Derby Mayor Anita Dugatto.
Mayor Anita Dugatto’s re-election campaign announced Tuesday they had collected more than enough signatures to qualify for the Democratic Party’s primary in September.
Dugatto’s supporters collected 160 signatures by 9 a.m. Monday, according to Andrew McIndoo, her campaign manager. She needed 117 signatures to qualify for the primary, which is scheduled for Sept. 12.
“It took us only the weekend to get it done,” he said.
“I’ve been humbled by the energy and enthusiasm from my supporters and volunteers this weekend,” Mayor Dugatto said in a prepared statement released Tuesday.
Dugatto is trying for a third, two-year term as Derby’s mayor, but her effort hit a hurdle July 18 in the form of her own Democratic Town Committee, whose members voted 21 – 15 to endorse Carmen DiCenso instead of Dugatto.
DiCenso, a former Derby High School football coach, is the president of the Derby Board of Aldermen.
The town committee endorsements are important because, unless there’s a party primary, it puts the candidate on the official party line in the November general election.
But Dugatto’s campaign filed a complaint with state Democrats protesting the manner by which DiCenso was endorsed. The town committee voted using a secret ballot, a violation of state and national party rules, though the Derby Democrats had been voting that way for years.
So a three-member Democratic Party panel stripped DiCenso of his endorsement July 21, ruling both candidates would have to collect petitions to qualify for a September primary.
During the primary, registered Democrats in Derby will decide which candidate they want to see take on Rich Dziekan in November. Dziekan was endorsed by the Derby Town Republican Committee July 19.
“When the state party decided to invalidate the nomination, and ruled that both candidates would have to petition on, we knew that it would take a grassroots effort to get in our signatures and that is exactly what happened. This weekend showed me that the people of Derby believe in what we are building,” Dugatto said in the prepared statement.
She then boasted of the city’s lower unemployment rate since she took office, improving schools, and a $5 million state grant for the downtown redevelopment zone.
Since the town committee meeting, Dugatto has been positioning herself as an outsider compared to Derby political insiders, such as the town committee members who don’t support her.
Second Ward Alderman Art Gerckens, Dugatto’s lone public supporter on the Board of Aldermen, said in a prepared statement he was surprised at how easy it was to collect the signatures.
“It just goes to show that outside of the political bubble, the people of Derby know that Mayor Dugatto is the right person to continue to lead Derby forward,” he said.
Rob Hyder, DiCenso’s campaign manager, a spokesman for the DiCenso campaign, said the campaign doesn’t care that Dugatto qualified for the primary first.
The Dugatto campaign had the chance to start collecting signatures Wednesday, the day after after Dugatto lost the Democratic Town Committee’s endorsement to DiCenso.
DiCenso, meanwhile, didn’t know he had to collect signatures until Friday evening, after the state panel’s ruling.
“That said, Carmen and the majority of his campaign team have been on vacation, yet he is still very close to the required number of signatures,” Hyder wrote in an email. “Many Democrats have been contacting Carmen and his team asking to sign the petition, so it’s not like we’ve had to take to social media pleading for signatures.”
Qualifying first means Dugatto’s name will be above DiCenso’s on the primary’s ballot, Dugatto’s campaign said.
Correction: Michael McFarland is the DiCenso campaign’s manager, not Rob Hyder.
