By Mark Pazniokas
Hebron — Eleven candidates were invited, nine accepted and two bickered to the point that another proclaimed the night “an embarrassment.” And so it went Wednesday in the second of the Connecticut Republican Party’s five monthly showcases of the politicians vying to become the GOP nominee for governor in 2018.
GOP chairman J.R. Romano watches from the wings. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Mark Pazniokas for CTMirror.org
With no practical way to thin the field, the Republicans are facing a long and bumpy road to their nominating convention in May at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, whose tribal owners are engaged in a multi-million-dollar lobbying battle at the state legislature over MGM Resorts International’s proposal to build a gambling resort in Bridgeport.
Peter Lumaj, a refugee from Communist Albania and an unabashed admirer of President Trump, who demonstrated in 2016 that decorum accomplishes little on a stage crowded with candidates, spent much of the evening goading his rivals, especially the five Republicans who have held public office. He repeatedly dismissed them as “career politicians,” members of a political establishment that has left the state in fiscal and economic disarray.
The candidates sat on stools arrayed across the stage of RHAM High School: Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, businessman Steve Obsitnik of Westport, former U.S. Comptroller General Dave Walker, Lumaj, state Rep. Prasad Srinivasan, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, former Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst, state Sen. Toni Boucher and Mike Handler, a top city finance official in Stamford.
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