Republican City Council candidate Phil Blagys says he’s not ready to concede defeat that saw his running partner Rick Torres and Democratic incumbent Sue Brannelly with the most votes, according to unofficial returns, in the 130th District. Blagys won on the machines, but the Democrats absentee ballot operation on behalf of Brannelly put her over the top. That’s not necessarily Blagys’ concern. Blagys and supporters are befuddled by the 71-vote spread on the machines between Blagys and Torres at Black Rock School while their opponents totals were virtually even.
Blagys supporters argue if there were real vote splitting it would have resulted in a separation between Brannelly and her partner Steven Stafstrom as well.
“The following discrepancy has us concerned and I am withholding any concession until we are provided an adequate resolution,” says Blagys in a statement.
Statement from Blagys:
“A total of 1,150 voted at Black Rock School which means if every voter voted for two candidates, a total of 2,300 votes would have been cast. The breakdown from the machine as follows:
Torres 708
Blagys 637
Strafstrom 438
Brannelly 437
Since the total votes cast is 2,220, 80 people voted for only one candidate which seems very unusual to us. And since I trail Rick by 71 votes, it stands to reason that most of those 80 votes were cast for Rick only–meaning they chose Rick and no one else. This seems very odd, though it may be the case. However, we would like the paper ballots reviewed and totaled before I concede. We think this is a reasonable request.”
It’s unclear exactly what remedy or legal recourse Blagys could follow. Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill conducts random audits of polling precincts to validate results.
What’s the explanation? Did a glitch exist in some of the ballots that did not register with the optical scan machine counter? Is it possible 70 or so voters simply filled in Torres’ oval and no other candidates?
The large win for the Republicans at Black Rock School was not a surprise but the vote split between Torres and Blagys has surprised campaign observers who believed Blagys would run ahead of the outspoken Torres. Torres, however, is a proven vote producer at Black Rock School having out-polled Bill Finch handily there in their 2011 mayoral contest. He also has a strong neighborhood following at his popular Harborview Market. Is it as simple as voters who generally don’t participate in elections just showed up to vote for Torres and that’s it?
Electors in the council race could vote for any two of the four candidates. When an elector votes for one candidate despite having an option to vote for others, it’s called bullet voting. A number of political conspiracy theorists believed among the competitors there could be a split between the Democrats. Sue Brannelly, once a popular figure in the neighborhood, has lost prestige with some voters and it showed at the polls. Stafstrom is a newcomer to the council having replaced councilman Marty McCarthy in the spring. Although the atmosphere existed for potential bullet voting (if you don’t like Brannelly just vote for Stafstrom) among Democrats there’s no evidence it materialized: there was just a one-vote separation at Black Rock school.
The isolated separation between Torres and Blagys, however, is strange because they ran as a team. In fact, Torres might not have run for council had Blagys opted not to run.
Was Lydia Martinez working the neighborhood?
Dan Roach was. He has done his magic in the past! LOL.
*** The magic “curse or blessing” that is a resident AB depending on how it’s used, has for a long time cost or won many elections in the city of Bpt. *** LORD KNOWS THE PAIN AND HAPPINESS, NO DOUBT. ***
What struck me is Brannelly received 80 votes AB and Rick and Phil only two votes AB, from Black Rock. I doubt they really only got two damn votes from the Black Rock AB!!!
donj, if they got more votes with ABs they would shout about those AB votes but you don’t hear that, do you? They ran a poor campaign.
No they didn’t. If they ran a poor campaign, then so did the Democrats because it was a split decision. They won on the machines. You don’t even live in Black Rock, yet you choose to cast aspersions right and left. Lord even knows why.
What happened in YOUR district, Ron? Your candidates did not win, did they? Did you mobilize your peeps for your council choices? We know what happened in the BOE race. They will have to put up with a … **GASP** … Republican!
Bond Girl, you know you are correct, the Republican Party ran a great campaign. Here again you make my point when you said, “You don’t even live in Black Rock, yet you choose to cast aspersions right and left,” that’s the problem, you ONLY care about Black Rock, forget about the West End, PT Barnum Apartments and Twin Towers. Please keep that mindset and yes, the Republican Party was the big winner yesterday.
I lived in BR for 30 years and the machine is very good at getting out the AB vote. Unless Lydia Martinez was involved in the BR vote there is probably nothing illegal going on. They are very organized and know who their reliable AB voters are. As popular as Torres is in some quarters I am surprised he got elected since his tea party views are way out of line even with a lot of conservative Republicans.
It just seems so odd to me 71 people would just vote for Torres and not Blagys. I could see if it were a 35 to 40 spread but 71, no way!!! I voted around 6:50 pm and I was the 1062nd person to vote and voted for both Blagys and Torres. My brother on the other had voted for Phil and Sue
It has happened many times in the past.
Okay, Lennie cleared it up, it was in the wrong slot. Hmmm. Ron, do you live in the 130th? Torres and Blagys ran a flawless campaign and Stafstrom was the only one on the Dem side I saw campaign hard. I am a Democrat and I’ve always voted Democrat but this time around I voted Republican. I even voted for Finch over Torres at BlackRock in 2011 but this time I held my nose and voted for Torres. I think Sue is wayyy out of touch with the people in her district. Well hey, look at the bright side. If I’m still living in Bpt two years from now and do not approve of how Torres is working on the council I can always vote for a Dem again.
Wasn’t there a mix-up in 2010 where Tom Foley only received about 440 votes at Black Rock School and after the audit he had actually received 545 votes?
Absolutely there is a need for a recount. I’m out of town and voted absentee ballot. The newspaper first counted no absentees for Phil. WHAT? Something Smells in Black Rock big time! Oh yes and I VOTED FOR RICK AND PHIL, Brannelly is no match!
donj, you are the best! Keep asking those questions and I really hope you stop in at Harborview and meet Rick. I think you will really like him.
Torres and Brannelly both had a lot of name recognition. Blagys, in spite of his family name and the BRCC, not so much. And a lot of people in Black Rock do not like Mr. Blagys who has dissed many fine folks with his belligerent, chauvinistic attitude. So my take on it is a lot of people who voted for Torres refused to vote for Blagys.
I’ve participated in five city council elections with Auden Grogins as my council partner, the vote differential in Black Rock was never more than a five-vote swing between us. So the close vote count for Brannelly & Stafstrom sounds like it fits the same pattern.
Since there’s a massive difference in the vote count between Torres & Blagys, appears to even the casual observer Torres ran a cut campaign against Phil, telling people to only vote for him. It’s either that or Torres slipped 71 votes in the back door in a bag along with the free cookies he was handing out.
The difference between the two victors in the 134th district was nearly 100 votes, attributable to, perhaps, popularity or preference of one person.
A review would be reasonable in the 130th given how close the numbers are compared to other districts.
For curiosity I just looked at the results and noticed the same (only a somewhat larger amount) of difference in the vote cast for candidates in district 134. One would hate to think a candidate would do something to cut his or her running mate to make themselves the top vote getter. That would be as low as one can go. I prefer to think Mr. White is correct, but let’s face it, anything is possible.
I tend to agree with Lennie’s observations on the surface. If it were ticket splitting you would traditionally expect to see one Republican running say 30 votes ahead of the other and a similar spread with the Democrats. This type of pattern seems to exist with the Aquaculture School where Rick ran 22 votes ahead of Phil and Sue Brannelly ran 12 votes ahead of Stafstrom.
This is obviously not the case in Black Rock School.
By now I would have expected to have heard of some bullet-vote literature surfacing if there really were a concentrated effort to encourage this activity. Or have heard stories of voters being mislead inside the polling place.
I had heard of a problem at another school where a moderator was telling voters in the Board of Ed race you could not vote for names if they appeared one on top of the other. So in this scenario you could not vote for Torres and Stafstrom. It would have to be Torres and Blagys or Torres and Brannelly. But if this were the case then it would be Stafstrom who was missing votes, not Blagys.
If Phil is serious, I would suggest the following:
1) Find a good election lawyer. These are hard to find and probably not cheap. By law he has a very tightly defined time period to act. Maybe Foley knows one from his close election three years ago.
2) Check with any of the official Republican voting officials working in Black Rock School to make sure they did not see any unusual activity inside.
3) Check with Linda Grace to find out if she heard of any complaints on election day that could explain it.
4) Lennie is right, a quick visual review of the ballots should spot any obvious processing errors in the reading of the ballot.
The election clock is ticking. No time to waste.
Bob Walsh, good advice, also I think Hector Diaz makes a very interesting point he posted on another topic on OIB:
Hector A. Diaz // Nov 6, 2013 at 4:09 pm
donj, no one seems to want to say the obvious. Rick Torres’ numbers were higher at Longfellow because there are a large number of Spanish-speaking voters who will vote solely for the Spanish-speaking candidates. Normally those voters vote straight Democrat. In this case the lack of Spanish-speaking candidates for any of the other seats allowed Torres’ name to stand out.
Thank You Ron, I guess people forgot Black Rock is home to the largest Cuban population in Bridgeport.
*** Now OIB haters got Torres making some secret deal behind Blagys’ back for 71 votes? Why, ’cause it’s not possible for voters to split their votes for the more popular candidates in their eyes (Dem. & Rep.) like they did when Tom Freer and two years later Donna Curran won and you had a Republican and a Dem from B/R on the council! *** PLEASE! ***
Mojo, splitting??? There was no splitting, if there were the two Dems would also have about a 30 to 40 spread. These numbers just do not sound right, Steve 438 Sue 437 Phil 637 Torres 708 makes no sense at all. It’s either Phil had votes not counted for him or Torres had more votes counted for him. Remember in 2010 at Black Rock Tom Foley was shortchanged 100 votes, first tallies suggested he only got around 440 votes and when the audit took place they found out Foley actually received 545 votes!!!
The other scenario is you had a confused electorate. When you look at the top vote getters on the BOE at Black Rock School you have Larcheveque with 593 and Hennessey with 596. Considering the Democratic council candidates only got around 440, that is a lot of voters voting Larcheveque (R), Hennessey (D), Best (R) with 450 then skipping over the candidates for Sheriff and voting for Torres and thinking they were done.
Rick got 110 more votes than Larcheveque and no one is disputing the accuracy of that.
It could have been this: take 70 random voters. All 70 voted for Rick. 36 then voted for Stafstrom and 34 voted for Brannelly. Giving a vote spread like this:
Torres 70
Blagys 0
Stafstrom 36
Brannelly 34
The rest of their votes fell along party lines.
So much speculation; I think a recount/audit will take care of that. I don’t think hate posts are a functional tool, but I can’t say I am surprised folks are posting them. SSDD.
Thank you Bob Walsh for posting plausible and substantive reasons for the disparity between Torres and Blagys’ machine totals at BRS.
Congratulations, btw, to all the winners. I saw the change candidates work very hard to win. Good for Bridgeport.
To those of you who lost and did not really deserve to, it’s a shame, and you have my empathy.
I do not believe there was anything nefarious in these results.
Brannelly and Stafstrom knew they were facing a big backlash because of Finch and Sue being aligned closely with him. Also Stafstrom because of his relationship with John Stafstrom. Consequently they worked far harder than in previous CC races.
With Danny Roach as district leader, they were going to have a better absentee ballot operation than Rick and Phil.
Lastly and in line with Hector Diaz’ post, I understand Rick’s brother was a flaming asshole at Aquaculture and played up his brother and Latino roots big-time. That may well have hurt Phil.
Congrats to Rick and in all likelihood Sue. It’s a shame because Phil would have been a strong councilman.
I am sorry to not get on this bandwagon. Mr. Blagys needs to show some respect and concede to Ms. Brannelly. To assume she doesn’t have a following as an incumbent and supporter of Finch and seasoned politician as well as having the machine behind her is just plain ignorant. Mr. Torres had a higher profile. Not only having a neighborhood market that is a magnet for locals but also has run for Mayor more than once. The fact TORRES’ NUMBERS WERE NOT TWICE THE AMOUNT OF BLAGYS IS QUESTIONABLE. THE INABILITY TO GATHER MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF ABSENTEE BALLOTS IS SAD. I SUGGEST YOU SHOW RESPECT TO MS. BRANNELLY. SAD THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR IN VIRGINIA, CUCCINELLI NEVER CONCEDED AND CONGRATULATED DEMOCRAT TERRY MCAULIFFE SHOWS A STRANGE ATTITUDE IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. THIS WAS NOT AN ANTI FINCH REFERENDUM. SUCK IT UP–MAKE THE CALL AND MOVE ON!!!
Steve,
I believe you are attempting to instill some form and courtesy into Bridgeport politics. And that is worthy of note.
However, here we are in an off-year election of sheriffs, Council persons and BOE representatives with about 70,000 registered to vote. How many did vote, by absentee or a trip to the polling machines? Perhaps 8,000. Perhaps the other 62,000 should be fined about $10 each or give up their registration.
More importantly to the discussion above is trust in the process, and I mean “trust” as in “trust but verify” and that seems to be the thread in this case. The law allows it, so why not do it? Well mistakes have been made in the past … at least donj reports this in 2010 relative to the Tom Foley vote. And the number of complaints and penalty consequences regarding election law violations in Bridgeport OIB covers pushes you to verify especially when the law permits this without the expensive route of suit and standing … and waiting …
Steve, this discussion smoked out Pat Crossin who ran five terms with Auden Grogins. His name triggers another type of mistake that sometimes happens in Bridgeport where trust should be relied upon, yet the later attempt to verify proved trust was not warranted. Remember the life insurance policies purchased for a handful of the Ganim team? (I kept asking whether any 1099s were ever provided by the City relative to taxation of such benefits. No answers. No verification.)
These days I have asked similar info FOI (verification) about stipends for City Council members. Stipend reimbursement can be for taxable or non-taxable type expenses. However, the first City response is that there are no 1099s. Curious? We continue to ask. Time will tell.
You know what they say JML, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
If the city told you there are no 1099s and you believe that means the city did not file 1099s then file a complaint against the city with the IRS.
If on the other hand, the city told you no printed 1099s exist, it could be the city may have the option or be required to file electronically. If that is the case then they may not be able or required by FOI to produce a copy.
Any FOI request you file needs to be as all-encompassing as possible. Rather than asking for copies of 1099s you should ask for copies of 1099s, reports that contain the same or substantially the same information as the 1099 would have, etc.
Bob,
Thank you for expanding on the way to request certain types of info when making an FOI request.
I requested: “A copy of the Federal tax form 1099 provided for each City Council member relating to City Council Stipend reimbursements for the tax years 2010, 2011, 2012.”
Thought I had the bases covered, but you are correct, if electronic filing were involved then perhaps only the master report would be part of the City records.
Another old saying is: “If you pay attention you can learn something every day.” Thank you for the education.
Are you willing to sit down over a cup of coffee and do some more teaching about the City Charter, Ordinances and the “duties” of a City Council person? We might also wander into municipal record keeping if you have any time. 203-259-9642. Hope you have some time to call and meet. Time will tell.