Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim secured another four-year term in office on Tuesday after defeating his chief political challenger, John Gomes, in a fourth election in less than six months.
Ganim announced victory shortly after polls closed on Tuesday night and boasted that the results of the election were evidence of his support in Connecticut’s largest city.
“I think people realized that the other side was really just negative,” Ganim said. “And it’s easy. I’m far from a perfect mayor, far from a perfect administration. They can knock all they want, but at the end of the day, they know Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim is gonna get up, roll up his sleeves and fight for the people every day.”
The mayor’s win in the special general election will close out part of a controversial and embarrassing chapter in the city’s history, one in which several of the mayor’s political supporters were allegedly captured on camera illegally depositing absentee ballots into drop boxes ahead of last year’s Democratic primary.
A state Superior Court judge determined the surveillance footage provided enough evidence to toss out the results of that primary election, a decision that pushed the mayoral contest between Ganim and Gomes into 2024.
In the months that followed, Gomes’ supporters filed dozens of complaints with the State Elections Enforcement Commission, alleging widespread absentee ballot fraud in the September primary. Ganim’s backers subsequently filed similar complaints against individuals who worked on Gomes’ campaign last summer.
[RELATED: How the battle for absentee ballots defined the Bridgeport election]
The judge’s decision to overturn the election in September captured national and international attention and made Bridgeport a poster child for alleged absentee ballot fraud. But nobody has been charged as part of any investigation to this point.
Both Wanda Geter-Pataky and Eneida Martinez, two of Ganim’s supporters who were allegedly captured on video depositing ballots into drop boxes last September, were in attendance at Ganim’s election party Tuesday night.
Gomes, who ran in the general election as an Independent Party candidate, attempted to seize on the election scandal as part of his campaign to oust Ganim, who returned to office in 2015 after serving seven years in prison on federal corruption charges.
Yet in three consecutive rematches, Gomes was unable to overcome Ganim’s institutional advantages as the Democratic incumbent who had the full political and financial backing of Bridgeport’s Democratic Town Committee.
As he took the stage at his campaign party Tuesday night, Gomes reiterated that a large focus of his campaign was about “restoring democracy and the electoral process” in Bridgeport.
“Bridgeport right now is a divided city. We understand the voter fatigue, the frustration,” he said.
“We understand our journey has ended with this election, but the fight and the movement will continue,” Gomes added.
In the leadup to Tuesday’s special general election, the Connecticut Post reported that Mario Testa, the longtime chairman of Bridgeport’s Democratic Town Committee, sent a letter to the leaders of the state Democratic Party imploring them to support Ganim.
Nearly all of the state’s top elected officials followed through on that request by publicly backing Ganim, who had finally locked up the Democratic endorsement in the special primary in January.
Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes and U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy all threw their political weight behind Ganim this month, with many of them stumping with him at campaign events throughout the city.
At his election night party, Ganim said the voting results Tuesday also showed that he has widespread support among average residents in Bridgeport.
“If it wasn’t clear, three times in a row. It’s clear today, louder than ever. Bridgeport has spoken, and people in a resounding way came to answer the call for the fourth time in the middle of February and said yes to the progress in the city that we started,” Gamin said.
“I think this was a resounding victory. I mean overwhelmingly, as was the primary, and it sends a powerful message about the support that we have in the city of Bridgeport,” Ganim said.
Democrats in Bridgeport have an overwhelming advantage, with more than 41,000 voters registered with the party. As a result, Gomes attempted to court Republican and unaffiliated voters ahead of the special general election.
The results show that Gomes was not able to form a large enough coalition, however, to overcome Ganim’s advantages.
Even so, Gomes argued that his campaign has started a movement in Bridgeport among voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo, and he said he would continue to advocate for change in Bridgeport and Connecticut.
His first target, he said, is convincing state lawmakers in Connecticut to reform the state’s laws surrounding absentee voting.