Primary grinds to a close

Today's primary wrapup story in The Bristol Press:

Tuesday’s mudslinging Democratic mayoral primary has long roots.
A decade ago, when Frank Nicastro declared that he would step down as mayor, two veteran councilors got together to decide which of them should run for the city’s top job.
Cit Councilor Art Ward agreed to back colleague Gerard Couture’s bid because Couture had a little more seniority.
As it turned out, Nicastro decided the next day to run again, and kept running every two years until 2003, when he really did hand over the keys to the mayor’s office.
Couture inherited the job, and named Ward as his unofficial deputy mayor, but lost it two years ago to Republican William Stortz, a former mayor who opted not to seek reelection this time around.
After moving into the office, Stortz immediately took aim at Ward, knocking him off key committees and basically shunting him to the sidelines.
While Ward, 60, sulked and occasionally snarled, Democratic Councilor Ellen Zoppo, 39, who secured some of the assignments stripped from Ward, sought to work with Stortz. Ward was the only Democrat on the six-person council who refused to try.
So while Zoppo plunged efficiently ahead with a range of issues, from cemetery restoration to park renovations, Ward stood aloof, frustrated and alone, but convinced the community shares his disgust with the course of events at City Hall.
Now Ward is taking aim at the center stage, hoping to snatch the mayoral endorsement that Zoppo won from party leaders this spring by turning to the party’s rank-and-file in Tuesday’s primary.
If Ward wins the right from primary voters to take on Republican Ken Johnson in the Nov. 6 general election, Zoppo will be out of the race. But if Zoppo wins, Ward will remain on the ballot as an independent candidate, creating a three-way contest that GOP officials say is their best hope for a victory in November.
The primary battle, which has cost the candidates at least $30,000, has been a strange one, with Ward dodging debates, leaked letters casting doubts on Zoppo’s treatment of employees and a barrage of ill-feeling that threatens to leave the party shattered no matter who emerges as the standard-bearer.
Ward is clearly hoping that the community shares his own frustration with the way things have been going under Stortz’s leadership.
Zoppo, on the other hand, said Ward “avoided both debate and discussion of the issues” during the campaign “instead concentrating on character assassination and dredging up old news and anonymous sources, and always claiming no knowledge of the sources.”
There is no proof that Ward had anything to do with leaked copies of letters and notes that showed at least six city department heads in 2004 and 2005 complained about Zoppo’s treatment of them.
Her own frustration flared Friday when she hammered Ward for failing to condemn the leaks and questioned whether he was running for mayor merely to bolster his state pension payments by racking up a couple of years of a $100,000 municipal salary.
A couple of weeks ago, she complained to police that her political signs were vanishing at a suspiciously fast clip – and also lashed out at Ward for failing to accept any responsibility for the thefts.
Zoppo said she wanted the campaign to focus on issues rather than candidates bashing each other.
Ward said he refused to appear at debates or forums with Zoppo because of the “exclusionary” tactic she’s used on him while she worked hand-in-hand with Stortz. He said he would appear with her if she had treated him with respect, but she didn’t.
Zoppo has used televised council meetings to reel off accomplishments that included pushing through a new housing code that aims to combat spreading blight, revamping code enforcement in city government and pushing forward the Rockwell Park renovation project.
Zoppo tries to tout so much that even her parents whispered to each other recently that she talks too fast for most people to absorb what she’s saying.
Ward said he doesn’t discount Zoppo’s ability to push an agenda. But, he said, she doesn’t need to treat others so harshly on her march forward.
It’s that trail of resentment in her wake that led to harsh criticism lodged against her by city department heads in years past – and perhaps the state Freedom of Information probe that’s looking into a meeting she “scripted” last winter after telling the mayor to practice his lines in a mirror before the session.
What’s especially odd about their current clash is that until Stortz took office, Ward and Zoppo tended to agree on most issues, including the controversial $5.3 million city purchase of the downtown mall.
Now, though, they’re barely civil.
Ward denied having a hand in slipping personnel material to the Press, as Zoppo accused him of doing, and pointed out she’s created so may enemies over the years that there’s no telling who did it.
Zoppo, he said, “needs to, as she suggested to the mayor, look in the mirror” if she wants to know who hurt her campaign.
Zoppo, who began the campaign promising to “be kind,” spent the final weekend slamming her opponent in mailings, on the web and in print.
It won’t be clear until the new electronic voting machines spit out their results Tuesday which candidate managed to capture the loyalty of Democrats.
But it’s already clear that both the winner and loser will emerge more tarnished Tuesday night than they were before it all began.
As of the final campaign finance filing deadline this month, Ward had raised $34,681 while Zoppo had raked in $23,547. Ward’s money went mostly for campaign materials, some of it oddly lacking in detail, while Zoppo shelled out $3,392 for “polling materials” from the Hamden-based Edge Communications Group.
The man they’re both hoping to defeat in November, Johnson, had collected $7,335 as of his most recent filing back in July.
The polls are open to registered Democrats from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Zoppo’s background
Democratic mayoral nominee Ellen Zoppo has been keenly interested in politics most her life.
She was only 26 when she sought a state House seat in 1994 that Rep. Bill Hamzy, a Plymouth Republican, grabbed instead.
Zoppo, who is married to city Police Officer Peter Sassu, won a City Council seat in 2001 in the 2nd District and held it through two subsequent elections. She easily garnered her party’s endorsement for her mayoral run this year.
Zoppo works part-time as a special projects director the New Britain Chamber of Commerce and as development director of the Bristol Historical Society.
A Bristol native, Zoppo graduated in 1990 from Providence College with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Two years later, she earned a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Connecticut.
Zoppo and Sassu, have three children: Michaela, 10; Zachary, 8; and Carson, 6.
Zoppo’s father, Michael Zoppo, is a former vice chairman of the city’s Board of Finance. – Steve Collins

Ward’s background
A Bristol native who served with distinction in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam after high school, Art Ward rose to prominence in town through his volunteer work in the veterans’ community.
He helped lead the effort to erect one of the nation’s first memorials to the Vietnam War, back in 1973.
Ward once operated a popular Park Street bar, and then became a sales manager, a job he had to give up after a 1997 drunken driving arrest.
Ward went to work instead of a state veterans services counselor, a position he’s held for a decade.
Ward won a 1st District City Council seat in 1993 and easily won reelection to the position every two years since. In many years, he was the top vote-getter among all of the council candidates.
Ward is married to the former Patricia Cassina. They have three children and seven grandchildren. – Steve Collins

More information on the web
Ellen Zoppo: www.ellenformayor.com
Art Ward: www.movingbristolforward.com
Bristol Blog: http://bristolnews.blogspot.com

*******
Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com