One day left and one final vote to declare a mayoral winner. On Tuesday it’s all about yanking out a vote. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Mayor Joe Ganim is coming off a week of multiple endorsements – Governor Ned Lamont, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, and Congressman Jim Hines – something Independent Party candidate John Gomes decried as coerced endorsements by Democratic Town Chair Mario Testa.
For the most part since Ganim won the redo Democratic primary by 12 points last month, team Gomes has taken a living-the-past napalm approach excoriating anyone dare endorse Ganim for such transgressions.
Gomes’ narrative hasn’t budged much opting to highlight Ganim’s past and September’s absentee ballot controversy that led to court-ordered new elections. If Gomes manages to pull off an upset on Tuesday its unconventional contours will largely center on leveraging an anti-Ganim, instead of pro-Gomes, vote.
Ganim righted the ship last month winning both the walk-in and mail-in votes. What is different from last month’s primary redo is more than 20,000 unaffiliated voters eligible to participate as well as more than 4,000 Republicans in the special general election. Only a fraction will show up based on prior elections.
Presumably the majority of Republicans will gravitate to the party standard bearer David Herz. Additional Democrats who stayed home in the primary could come out. Key will be how electors not aligned with a party break.
Tuesday’s weather is shaping up as a cool start with temps warming into the mid 50s and potential rain in the last few hours of voting.
A pattern has emerged from the three prior votes, Gomes performing best in the north and western portions of the city led by Black Rock while Ganim runs up numbers in the Whiskey Hill, East Side and East End precincts with a few outliers. Both camps are working absentee voters. Ganim will prevail with the mail-in vote once again, the question is by how much.
Some examples of mail drops in the final days.
Lennie, what the fluck is going on here? First, John Gomes is Cape Verdean; then Portuguese; Brazilian; Puerto Rican; Domincan; Just days ago he was Irish; now he’s BLACK. By tomorrow he’ll be Italian and Lennie Grimaldi’s illegitimate son.
Speedy, maybe Gomes is the chameleon candidate.
After the election when the vendors come looking for their money Gomes will be The Invisible Man.