Medina: I’m Voting For Ned

Former Board of Education member and 2003 mayoral candidate Max Medina shares why he’s voting for Ned Lamont over Joe Ganim.

On August 14, 2018 registered Democrats get to vote for either their endorsed nominee, Ned Lament or his challenger, Joe Ganim to be the party’s gubernatorial candidate in November’s general election. Most candidates try to get voters to pay attention to them and their qualifications. But Joe has decided to do things differently. To distract voters away from his record, he has spent much of his time asking voters to look at Ned or where Ned sleeps or where Ned grew up. While Ned has talked about saving Connecticut’s middle class, Joe has obsessed about the number of bedrooms in Ned’s house. While Ned has focused on what we need to do to improve public education in Connecticut’s biggest cities, Joe has been fixated on who cleans the bathrooms in Ned’s house.

While Ned has taken the high road and said that he looks forward, after taking office as governor, to working with Bridgeport’s mayor, Joe has tried to get voters to change Ned Lament’s name to “Greenwich Millionaire,” as if either of those words were a crime. Ned did not respond in kind. I’m sure Joe would not have appreciated Ned using the phrase “Convicted Felon” as often as Joe has pulled out “Greenwich Millionaire.”

Joe has not been bashful about saying that his campaign has specifically targeted voters in Connecticut’s big cities such as Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford and he has been equally open about his hope that Latino and Black voters will be especially receptive to these tactics.

As a Bridgeporter who is proud to be 100% Puerto Rican and as someone who spent hundreds of hours cleaning the bathrooms of my fellow students to help pay for my college education, I find Joe’s pitch offensive. Joe’s campaign is an insult to all of Connecticut’s urban voters but especially those of us who are Black or Latino. Joe’s campaign is built on a lack of respect for our intelligence; he wants us to vote against Ned because Ned is white and has family wealth.

Well, guess what? Joe is white and has family wealth. Ned was born to a successful family. Joe was blessed to be born into a wonderful family led by his father who has been a prominent attorney for over 50 years and is one of the region’s most successful real estate developers. Ned grew up in a suburb. So did Joe.

I am proud to say I grew up in the Pequonnock Apartments in Bridgeport’s South End. Trust me, there were no Ganims or Lamonts in my neighborhood. We had families with names like Fonseca, Kendricks, Soto, Hughes, Medina and Francis. When you grow up poor or working class in a tough neighborhood in Hartford or New Haven or Bridgeport you remember who you grew up with for the rest of your life. No amount of political back-stabbing or parade-marching can earn a candidate–Joe Ganim–or anyone else, some certificate of authenticity for “being one of us.”

Joe’s approach is un-American. He wants Black, Latino, working-class voters to vote against someone based on race or income. Joe doesn’t get it.

Many of us were slapped with labels from birth. We were undervalued by society because people presumed to know us by focusing on what we looked like or where we lived. We spent a life time proving to others that our intelligence, drive, ideas and morals were more important than where we were born or what our parents did for a living.

Those of us who have actually led that life don’t want the kind of Connecticut that Joe is selling. We don’t want politicians to pander to us. Talk to us about the issues that matter to us such as education, economic opportunity, public safety and affordable health care. It is especially galling to hear that kind of nonsense from Joe. We know Joe and we know better. Thanks to family support, Joe was able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on his legal defense when he committed his crimes. The average kid from Bridgeport’s East End or Hartford’s North End doesn’t have those same options. Did Joe set up a local clinic to help poor kids navigate the criminal justice system when he got out of prison? No, he set up a company called Federal Prison Consultant. Joe’s website for that company carried a statement that read “I’m sure our stories are very similar. We both led successful and prosperous lives and then for whatever reason we became entangled in a federal prosecution.” Real “man of the people” stuff there.

Joe goes into urban neighborhoods and asks for our votes and says that he feels a connection with us because he too has “made mistakes” or “shown errors of judgment.” Taking the wrong exit off the highway is a mistake. Believing the Mets will be competitive is an error of judgment. Organizing a conspiracy that operated for five years which caused losses to the government of more than $800,000 and, after getting caught, giving false testimony under oath in federal court resulting in convictions on 16 counts, is not a “mistake.” They were not errors in judgment.

Despite all of this in 2015 Bridgeporters gave Joe the second chance he wanted. Where I come from, if someone gives you a second chance after you have badly messed up you pay them back with loyalty. Joe has decided that spending his time campaigning for a new job is the way to show loyalty to Bridgeport. Democrats voting Tuesday should choose between Ned and Joe not based on what either of them says about the other but based on which one can reasonably be expected and trusted to do right by us.

I’m voting for Ned.