In 2018, the Democratic Party made significant gains in the Connecticut State House and Senate. Following the 2016 election, the Senate was evenly divided 18-18 between Democrats and Republicans, but in 2018 Democrats flipped four senate seats to gain a 22-14 advantage. Similarly, in the House, Democrats now lead by a wide margin 91-60. 2020 will be the first year that Democrats have to defend many of these swing seats that they gained in 2018. Today, we thought we would focus on the Western part of the state and look at the 36th Senate district race.
The 36th Senate District consists of Greenwich and portions of Stamford and New Canaan. The 36th senate seat had been in Republican hands since 1930. In 2018, Democratic challenger Alex Bergstein, a former New York attorney and Greenwich mother, upset five term incumbent Republican Scott Frantz by the slimmest of margins. Bergstein won 22,261 votes to Frantz 21,645 votes for a winning margin of approximately 600 votes. Bergstein defeated Frantz by winning the Stamford vote by nearly 2500 votes while Frantz narrowly carried Greenwich and New Canaan. In 2016, a presidential election year with higher turnout, Frantz won comfortably by a vote of 28,901 to Democrat Joe Blankley’s 19,291 votes. In 2016, Frantz won both Greenwich and New Canaan by wide margins while narrowly carrying Stamford. Bergstein spent an enormous amount of her personal money on advertisements and aggressively went after Frantz on gun control, women’s rights, and advocacy for tolls.
In 2020, Bergstein is running for re-election but has changed her last name to Kasser (her mother’s maiden name), after filing for divorce from her husband Seth Bergstein, a Wall Street banker. The divorce proceedings have been protracted and are scheduled to go to trial in July 2020 in a Connecticut district court. Kasser gave a TED talk in 2019 on “Love and Purpose: Breaking the Bonds of Patriarchy and Privilege” at Wesleyan University in which she describes how she found freedom and love following her decision to run for office and divorce her husband. In Hartford, Kasser has been outspoken but has attacked some of her Democratic colleagues, criticizing them for failing to embrace the Governor’s original toll proposal.
We believe that Frantz would have had a good chance of winning back his seat, but he decided not to run. Instead, the Republicans have nominated Ryan Fazio, a local renewable energy professional who has served one term in the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting. Fazio is young and energetic, but lacks name recognition or political experience. Kasser is almost certain to outspend Fazio if she is willing to draw on her personal wealth as she did in 2018 to fund her campaign. Fazio grew up in Connecticut and attended local public schools but may struggle to raise sufficient money to match Kasser. It will be an interesting race to watch. Kasser has had a controversial first term, but she is the incumbent against an opponent without significant money or name recognition. The district leans Republican, but given the dynamics of the race we rate this as a toss up. That said, the 36th is must win for Republicans if they want any chance of regaining control of the Senate.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 