A funny thing happened Tuesday.
A Republican was elected to the Board of Aldermen in Ansonia.
It’s the first time in the past 10 years that a Republican has held a seat on the 14-member board.
John Marini, 29, won 232 of Ward 3’s votes. Democrat Joseph Jeanette Jr. was re-elected with 259 votes, but the other Democratic incumbent, Gale Banks, lost with only 195 votes.
Is a movement afoot? That’s up for debate.
Some Republicans say Marini’s election to the Board of Aldermen might be the start of a shift back to a dual-party board, but others attribute the win solely to Marini’s hard campaigning for months before Tuesday’s election.
Voting Shift?
Republican Town Committee co-chairman Patrick Henri said it’s a bit of both.
“There may be a bit of trend going on there,” Henri said. “I think there is a shift in the voting pattern.”
Henri looked at the number of votes Republican and Democratic mayoral candidates received this election and in 2007, the last time the position was up for election.
While 100 fewer people cast votes for mayor this time around, the Republican candidate received 200 more votes this year. There was a 34 percent voter turnout overall.
With 2,157 votes, Mayor James Della Volpe received about 300 fewer votes Tuesday than in 2007.
But over the past 10 years – the time period in which no Republicans made it to the Board of Aldermen – the Democratic candidate for mayor (Della Volpe), has received between 65 and 75 percent of the votes cast for mayor. That’s excluding 2001, when there was no Republican candidate for mayor.
(See chart at left)
The make-up of voters in town doesn’t reflect the representation on the board. Out of 9,816 registered voters, 48 percent are unaffiliated, 39 percent are Democrats and 13 percent are Republicans.
“We’re happy to have our foot in the door into city government and I certainly think it’s something that can be built upon,” Henri said.
Board of Aldermen President Steve Blume said the win has more to do with Marini’s personal campaign than with a political shift in town.
“It’s not earth-shattering,” Blume said. “They (Marini and his wife) did this on their own. They worked out of their house.”
“This is isolated,” Blume said.
Meet John Marini
He’s a relatively new resident in Ansonia (four years), but says his wife comes from a long line of Ansonia residents (the Monacos, who owned the taylor shop next to the YMCA).
After getting married, they settled in her hometown to raise their family, Marini said.
And expecting their first children (twin boys born a couple days before the election), Marini said he wanted to take action to improve his town, rather than just complain about things that bothered him.
“We wanted to get involved, and we thought this is a good first step,” Marini said.
Marini works as an attorney at Tinley, Nastri, Renehan and Dost in Waterbury.
He said he ran a campaign that focused on making Ansonia a viable place for manufacturing jobs again. Not that kind residents are used to from the old factory days.
“Tech centers, the film industry, green jobs, different forms of manufacturing,” Marini said. “There’s potential out there. But it’s not going to just come and find us.”
It’s important to help Ansonia prevent becoming dependent on state and federal funds, Marini said.
Marini attributed his ability to win the vote as a newcomer Republican to “being proactive.”
“I started in August, and went door to door,” Marini said.
In a district with about 1,500 voters, Marini said he visited almost every house in that time – and even lost 10 lbs in the process.
Working Together
Blume recalled the make-up of the board in the 1970s, when there were eight Democrats and seven Republicans.
He said in those days, if a board member became ill, the other party members would try to nurse them back to health before the next meeting so they would have every vote they could get on certain issues.
“I think it’s healthier to have representation, of course, from both sides,” Blume said. “It was always a mixture. But it’s not our fault that they can’t find anybody.”
Blume said he looks forward to working with Marini and planned to call him and invite him to the board meeting next week to get started hearing about the issues.
“He’s welcome. He’ll be treated just like anybody else,” Blume said. “He seems like an intelligent guy.”
Marini, too, said he looked forward to working with everyone on the board.
“It’s certainly not a Republican or a Democrat thing,” Marini said. “There are people from both sides of the fence that share the same concerns.”
