Merrill At Public $$ Threshold; Garcia ​“Halfway”

The frontrunner in the race for secretary of the state said she’s raised enough money to qualify for matching public money. Her Democratic challenger from New Haven said he’s confident he’ll get there, too.

The frontrunner, Denise Merrill (pictured at a stop this past week in New Haven’s Pitkin Plaza), won the party’s endorsement for the secretary of the state position at last month’s Democratic convention. She faces a primary challenge from New Haven’s Gerry Garcia, around whom the hometown crowd has coalesced.

Public money could be a crucial factor in the race for the job of Connecticut’s top elections official. Merrill’s campaign plans to announce Thursday that it has crossed the threshold of $75,000 in contributions of $100 or less. Under the state’s new clean elections law, which she cosponsored, that means Merrill will receive $375,000 in matching government money for her primary campaign, and another $750,000 for the general election if she wins the primary. In return, she has to agree not to accept donations from political action committees or state contractors.

Garcia, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that his campaign is ​“over halfway there.” He has until July 16th to raise enough money to qualify.

He said he’s confident he can get there. Earlier in this campaign he was more focused on gathering delegate support to qualify for the primary ballot at the convention, which he did, Garcia said. Now he has a series of fundraising events lined up in coming weeks to get him to the public-financing threshold, he said.

Hello, New Haven

New Haven’s been hearing about Garcia, a former East Rock alderman. The city’s entire 81-member party delegation supported him at last month’s Democratic convention. Garcia started early cultivating New Haven as a base.

Merrill, a nine-term state representative from Mansfield (that’s in Connecticut, way up past Hartford), has concentrated her energy elsewhere.

She made a point of stopping by New Haven the other day to remind New Haven that she’s running, too, and to argue that she’s better positioned to use the office to drive up the number of people who participate in Connecticut elections, including urban-dwellers.

That is emerging as a key issue in the primary. The secretary of the state is Connecticut’s top elections official, responsible for voter registration and certifying candidates on ballots, and in general promoting democracy. (The office also handles small-business permitting and databases.)

“I thought I should come down and reach out,” Merrill said during an interview at Bru Cafe.

Garcia is running to become the first Latino ever elected to statewide office in Connecticut. His campaign promises to dramatically increase the number of registered voters, including the pitch that his background would help him reach out to the state’s fast-growing Latino community. He has vowed to raise the percentage of people voting in presidential years from 80 to 90 percent, and in even-numbered off-years from 60 to 80 percent. He has endorsed the idea of same-day registration and of allowing people to cast votes over a period of weeks, rather than just on Election Day.

In the interview, Merrill, too, endorsed early-voting. She too vowed to boost registration numbers. While she’s open to same-day registration, she said she wants to make sure Connecticut upgrades its computerized voting rolls first so officials can handle it.

Over the past 12 years the secretary of the state has modernized the office, but there’s still work to be done, Merrill said. Right now, Connecticut has no statewide computerized voter registration list. So last-minute voter rushes overwhelm local officials on Election Day. Merrill spoke of the long lines in Storrs in 2008, when thousands of students showed up. Many were not previously registered. It took hours to process them. ​“It was a nightmare,” she said. ​“It was chaos.”

She said she has a strong record of support from Latino groups in communities like Waterbury and Willimantic. At the legislature she has fought to protect Latino community groups from budget cuts, she said.

She also emphasized that boosting Latino registration numbers is part of a larger imperative: boosting the broader notion of citizenship.

“It’s much more complicated than just going out to get people to vote,” she said. ​“We need an entire dedication to citizen engagement. That’s why I’m running for secretary of the state.”

She said she wants to combat the ​“prevalent” notion that ​“government doesn’t matter.” She spoke of boosting high-school civics education and proposing a mandatory statewide standardized civics test similar to those administered for math and English. She previously sponsored a bill that made high school civics classes mandatory.

She’d also like to enlist local registrars of voters in reaching out to Latino and other communities. She spoke of funding outreach efforts by seeking grants from outfits like the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose new chairman has emphasized a ​“return to civic society.”

Outside of an occasional high school visit, ​“registrars now sit in their offices and wait for people to register,” Merrill said. She’d also encourage registrars to send hold voting seminars and send postcards to new residents to remind them to register at their new addresses.

Merrill contrasted her experience with Garcia’s. He was an alderman in New Haven a decade ago. She has served as a state representative for 17 years and is currently the House majority leader. She introduced the state’s current campaign clean elections law, the bill that dropped the percentage of party delegates needed to qualify for a primary, and living wage legislation.

Garcia claimed he has ​“driven the policy conversation” in this campaign, while Merrill has ​“played a lot of of copycat.”

How Much Democracy?

Whoever wins the election will have the mandate of promoting democracy, and not just for Democrats. Both Merrill and Garcia had an opportunity to do that in their own campaign. Neither took action.

That opportunity occurred at a campaign debate earlier two weeks ago in Hartford. The sponsors invited Merrill and Garcia. They invite the Republican candidate for secretary of the state, Jerry Farrell. They didn’t invited the Green Party candidate, Mike DeRosa (pictured), even though he has a spot on the November ballot. DeRose showed up. He asked to participate. The debate organizers said no. They said the debate was just for candidates running in primaries — however, Farrell doesn’t have a primary.

Merrill agreed that DeRosa should have been included. ​“I think it should have been one way or the other,” she said — either candidates involved in a primary, or all candidates running.

So why did she participate anyway?

“Well, it wasn’t my debate. They set it up. I was in a primary. I wasn’t going to be not part of the discussion because they didn’t set it up properly.”

Garcia (pictured at last month’s Democratic convention) said he had ​“never heard of” candidate DeRosa before the debate. He noted that the debate planners originally invited Farrell when he did have a primary opponent (who subsequently dropped out).

“I walked into the building [for the debate]. I sat down. I found out after” the debate about the exclusion of DeRosa, Garcia said.

Should DeRosa have been allowed to participate?

“I don’t see why not,” Garcia responded.