A tenth candidate for governor entered the field Thursday. His pitch: He’s a newer face. And he can build a bottom-up coalition for change.
The candidate is Juan Figueroa. He planned a noon announcement that he’s filing papers to form an exploratory committee to seek the state’s highest office.
If he wins the Democratic nomination, Figueroa would be the state’s first Puerto Rican major party candidate for governor.
Figueroa, a former representative who’s 56, began his quest Thursday by focusing on a story: The story of how he helped build a statewide coalition to get health care reform passed this year.
As head of the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut (UHCF), he oversaw the effort to pressure the legislature to pass the “SustiNet” bill. The law established a nine-member board charged with coming up with a plan, by Jan. 1, 2011, for a statewide, affordable public health insurance plan (called SustiNet). Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the bill; Figueroa’s group organized the coalition that successfully lobbied the legislature to override the veto.
The coalition included groups that don’t always work together in politics: small business people, clergy, doctors, reform activists.
“The experience I had bringing together the varying constituencies [for health care] is important. It can’t be politics as usual. We have to find ways of building common ground,” Figueroa said in a conversation Thursday morning.
Figueroa served as a state representative from Hartford for five years. He left the post in 1993 to run the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, a national civil-rights group based in New York. Since January 2003 he has run UHCF; he took a leave of absence this month to launch his campaign.
Figueroa joins seven other Democrats and two Republicans who have formed either campaigns or exploratory campaigns for governor. The Republicans are Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele and former ambassador Tom Foley. The Democrats: Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi, East Hartford State Sen. Gary LeBeau, former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont, former state House Speaker Jim Amann, Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman.
Figueroa is one of several liberal-leaning candidates competing for the support of not-for-profit groups and activists who play a disproportionate role in primaries.
He stressed that his route to the nomination will have to come from the bottom up. He will compete with everyone else for his party’s nomination, through the party convention. He’s sending out letters today to town committee chairmen pitching his candidacy.
But he’s also planning from the start to run a petition drive to get on the ballot in a September primary.
“I believe if I do this it will be through the petition process,” he said. “It will be a grassroots movement. It will be bringing onto the political scene a new face.”
The Yule season has passed,and Al Gore is right with a prediction of global warming especially in Connecticut with all the politicians' hot air. Never in the annals of our State have we seen such a group of egotistical and unqualified individuals aspire to the Office of Governor, Attorney General, and United States Senate. Before you go to the voting booth,study those running before casting a vote so there won't be another Dodd in our future.