Tony Hwang goes small. Fairfield Republican rejects Sierra Club endorsement to thwart challenger. Stumbles over role in electricity rate rise.

State Senator Tony Hwang is feeling the heat. The Fairfield Republican won re-election to the 28th Senate District two years ago by 636 votes, the closest of his five campaigns for the seat. In 2022, Hwang faced Democrat Timothy Gavin, a newcomer to politics.

This year is different. Hwang faces Rob Blanchard, a member of Fairfield’s Representative Town Meeting and veteran of several statewide campaigns. Hwang’s frayed nerves are showing, and they are not attractive. And it’s only August.

The four towns that comprise the district, Bethel, Easton, Fairfield and Newtown, are communities crammed with voters of all party registrations or none who have long cared about the environment. Whether it’s protecting Long Island Sound, improving the quality of air and water, preserving wetlands and open space, or addressing climate change, the voters in 28th Senate District pay attention to the state of their world, near and far.

It came as a surprise that Tony Hwang declined the endorsement of the Sierra Club, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest and most effective grassroots environmental movement.” The Sierra Club is proud of its 130-year history of preserving land and protecting the environment. Its endorsement adds a credential that crosses party lines. Tony Hwang rejected it in a petty act dressed up as campaign strategy that he probably hoped would remain known to only a few insiders.

The Sierra Club’s political arm has rules about endorsements. If two candidates merit the organization’s endorsement, it will ask both candidates to agree to a dual endorsement. If one refuses, no endorsement is made. Tony Hwang vetoed the clubs desire to endorse him and Blanchard. If only he could not have it, Hwang wants no one to get it, regardless of each candidate’s merits. Hwang would rather the voters know less about the candidates’ stands on the environment than that he share the endorsement with Blanchard.

Let me declare an interest. I met Rob Blanchard seven or eight years ago when he was working on a campaign. We are friends. That disclosure may not help him among some politicos but Daily Ructions readers enjoy learning about politics as practiced behind the curtain. This is a campaign story of extreme pettiness that should be told, no matter who the candidates are.

Having been a candidate for the state House and Senate long ago (4-2), I am still surprised when an experienced politician is not smart enough to, as an admiring mobster once advised comedian Joan Rivers, “run your own race. Don’t look left, don’t look right. Stay in your lane.”

The results of the 2022 race in the 28th Senate District suggest more voters than ever are on to Tony Hwang and he is uncertain of how to stop the erosion of support.

Instead of trying to block a Sierra Club joint endorsement, Hwang ought to be explaining why he voted for the catastrophic Millstone legislation that last month caused families in the district he serves to have to cope with a skyrocketing electric bill. The ill-judged 2017 bill that passed with Hwang’s support will continue to burden ratepayers for another five years.

Campaigns can provide unexpected revelations about a candidate, even one who has been around as long as Hwang. Voters will want to ask themselves what sort of candidate rejects the endorsement of the Sierra Club but accepts a maximum campaign contribution from a man whose fabricated evidence and false testimony helped send two innocent young men to prison for 25 years in 1985. Dr. Henry Lee’s testimony in the trial of Ralph “Ricky” Birch and Shawn Henning eventually cost the state $25 million in damages to the two wrongly convicted men three years after their convictions were overturned in 2020.

Lee ran the state police’s forensic lab when he testified there were blood stains on a towel found at the New Milford murder scene of victim Everett Carr. Last year, “U.S. District Court Judge Victor Bolden ruled in July that there was no evidence Lee ever conducted any blood tests on the towel…,” Connecticut Public Radio and the AP reported. Lee’s testimony, courts ruled, was crucial in convicting Birch and Henning. That $25 million came from taxpayers to begin to compensate the wrongly convicted defendants for the 35 years they spent in prison. Convicting the innocent is the nightmare of ever free and just society.

Hwang may think he has slain a mighty dragon by killing the Sierra Club’s endorsement, but it’s his self-inflicted wounds that tells the story in the 28th Senate District.

Published August 19, 2024.