Markeshia Ricks Photo
Bermudez Zimmerman greets Pastor Roger Wilkins at the forum Sunday.
A Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor admitted that she’s looking to run on a ticket with someone who wasn’t her first choice.
The candidate, Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, joined gubernatorial candidates Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim and Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont Sunday for a forum at the historic Varick Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue Sunday afternoon to answer questions important to communities of color, largely about jobs and the economy, affordable housing, and gun violence. The forum was an opportunity for people to hear from the candidates ahead of the Aug. 14 primary.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison and a team of clergy from New Haven and Bridgeport.
Bermudez Zimmerman is one of two Democrats running in a primary for lieutenant governor. Her opponent, Susan Bysiewicz, did not attend the forum.
Whoever wins that race will run in November on one single ballot line with either Ganim or Lamont, depending which one wins the gubernatorial primary.
“Who are you supporting for governor?” panelist Pastor Fred Gee Jr. asked Bermudez at Sunday’s forum.
Gee was almost apologetic in asking Bermudez Zimmerman, who was questioned after both Ganim and Lamont had been peppered with questions, such a tough one right out the gate. The gubernatorial candidates weren’t around to hear her answer. They’d just left.
The Rev. Scott Marks gave the charge. Jobs, housing and immigration were on the menu.
“Well, the candidates that I loved are no longer in the race,” Bermudez Zimmerman said after a slight pause. “That’s number one.”
She chose to back neither Lamont nor Ganim. She said she will tremain focused on the working-class, progressive taxation and reminding the next governor that it was the people who helped him get elected.
“No offense to the candidates that are left in the race. But we started off with many, Harris and Lembo being two other names.” She was referring to State Comptroller Kevin Lembo, a popular potential gubernatorial candidate who decided not to run in the face of daunting polls; and former state consumer protection chief Jonathan Harris, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race when he failed to muster enough delegate support.
“At this point, my candidacy for lieutenant governor, I think my strongest position is to represent those working-class issues, let them duke it out,” Bermudez Zimmerman added. “Let the people decide who they want to be a running mate to put together for the November election. And that’s how the process is created. We are allowed to vote for election primary candidates for governor and for lieutenant governor. Whoever gets the most votes goes on running together in the November election.”
Bermudez Zimmerman with forum organizer Patricia Solomon.
Lamont has chosen his fellow party-endorsed candidate Susan Bysiewicz, who dropped out of the governor’s race to run for lieutenant governor, as his running mate. So they’re running as a team. A party convention endorsed Bysiewicz — but Bermudez Zimmerman picked up 40 percent of convention delegates, twice what she needed to qualify for the November ballot. She has picked up pretty much all the visible support in New Haven among party politicos and activists.
Bysiewicz was conspicuously absent from Sunday’s forum. A conflict in her schedule kept her from attending, according to forum organizer Patricia Solomon.
She said that besides the constitutional responsibilities of presiding over the Senate and delivering tie-breaking votes, the number one responsibility for the next lieutenant governor will be to remind the governor to do right by the people who elected him, Bermudez Zimmerman told the Varick crowd.
She promised to take an independent approach to working with the next governor.
“I will be constantly prodding and poking that governor to do the right thing,” she said. “And when I have the tie-breaking vote, I’m saying to the governor, ‘If you expect me to go with the status quo, or go against the people, don’t expect it.’
Besides Gee, the forum’s panelists included Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison and pastors from New Haven and Bridgeport churches including Varick’s the Rev. Kelcy Steele, Pastor Roger Wilkins, who serves as the current president of the Greater New Haven Clergy Association and pastor of Maranatha Life Changing Ministries, Pastor Todd Foster of Church on the Rock, Pastor Elvin Clayton of Walter Memorial AME Zion Church in Bridgeport, and Pastor Brian Odem Bellamy Sr. Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.
After Bermudez Zimmerman spoke of how she’d attract millennials and leverage existing legislation to make health care more affordable in the state, Pastor Wilkins delivered the only direct compliment received by a candidate Sunday to Bermudez Zimmerman.
“You’ve done a good job,” he said. “Thank you for being here to explain your ideas.”
The Hot Country Club Seat
Lamont with a potential voter.
Bermudez Zimmerman wasn’t the only one who endured a tough question Sunday. Ned Lamont found himself in the hot seat when Pastor Bellamy asked a question from his congregation.
“It is a bit controversial, but I am prayerful that you will turn it into a come to Jesus moment,” Bellamy began.
“You setting me up?” Lamont asked goodnaturedly off mic.
The question: “When you ran for senator in 2006, it came to light that you had a longtime membership in a country club that had racially and religiously exclusive practices. Twelve years later, the climate of bigotry in our country has only intensified. Please share with us why racial, ethnic and religious minorities should trust you to support and represent our interests in Hartford?”
Back in 2006, Lamont was running against U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, trying to unseat the longstanding Connecticut congressman over his support for the war in Iraq. (He won a primary but lost the general election.) At the time he also was a member of the Round Hill Country Club in Greenwich. Lamont said Sunday that the decision to run against Lieberman and decry the war was the right one, and that being a member of Round Hill was not.
“I gotta say in my personal life, I did play golf at a place where I should not have been,” he said. “I changed my location immediately. Now, I am no longer a member there but most importantly, you’ve got to understand from my heart where I stand. I stand with each and every one of you. I will be fighting for folks in New Haven, folks in this neighborhood, folk from neighborhoods just like this.”
Lamont resigned from the club after receiving criticism about its lack of ethnic diversity.
“I’m going to be there looking you in the eye,” Lamont told the Varick crowd. “I’m somebody who you’ve got to take me at my word. You’ve got to look me in the eye and I’ve got to look you in the eye and you have to know that I’m there for you every day. That’s why I’m running for governor.”
Unified By November?
Ganim: Party must unite in November.
In his opening remarks, Joe Ganim acknowledged one of the biggest Achilles’ heels dogging his gubernatorial campaign: his felony conviction on corruption charges, for which he served seven years in federal prison. But he said the city of Bridgeport gave him a second chance and he’s hoping the people of the state will do the same and make him their next governor.
His tough question, which also came from Bellamy: Given the loss of major corporations in the state and the elimination of central services under the current Democrat governor’s budget cuts, many Democrats are dismayed, and black and brown people who have historically voted for Democrats are open to the possibility of a Republican governor.
How would Ganim advance party unity if he is the party candidate in the November general election?
“As Ned and I might disagree on some things. We agree that it is paramount — as partisan as it may sound” — to be unified come November, Ganim said. “Looking at the back drop of what’s happening in Washington with Supreme Court appointments and the potential changes of decades of history even for a woman’s right to choose we are the frontline in connecticut to defend the rights that we cherish so deeply.”
He said people should be keenly aware that the tight margins in the General Assembly means that who is sitting in the lieutenant governor’s seat also is crucial.
“Breaking the tie can mean the difference on a program, for funding, for gun safety laws,” he said. “Nothing in my mind remains more important. In past elections, in Democratic primaries and general elections, there is a way to have an impact. And cities for Democrats, in my view, we have the highest concentration of voters.
“But it doesn’t matter how many voters we have if on Election Day from six in the morning to eight o’clock at night we don’t take that walk down and do what we’re supposed to do and exercise the right that people fought and died for.”
Click above to watch a Facebook Live video of Bermudez Zimmerman’s Q&A, and below to watch Mayor Joe Ganim and Ned Lamont.
Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD…Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD…Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that steal my words every one from his neighbor. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that use their tongues, and say, He saith." (Jeremiah 23:1-2,16,30-31)
.And this is why The condition of the Black church in the 21st century can be best summed up as It is not the religion that turns people off, it's the representatives.This is nothing New. There is no shortage of sell outs and traitors. We are awash in good-for-nothing sell out colored preachers.These stab in the back black ministers are growing in numbers across this country, They are a political and financial calculation to ally themselves with this most corrupt and unrighteous adminstrations. Their cynicism and greed are so blatantly obvious that they come off as the unscrupulous always do,making bizarre pronouncements that have no basis in reality. These preachers are useless to black people. They do not serve a spiritual need and their actions are in direct opposition to the political will of the vast majority of black people. They only serve themselves. The way to deal with them is simple. Their congregations must leave their churches en masse and tell them why as they run out the door and down the church steps. Even our enslaved ancestors knew the deal on the sell out preachers.
Mark 8:36 KJV: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
No shame hast the Judas Goat!!