to learn the ins and outs of knocking on doors in what was their first big canvas of Democratic and Unaffiliated voters throughout town. Some of them posed for a photo before they left headquarters.
Milici welcomed the volunteers and thanked them for “getting the message out about the candidates.”One aspect of the canvass was to determine name recognition in different parts of town.
Derry Kiernan, the campaign manager and Kit Wilcox, the field organizer, gave the volunteers a list of addresses and then engaged in role-playing as to what the range of responses might be when they knocked on a door. The responses ran the gamut from yes to no with variations in-between.
One question to try to get answered, Kiernan said, is: “What is the issue most driving your vote?”
Kiernan also explained that on a sunny day like Saturday, when most folks are out shopping, or on their boats or at the beach, they may find that “not home,” will be the box they check after they get to the door. That insight proved correct.
Out in the Linden Shores area, Rabinowitz and Susan Solomon, who is running for a seat on the RTM, both experienced “not home” responses at a number of houses they approached in the 5th District. (See top photo)
But they were optimistic. Rabinowitz said he met many people and they were very upbeat. “Most of the issues were local to their neighborhood.” Yesterday he made the rounds in Short Beach. “Sunday was about transparency. On their own the Inland Wetlands vote came up. People were upset about that,” he said.
Ahern, who like Rabinowitz is known to many in town, knocked on doors in his own neighborhood, the Mill Plain Road section of town. We caught up with him afterwards.
“It went very well,” he said. “The only down side was a lot of people were not home. Other than that, every person I talked to, I would say 90 percent were positive. Two were non-committal. They didn’t know if they would vote.”
Asked if voters recognized him, he said most did but not everybody. “People knew Mark,” he added. “He wasn’t with me but this area draws students to the Tisko Elementary School.” Rabinowitz was the longtime principal until he retired. “They definitely knew him. They were very positive.”
Earlier, at headquarters Ahern told the group that if elected one of his aims is to decrease the tax burden on seniors, many of whom are on fixed incomes. This topic has been also been explored by the RTM.
Rabinowitz told the group he wants “to make Branford even better than it is. I am definitely a dreamer. I picture a town where decision making is going to be inclusive. That’s what Jack and I want.”
Pam Knapp, who is seeking the town clerk’s position on the Democratic line, went canvassing in Short Beach, her home district. She ran for the same spot in 2013 and lost to Republican Lisa Arpin. Arpin is seeking re-election.
Asked how the door-to-door campaign went, Knapp told the Eagle that she and her canvassing partner, Attorney Keith Sittnick, had direct contact with a substantial number of voters, including voters “driving by us, who stopped their cars to ask if we were volunteers for Mark Rabinowitz. Every driver and each voter who answered a doorbell expressed his or her solid support and admiration for our candidates….
“It was the first time I had completed a long canvassing day with unanimous support received for the top of the ticket from every single voter reached.”
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