Emily Hays Photo
Eric Mastroianni was mid-speech about his military record and his top issues when Roseann Iuvone stopped him to say what she really cared about: Cars nearly running her over in her own neighborhood.
Mastroianni, the Republican candidate for the 96th state General Assembly District seat held by Democrat Roland Lemar, came to Iuvone’s doorstep to make a pitch for his candidacy during an afternoon of door-knocking.
Iuvone said that she regularly walks to work past Pepe’s Apizza. She painted a picture of Tesla drivers pulling up to the pizzeria to park illegally, inches from where she had just stepped.
“Can you please do something about that?” Iuvone asked.
“Get someone to ticket them. I don’t want to die because someone from New York wants to eat pizza.”
Mastroianni nodded, offered sympathy and turned the conversation to his opposition to tolls on Connecticut interstate highways.
Iuvone asked him where the tolls would go. The Republican hopeful responded that they would be on all exits.
“Oh my god, that’s ridiculous. I’m a realtor, so I go to Branford all the time,” Iuvone said.
Lemar Mastroianni’s opponent, supported electronic highway tolls, as exist in neighboring states, to upgrade the state’s highways and transit systems. Most recently, he has pushed a pared-down proposal that would add tolls just for truck drivers on 12 highway bridges. Lemar argues that the state needs the money to improve transportation, and that 40 percent of the money would come from out-of-state drivers.
Mastroianni, who is 48 and lives in the Cedar Hill neighborhood, works out of Orange for the construction supply company Colony Hardware. He told Iuvone that costs would add up for the company drivers from just a few trips if tolls were implemented.
He then moved on to his education platform.
Iuvone waved him away from that topic.
“Don’t bother. I don’t have kids,” Iuvone said.
She opened the screen door to allow Pauly, a cream-colored dog who belongs to a neighbor, to say hello to the campaigners. Mastroianni gave Pauly a few pets and said that he sometimes helps his sister with her animal shelter. Pauly then took off into the house with the campaign flyers in his mouth.
Iuvone brought Mastroianni back to her main point.
“Just ticket those cars. They’re so rude. If you do a debate, bring that up,” she said and wrapped up the conversation.
“I’ll vote for you. November 3rd, got it.”
One down.
Blue City
Mastroianni, a veteran of the United States Navy Seabees (the nickname for the Naval Construction Battalion), is working hard for every vote in Democratic-dominated New Haven as he challenges Lemar for the second time. When they squared offIn 2018, Lemar won around 90 percent of the vote.
“I said that I oughta try again. The issues from then haven’t changed,” Mastroianni said.
His campaign manager, Steven Mullins, who accompanied the candidate on the doors, jumped in to note that Mastroianni has a cross-endorsement this time from the Independent Party. He has also has reached out more to Hispanic voters through radio and print ads.
The sprawling district includes Downtown, East Rock, Cedar Hill and Wooster Square, as well as portions of Fair Haven, Bishop Woods, and the town of East Haven.
Mastroianni greets Crystal DeCola.
While canvassing in Wooster Square, Mastroianni rarely led with his differences from Lemar, or even the fact that he represents the Republican Party. Instead, he introduced himself as a candidate for the 96th District and a friendly face wanting to say hello.
In this partisan national election year, many Wooster Square neighbors brought up party.
Sara Ohly (pictured above with Mullins) emerged from her backyard, where she was preparing to water a tree in Wooster Square. She looked at Mastroianni and recognized him from an earlier leaflet the campaign had left at her door. Mullins asked her whether she had any questions for the candidate.
She did have a question: How are presidential electors chosen?
Mullins offered to take the question, since he was chosen as an elector in the 2016 election. He carefully walked around which candidate he was chosen to represent but noted that the state’s seven electoral votes went to Hillary Clinton.
“Well, I’m firmly Democratic,” Ohly said.
Mullins asked her how she felt things are going in New Haven and Connecticut. When she said that she likes her representatives, he asked who her state representative was.
Ohly blanked on Lemar’s name for a moment. Mullins took this as evidence that Lemar has not done a good job campaigning.
“He’s done a good job being on the same page as me on issues, though,” Ohly responded.
Mastroianni’s top issues span the campaigns of several GOP challengers in New Haven: no to tolls, no to recent police reform efforts, yes to government dollars following students to their chosen schools, including charter schools.
Lemar joined other New Haven-based state legislators this summer in pushing through HB 6004 An Act Concerning Police Accountability (AACPA). One of the first legislative fruits of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, the bill gives civilians more of an opportunity to sue police officers in court for damages, limits police use of chokeholds and increases mental health screenings for officers.
Mastroianni said that he would work to overturn HB 6004 and said that it would push more police officers to retire. He is also opposed to decreasing funding for police departments, as BLM protesters have demanded, or shifting those funds to psychologists or social workers to address the seemingly infinite array of non-violent situations police officers respond to.
“A psychologist is not going to talk down a criminal. The more the economy goes down, the higher crime is going to go, and fewer officers is not going to help,” Mastroianni said.
Mastroianni said that he is opposed to police brutality. He supports de-escalation training and checking police mental health regularly.
Lemar opposes state subsidies for private schools. Mastroianni said that all schools should be funded equally, including charter and private schools. His own children attend New Haven Public Schools.
A Familiar Face, Or Name
For some voters, Mastroianni’s Wooster Square roots made a difference.
Vincent Verderame (pictured above) recognized Mastroianni from an earlier meeting. The two went off-script, bonding about how important trade schools were in their lives and the need for housing to be affordable.
As Verderame prepared to return to the crab sauce on his stove, he asked Mastroianni whether he knew one of Verderame’s friends and work acquaintances. Mastroianni said that the man is a relative, and counted off his four Italian last names.
The two ended their talk by posing for a photograph together. Verderame invited Mullins into the frame.
Mastroianni said that his interest in politics stems from seeing politicians in his family. He said that his relatives when he was growing up included the late Police Chief and Mayor Biagio DiLieto.
Mastroianni started his next pitch, to Carmela Savo, by saying that his family members live in Wooster Square and that he was baptized at a neighboring church.
Savo exclaimed that she goes to that church and promised Mastroianni her vote. The two continued to chat about Mastroianni’s military service and charity work.
“I always say, ‘Never look down on anybody, unless you are looking down to pull them up,’” Mastroianni said, miming his words.
Savo said that she would have to remember that phrase.
I think we should have electronic remote collected tolls at the state borders for all interstate traffic, and maybe at the junction where interstates connect to other interstates. And if you are a CT resident and you pay real estate taxes or income taxes to the State of CT you should get a rebate at the end of the year for the tolls you paid. That way the State can collect money from all the out of state traffic that puts wear and tear on our roads. Any toll money collected should only be allowed to be used for maintaining and repairing transportation infrastructure like roads, bridges, etc and improving mass transit like trains, buses, shuttles, airports or ferries.
We also need to adequately fund social services and support systems for the homeless, the addicted, the mentally ill, and a new crisis management and deescalation system of responders to take the burden of those populations out of the hands of law enforcement. Also we need to rethink policing systems policies and procedures and retrain with a focus on deescalation and negotiation and intervention and provide mental health support for our good officers, and weed out the bad officers. We need to adequately fund our public schools and overhaul the system of funding our schools so that there is no need to take your child out of the public school system. If every school had equal funding on a per pupil basis regardless of where you lived, and funding wasn't based on each individual municipality's property taxes, and there was a equity and equality standards set for each school by the State of CT then each student could get the education and resources they need regardless of where they live in CT. Smaller municipalities would need to regionalize with their neighboring border towns to pool resources. This would relieve taxpayers and municipalities through out the State from an ever increasing disparities in education and struggling with rising property taxes that their residents can't afford.