Oh man, the way The Fairfield Weekly is hammering Mayor Mark, I don't we'll see a Weekly box on Main Street for some time.

The latest article from my favorite weekly has it all, Boughton's hiding in his spider hole and refusing to talk to the media during the Basso/Urice/Teicholtz email debacle, Boughton MISLEADING THE PUBLIC about the city's role in the Danbury 11 sweep, the James Galante "I had no idea about the" illegal campaign contributions, school over-crowding, bigotry running amok, etc. Hell, they even goof on that candidate FROM BETHEL who walks around in an Uncle Sam outfit and suggests that residents shoot and kill members of the immigrant community.

NOTE: The Weekly is a sister paper of The Hartford Courant...you know, that paper that has the goods when it comes to Mayor Boughton, James Galante, illegal campaign contributions and other goodies like improvements to the ice rink, etc, etc.

Pardon the one-sidedness of our look at the Danbury mayoral race. Republican incumbent Mark Boughton declined to talk to us. And Concerned Citizens candidate John McGowan demanded we never call him again after we asked him to clarify statements he made on a public-access show implying that residents should shoot undocumented immigrants.

So that leaves Democrat Helena Abrantes. And while we couldn’t talk to Boughton, we can talk about him—and even without his input, we should. Education, business development and affordable housing are just as important to Danbury as they are to the rest of the county, but the talk of the town is Boughton’s hard-line, headline-grabbing approach to illegal immigration and its ripple effects.

“By going on CNN and Lou Dobbs, he hurt the city because everybody is talking about Danbury and how bad it is,” says Abrantes, a former town clerk and three-term common councilwoman. “Why would somebody want to move to Danbury after hearing that?”

Boughton has taken a hands-on approach to problems presented by an influx of Brazilians and Ecuadorians—plenty of them undocumented. His UNIT (Unified Neighborhood Inspection Team) initiative cracked down on rowdy volleyball games, which Boughton told the Weekly in August were “part of an underground economy where some people sold food and wagered money to pay their rent” and wanted Immigration and Customs Services to deputize Danbury police to enforce immigration laws. In Sept., 2006, ICE apprehended 11 Ecuadorian day laborers in Kennedy Park, and the resulting racial-profiling lawsuit against the city revealed that Danbury police officers made the arrests, though Boughton had said that the city played no role in the raid.

Abrantes says, under her administration “if someone is a criminal, [ICE] can go into Danbury and arrest them but I’m not going to do something illegal to get them. That could cost us a lot of money; the city is getting sued. You have to use the laws that are there.” (In past interviews, Boughton has said he couldn’t discuss the suit as it is ongoing. He’s toned down the rhetoric, telling the Danbury News-Times, “People are passionate on both sides.”)

Abrantes says there are other ways to address the problem than raids. “Businesses are creating false documents for some of these workers,” she says. “The police can go undercover and stop that sort of thing.”

The problems caused by the Boughton immigration plan extend outside the courtroom and outside the immigrant community, says Abrantes. Boughton may have “opened Pandora’s Box.”

“If you go online and read the comments at the newspaper’s site, I have never seen such bigotry in my life; I didn’t even know people used those sort of words anymore,” she says of the semi-infamous NewsTimes.com. “What’s scary is that all the anger in the city is giving credence to people who’d ordinarily be in the shadows.” She points to the recent scandal in which two Republican officials, neither of whom has apologized publicly, were caught forwarding emails with crude Latino caricatures. “I don’t think there would be such acceptance for that sort of thing if we were talking about this civilly and realistically.”

Abrantes made it clear she doesn’t think Boughton is a racist, just a politician. “It’s political posturing,” she says. “I think he’s gearing up to run for something else.”

Okay. That’s out of the way. Let’s talk about other issues.

Danbury High School is over capacity and the principal was warned by the fire marshal. What would you do about that? “I’d talk to the owner of the Palace Theatre on Main Street and start a science, technology and arts school. I’d also look into another magnate school.”

Taxes? “We need to bring in a business base and stable source of taxes...Taxes have gone up every year since Boughton took office. Water and sewage have gone up too. That needs to change.”

Housing? “We’ve been overdeveloped in recent years and need to regulate it better… In Danbury, they are building either multi-family units or McMansions. There’s nothing in between for the middle class-person.”

Main Street? “The zoning shows aren’t being enforced. There are a lot of signs and trash that have popped up since they took the cops on bikes off the streets. I’d like to hire 32 more police officers and get some of them who are behind desks out in the streets.”

An instant Weekly classic indeed!