The Connecticut General Assembly 112th District includes the Town of Monroe and the northeastern section of the Town of Newtown. The current representative is Debra Lee Hovey ("my towns").
Below is a brief account of my effort to depose her as the Working Families and Democratic Party candidate last fall, as told to my fellow 1969 classmates at Wesleyan University.
I can't recall the last time I posted in the 1969 Class Notes, which either means it's been decades or my shorter term memory is failing ...
The current century had passed too quietly, so in 2012 I decided to take on a fun project: running as a Democrat in a hopelessly Red Republican state legislative district here in upper Fairfield County. I had previously joined the Monroe Democratic Town Committee, and our candidate in the past two election cycles bowed out. She had ran flawless energetic campaigns, but after garnering a respectable 44% in '08, fell back to the high Thirties in Tea Party impacted 2010. No one else was eager to step up to the plate, so ...
The 112th District encompasses the entire Town of Monroe and scattered roads and subdivisions in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown.
Back at Wesleyan, I took up road running with classmate Dean May, routinely pacing westward on Pine Street, turning past Long Lane and the Wilbur Snow Elementary School, down to Wadsworth hollow & back uphill to the campus. Years later, I recommenced hill running in Traverse City, Michigan, daily grinding out 10Ks, and occasionally doubling down to a half marathon.
To spite a 2010 health crisis, a near miss stroke from a 99% blocked carotid artery, I have started up one more time & have gotten back to 4.4 miles, albeit a much slower pace.
Thus I was equal to the task of door to door solicitation with the hilly roads, long driveways, and nasty dogs that characterize retail politics in my neighborhood.
Nothing turned out well.
My opponent easily won reelection for the sixth time & has made a name for herself this new year by warning Arizona ex-Congresswoman Gabbrielle Giffords to "stay out of my towns".
I don't have that option, so I guess I'll stay put.