We have profiled several races so far from swing districts that we anticipate will provide clarity on how some of the key suburban and swing districts are breaking as we head into the all important 2020 Presidential Election. However, equally important is that each party turns out their base. In Connecticut, that means that the Democrats must run up the score in key cities such as Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven. So for our next election to watch, we profile the Bridgeport mayoral race.
Bridgeport is the largest city in Connecticut with a population of approximately 145,000 and is a majority minority community: 39% hispanic, 33% black, and 21% white. Bridgeport has a fairly high poverty rate of 20.8%, low median income, and one of the highest property taxes in the state.
With respect to party registration, the Democrats hold a dramatic registration advantage over Republicans of 47,000 to 4000 with 20,000 unaffiliated! In 2012, President Obama captured 85% of the vote with Romney winning only 14% … the lowest that Republicans have won in Bridgeport in over 100 years. For comparison, in 2004, Bush had won 27% of the vote to Kerry’s 72%. In 2016, Trump did marginally better than Romney winning 17% of the vote.
On the local level, Bridgeport always elects Democrats, but in recent years there has been considerable controversy. In 2015, former mayor Joe Ganim who had been incarcerated after being convicted for corruption defeated the incumbent mayor Bill Finch in the Democratic Primary and then went on to win the general election by a vote of 11,198 to 6,029 over a Democratic petition candidate named Mary Jane Foster (former owner of the minor league baseball team Bluefish) and 2,838 for the Republican Rick Torres. In 2019, the Democratic Primary race came down to Ganim v. Marilyn Moore. Turnout in the primary fell by -31% with Ganim narrowly winning the election, with the difference coming from absentee ballots, provoking claims from Moore that Ganim had engineered the election. On the Republican side, the winner John Rodriguez had only 282 votes.
The ballot this November features only Ganim and Rodriguez, with Ganim’s election a virtual certainty. We will be watching several items: (i) whether turnout plummets as it did in the primary; (ii) the percentage of vote for Ganim; and (iii) whether the controversy over the Democratic primary leads to a write in candidate such as Moore capturing a sizeable share of the vote. Democrats need Bridgeport to be unified in 2020 and low turnout in 2019 could signal trouble in 2020. If Republicans want to win Connecticut, they will have to narrow the gap in the cities back to the margin of the 1970s and 1980s when Republicans often picked up 40%+ of the vote in Bridgeport (Reagan won 49% of the vote in 1984, Nixon actually won 54% of the vote in 1972). Turnout in Bridgeport (as well as New Haven and Hartford) will be an important election barometer.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 