Waiting Game, Within The Game For Voter Supremacy: Lamond Daniels The Mayoral Wildcard

A legal narrative will play out the next few weeks deciding the configuration of the mayoral race. Another primary or straight to the general election?

Legal advisors to John Gomes, challenging Mayor Joe Ganim’s 251-vote Democratic primary win, and city officials that certified the vote, will duke it out in the courtroom of Judge William Clark who must assess if there’s a preponderance of evidence for a primary redo. Whatever determination he makes could end up before the Connecticut Supreme Court as was the case four years ago upholding Ganim’s 270-vote win over State Senator Marilyn Moore.

Gomes smartly lined up Plan B: a place on the Bridgeport Independent Party line for the general election if foiled in the primary. If Judge Clark orders a primary redo and Gomes wins he’ll have two general election lines and robust wind at his back.

Now, let’s say the judge sides with the city: Ganim will also embody two lines as the primary winner and ballot spot on the New Movement Party line, with favorite status.

Either way, Gomes and Ganim will play in the general election.

David Herz will occupy the Republican line.

The wildcard is Democrat Lamond Daniels who narrowly missed qualifying for the primary via signatures, but who also implemented a Plan B strategy by successfully petitioning for the general election.

There’s no parsing this: what occurred in the aftermath of the primary, leaked police videos of a political operative placing what appear to be absentee ballots in a drop-box fronting the Margaret Morton Government Center poses a public relations stick-in-the-eye.

What if, in Judge Clark’s courtroom, evidence reveals both sides do this?

This opens for Daniels to argue they all flow from the same womb of hypocrisy. First, one side got caught, then another. Oh, what a tangled web…and, so on.

Do not discount Daniels, if Ganim and Gomes are both bruised by this process, to make a compelling wedge candidacy argument. He’s untainted, distant from the BS, unencumbered by the shackles of politics. He also embraces a story of strong public service.

This is a leap, you say?

Had anyone predicted leaked PD videos surfacing to change the course of the narrative? Or another potential whiplash churning electorate-nausea to look elsewhere for the magic of Zofran? And, then, when tummies settled, something different in a mayoral candidacy?

Could happen, or maybe not. But, we’re dealing with the game, within the game. Both sides play this game. They do. If one side gets caught, doesn’t make the other side pure in a game of insiders. It’s just about timing. In the long haul these things even out.

Meanwhile, does Daniels’ candidacy focus general election voters on a viable alternative to break free from all this crap?

If he’s sufficiently financed and both narratives break his way, don’t discount a pissed off electorate breaking his way.