FIC Blog

While conservatives are rightfully lamenting our losses around the country, we have some VERY good news here in Connecticut.  In our #1 targeted General Assembly race, the race where we spent the most time, money, and effort, WE WON.  

There was only one open state senate seat in Connecticut where there was a clear pro-family candidate and clear anti-family candidate.  This was the 16th State Senate District, a seat formerly held by Congressman-elect, Democrat Chris Murphy.  We endorsed Republican Sam Caligiuri from the get-go, and devoted much of our efforts to turning this seat.  Sam’s opponent, David Zoni, was endorsed and heavily funded by Love Makes a Family, the PAC pushing same-sex “marriage” and other attacks on the family.  Zoni tried to hide this fact from the voters, but we exposed him at every turn.  Our Director of Public Policy, Peter Wolfgang, and I published an op-ed in the Waterbury Republican-American titled “Candidate Masks Gay Advocacy” which was reprinted and spread throughout the district.  We mailed a letter highlighting David Zoni’s support of same-sex “marriage” to over 8000 households and we were greeted at the polls by Democrats saying that they had intended to vote party line, but because of our letter were voting for Caligiuri. We produced a video that was viewed by hundreds of the district’s residents highlighting Zoni’s duplicity.  You can view the video by clicking here.
Our op-eds, Get Out the Vote campaign, video and volunteers helped made the difference, and Sam Caligiuri defeated Zoni 55%-45%. Sam never wavered in his opposition to same-sex unions and other anti-family efforts, even in the face of a despicably negative campaign run by David Zoni.  Sam will provide much needed conservative leadership in our General Assembly.

Sam’s victory stands in striking contrast to Nancy Johnson’s congressional defeat.  As a liberal Republican, Johnson was trounced in Waterbury; Caligiuri ran as a pro-family Republican and took 61% of Waterbury’s vote.  A lesson is to be learned here by the Republican establishment:  We need more Sam Caligiuri Republicans.

We also won a tight victory for Bob Ward’s open seat, with Vincent Candelora defeating Love Makes a Family endorsed Ashley Joyner by a few hundred votes.  This is a great victory because Bob Ward often cast crucial anti-family votes.

We also had an almost perfect record in helping our incumbent pro-family legislators win reelection.  We only lost one incumbent pro-family legislator to a Love Makes a Family endorsed liberal: Robert Heagney of Simsbury lost to Linda Schofield.  And here Schofield only won by hiding her support of same-sex “marriage” and other extreme social positions from the voters.  We will do everything in our power  to make sure that Simsbury voters learn about Schofield’s extreme positions before the next election.  Cathy Tymniak also lost, but her opponent Kim Fawcett was not endorsed by Love Makes a Family and she opposes same-sex “marriage.”

Every other pro-family incumbent we endorsed won.  THAT’S 38 WINS AND 2 LOSSES FOR OUR INCUMBENTS.  We’re proud of that record.

T.R. Rowe, Al Adinolfi, Ruth Fahrbach, Dolly Powers and John Harkins are only a few of the legislators that your donations helped across the finish line.  T.R. and Al Adinolfi were both subjected to vicious campaigns by pro-same-sex “marriage” candidates: T.R. and Al stood firm for marriage and defeated their challengers by large margins.  Ruth Fahrbach, John Harkins, and Dolly Powers had closer races, and this makes our help even more critical to their victories.  David Aldarando was but one of our pro-family Democrat incumbents that had a tight race that we helped to victory.

We will give you the final numbers tomorrow, but overall the overwhelming majority of our endorsed candidates won their elections, showing that Connecticut is not the extreme liberal state some on the left believe it to be.  Yes, that’s right: AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THE CANDIDATES WE ENDORSED WON THEIR ELECTIONS!  That is an amazing statement given that nationally we suffered some major defeats.

Of course we had some losses.  Phil Gallagher’s loss (46%-54%) to Jason Bartlett for an open seat in Danbury was a heartbreaker, given that retiring Hank Bielawa was a solid vote in our corner that has now moved into Love Makes a Family’s corner.  And yet,  this was Love Makes a Family’s only victory over one of our endorsed candidates in an open seat.  And again, Gallagher never mentioned his support for same-sex “marriage” on his website or campaign literature.

But the key thing to understand here is that our losses were almost all first time runs by Republicans against entrenched incumbent Democrats.  The national mood and the high party line voting made it difficult for these candidates to win this time around.  Gregg Hannan, Rick Giordano, Chris Oliviera, Matt Daly, Eric Thompson, and Dan McCann all lost their bids to unseat liberal incumbents.  But even here, candidates like Rick Giordano and Dan McCann forced much closer than expected races, gaining 38% and 37% of the vote respectively.   You can’t win an election by refusing to run a candidate and often candidates who initially lose elections win on their second or third try.  Love Makes a Family knows this and that is why they continue to challenge our key incumbents.  We must realize that reclaiming Connecticut for common sense values will take a number of election cycles.  Love Makes a Family, NARAL, and NOW began their dominance of our politics long ago by strategically going after a few key districts at a time.  We have now begun that process ourselves and achieved our first major victory in two open seats on Tuesday.

Building a conservative base in our legislature is going to take time and effort.  But Sam’s victory, Candelora’s victory and the victory of almost all of our incumbents shows that if we work together we can change the course of this state.  We raised and distributed over $50,000 to targeted races.  This was a small pittance compared to the liberal interest groups.  We also systematically organized volunteers for key races for the first time.  And thus while the nation was tilting to the left, we gained a key seat in the state senate, a seat in the state house and held on to all but one of our pro-family incumbents to a Love Makes a Family endorsed challenger.  

We sincerely thank all of you who donated or volunteered.  Even if the candidate that you volunteered for did not win, know that for the first time Love Makes a Family and other extremist groups were spread across the entire state and were unable to focus effectively on key races like Sam’s.  Though they dumped over $4000 into David Zoni’s campaign trough and countless thousands more into attempting to defeat Vincent Candelora and our pro-family incumbents, our volunteers, mailings, and financial support helped make the difference.  For that we are proud and blessed.

We are already starting now to prepare for the next legislative session.  If you want to build on our successes and stand up for the family in Connecticut please donate online on our secure server today by clicking here.  We need your help now more than ever.  All of the money that we have raised for our PAC has gone directly to helping candidates.  Our operations budget for lobbying is therefore suffering and we are in serious need of your financial support as we prepare for the 2007 Legislative Session.

God bless you for all you have done to help . . . Onward!