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Same as the Old Boss
DeStefano cruises, 62-38, over Looney. Can Schiavone pose credible challenge Nov. 6?
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Business New Haven
9/17/2001
By:
BNH
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On a day when most Americans sat glued to their televisions in disbelief and horror, nearly 16,000 New Haven Democrats found the time to go to the polls for the September 11 Democratic primary.
Most of them voted for the status quo in City Hall.
Seeking his fifth term in City Hall, incumbent John DeStefano Jr. outpointed his rival, State Sen. Martin L. Looney (D-11), 9,859 votes to 5,974 for a surprising 62-38 victory margin.
DeStefano now faces maverick Republican Joel Schiavone in the November 6 general election.
Of the Elm City's 54,235 registered voters, more than 37,000 are enrolled as Democrats - about 69 percent of the total (about 26 percent) are unenrolled, and just five percent are registered as Republicans. New Haven's party primaries are closed primaries, which means only voters registered as Democrats or Republicans may vote in those respective primaries.
Roughly 43 percent of registered Democrats turned out to vote in the primary, and higher-than-usual figure.
Interest in the Democratic mayoral contest was higher than in previous DeStefano re-election years due to a strong and credible opponent in the 53-year-old Looney, a 20-year veteran of the General Assembly whose senate district includes parts of New Haven, Hamden and East Haven.
In the end, the Looney challenge turned out to be as credible as advertisers - but not nearly as strong.
Early on primary day, there was some doubt the contest would even take place as scheduled. Devastating terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, outside Washington, D.C., caused election officials to quickly postpone primary elections in New York.
However, early on primary Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan L. Bysiewicz decided to allow primaries statewide to be held as scheduled.
“It's important for people not only to support the candidate of their choice, [but] to show that despite what happened, democracy does go forward,” said Bysiewicz.
Is DeStefano in danger on November 6? It's difficult to say, but one measure will be how seriously the local media take the candidacy of the mercurial Schiavone. Certainly, the city's low Republican registration mitigate against that. Moreover, in the absence of a strong (or in some election years, any) GOP mayoral challenger, many media have developed an unhealthy habit of treating the Democratic primary as the de facto general contest.
Unless that particular old habit dies in 2001, Schiavone surely faces an uphill struggle.
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