Campaign Season

Thanks to voters being afraid to let our city officials stay in office more than two years at a time, we've got another election this fall. Odds are most of our elected officials will be re-elected, which makes me wonder why switching to a four-year system was voted down two years ago.

Tremaglio recently announced that he's running again. He says he doesn't expect to win, but that his running will help save Waterbury's Republican party. What ego! The Republicans already have two viable candidates, D'Amelio and Odle. The party has already squabbled publicly, since some of them want to just throw all their support behind D'Amelio, avoiding any divisiveness with Odle supporters. By presenting himself as a third candidate, Tremaglio will just cause more divisiveness. Not to mention that Tremaglio is kind of sleazy, and possibly racist (two years ago, he was quoted several times as saying that "there is an element on the Green that scares people"--I've been told that "element" is a code word used by Waterbury racists when they would rather use the n-word).

I haven't seen anything about whether or not Larry DePillo will be running again. He had a letter to the editor published in today's paper that sounded a bit like campaigning--praising a police officer for removing rocks from the middle of the road. DePillo seemed to think this was going above and beyond the call of duty. I suspect that removing debris from the roadway in order to prevent an accident is probably required of all police officers.

I had the impression that Karen Mulcahy was going to join DePillo's party and become their candidate, but she has announced that she's running again as Democrat. I don't think she'll do as well this time, although maybe she'll be picking up DePillo's votes. Two years ago, her campaign was based on a specific hot topic. For most of the past two years, she's been invisible in local politics. Her recent appearances have not been inspiring--just speeches designed to scare voters, without any specifics. I supported her last time, but I definitely won't support her this time. She seems bitter and ineffectual.

Vance has decided against running for mayor, but will still run for re-election as alderman. Jarjura will, of course, be running again and will almost certainly win again. Last time he won with 7,900 votes. He should be able to do that again this time (although you never know what might happen between now and November!).