Lets just say that Mark's lucky the New York Times opted not to do a full extensive profile on his political career. I would have dumped so much material in Jill's lap that she would have been busy reading and watching material for days.

Al Robinson, whose blog, HatCityBlog.com, is largely devoted to the mayor’s activities, says Mr. Boughton underwent a transformation in 2005 after being criticized by many residents here for proposing a day labor center to stop workers from gathering in Kennedy Park.

“He just didn’t know the level of anti-immigration feeling in the area,” Mr. Robinson said. “It almost seemed like overnight he switched his whole policy from someone interested in helping immigrants to someone who just wanted to enforce immigration law.”

Well, she basically got the quote right. Mark didn't actually propose to build a day laborer center BUT the mere fact that he was interested in the idea sparked the backlash within his party and the last honest man in Danbury saw a political advantage. You have to remember, before the day-laborer fiasco, Boughton was just a guy who was blessed to even be in office if it wasn't for Gene Eriquez retiring it's well known that he and the immigrant community got along pretty well prior to 2005 (although there were anti-immigrant xenophobes in the area since 2003) and with good reason.

The shops along Main Street, which were once abandoned, were filled with businesses and Main Street with going under a sort of transformation process which helped the local economy. Mark was having fun cutting the ribbons from Gene Eriquez's projects and basically giving the impression that Danbury was business as usual as it was during the Fairfield County (Norwalk/Stamford)job boom of the late 90s.

That all stopped after the day-laborer backlash.

With the immigrant population building here, Brewster, and in Westchester County, you had day-laborers who popped up on Main Street, which irritated residents so they moved to Kennedy Park. Once that happened and work of the day-laborer center gained attention, BOOM, the Republican/moderate independent backlash happened and Boughton (who's no idiot to the political landscape of the city seeing that he's a life-long resident, father was the mayor during the late 70's, former member of the planning commission, and former State Rep.) did a political 180 degree turn.

From there we had city officials and people in Boughton's administration mingling with Paul Streitz's anti-immigrant/hate group named The Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, later identified as the Danbury Chapter of the Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, now currently known as the United States Citizens for Immigration and Law Enforcement (after the CTCIC breakup over Streitz's MexDonalds survey).

From the turnout of CTCIC's first (and only successfully attended) meeting, basically, Boughton woke up to the prospect of using illegal immigration for political purposes (which is why some members in the anti-immigrant movement such as Streitz, still consider Boughton a fraud when it comes to this topic). From there, Boughton pulls political stunts that he knows has no way in being successful such as the volleyball ordinance and requesting state police to be trained as immigration agents. This leads to Boughton's popularity in the anti-immigrant community and on many hate-group/white supremacists websites and message boards.



From there, in a nutshell, we now have Boughton, the political opportunist who will do or say anything for political gain, and the political opportunist Republican party (a party which core comprised of former Democrats who were excommunicated from the party after the downfall on Jim Dyer). who are inter-connected with one of the most notorious xenophobic organization in the region, now led by Streitz's disciple, Elise "deer in headlights" Marciano.

Unfortunately, one needs to have a trail of Boughton's activities in the area to have a complete understanding of the man. Danbury is not a media target as most of the media is located in Hartford, New Haven, and New York. The local media simply does not have the structure to have reporters cover ALL the ad-hoc and land-use meetings as they did under previous administrations thus, Boughton has been able to get away with a SLEW of misstatements to outright lies in public appearances and on local access television.

I could go on and on and produce hours of video footage and evidence to back up my case but like I said, Mark's blessed that this wasn't a complete and detailed profile. There is always next time and the media knows how to find me...hell, maybe I get give enough material to make place Boughton in the New York Times Magazine.