Bridgeport Kid Gaudett Does Good – CAO Lands Syracuse Law Degree – Pols Throw Him Bash

Harvard, Bridgeport public school teacher, mayoral aide, deputy chief of staff, Bridgeport chief administrative officer. Now Tom Gaudett has added law degree, Syracuse University College of Law, the majority of his studies on line while juggling his administrative position. Not bad at age 33.

Gaudett is the rarest of breeds in Bridgeport government and politics. He’s hard to dislike. And even if he senses you loathe him, he’ll still talk to you, threading common sense rejoinders that causes pause and even irritation from the calumny crowd. It can be annoying to the other. Gosh damn kid! He has the sensibility to get along with just about everyone, even cranky scribes searching for answers.

What the freaking fracking, freaking fracking is going on!

“Well, here’s what’s happening…”

Gaudett’s like a duck on a pond. On the surface cruising merrily…underneath, paddling like mad, knowing some political enemy may be hunting for mallard. Gaudett on a grill? How’s that with rosemary encrusted garlic finished by a flame of bourbon? Fire up the haters. Hasn’t happened yet.

City Council members drive him nuts but he understands the landscape of the body 20, shepherding Mayor Joe Ganim’s initiatives through the legislative body. They may yell at him, he doesn’t yell back. When they freak out he turns down the temperature, without giving up the point he wants to hammer home.

On occasion I’ve been in the mayor’s office when Ganim and Gaudett go at it, the mayor twice his age.

Gaudett: “If you do that, this could happen…”

Ganim: “Jesus, an answer for everything…”

The other day political and government friends threw Gaudett a surprise congratulatory party at Vazzy’s on the Upper East Side. They provided zingers, he parried his own. See the video festivities here

Gaudett is the guy who persuaded Ganim and Stratford officials to jointly seek court intervention to the madness engulfing roughly 2,000 residents at Success Village suffering without heat and hot water. If this doesn’t happen, he argued, we have a gigantic public health toothache on our hands, and it only gets worse. You wanna deal with that? National news in no time.

Superior Court Judge Dale Radcliffe appointed attorney Barry Knott to oversea the mess and shelve the board of directors while the place gets straightened out. It’s still a work in progress but better than before.

Ganim was on hand at Vazzy’s to lend his observations about Gaudett’s value. Ganim is the youngest mayor in city history so he knows what it’s like to be a youthful government decision maker. Ganim doesn’t want to lose him.

Gaudett will take the bar exam this summer. Once he passes, and he will, he will have mountain ranges of professional opportunities. But he does enjoy the government and political action give and take. Maybe he stays another year or two. But considering he joined Ganim’s administration as a fledgling 10 years ago, not a bad run for when he decides on something else.