This is, of course, a minor story, but in a way it may be significant. We had our local elections today. The Republicans have dominated the Town Council for something like thirty or more years, and most years they have a majority on the Board of Ed, though sometimes we’ve had a slim majority on that body.
Tonight, we swept. Nine out of nine seats on the town council. One of the defeated Republicans has been on the council for more than 20 years, and was, I thought, quite popular. Due to minority representation on the Board of Ed, there will be a Republican in that body. We also have a Representative Town Meeting, and we crushed there too.
We did some things right, and can take some credit for the victory. We welcomed the Resist people with open arms, and nominated several for the council and RTM. We had hard working campaign managers. But it’s hard not to believe that a great deal of credit goes to Donald Trump. Not being comfortable with manning phones, I normally drive people to the polls on Election Day. Today, among others, I drove a 95 year old lady who spent quite a bit of time talking about how much she loathed Donald Trump. Turnout was up and that can’t be explained by any local issue that got people excited.
Many Republicans in Connecticut are still a bit like Republicans were in the olden days, before Nixon’s Southern Strategy took root. At least in Groton, they learned today that it’s not going to be easy to be a fellow traveler to a party composed of plutocrats that harvests votes by catering to, and whipping up, racism. Today’s results give me hope that despite Dan Malloy’s best efforts, we may be able to elect a Democratic governor in 2018.
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