During the last reporting period, Democratic City Councilman Fred Visconti contributed 50.00 in support of Republican Dean Esposito's re-election efforts. According to the filing, this was not Visconti's first contribution to the current mayor, as the records show 350.00 in aggregate (or total) contributions for the entire election cycle.
This open support for Esposito from a sitting Democrat is the latest in the well-known fracture with Danbury Democrats; the bad blood can assist not only in the continuation of two decades of Republican leadership but could also factor in the possibility of Republicans picking up a seat in the 5th ward with the announcement that Visconti is not seeking another city council term. Going back to 2019-early 2020, bitterness between incumbent Democrats in the 5th and 6th wards (Visconti, Duane Perkins, Paul Rotello, and Ben Chianese), who don't see eye-to-eye with newly elected Dems on the city council (Frank Salvatore, Farley Santos, and Roberto Alves) aligned with town committee leadership, has been the worst-kept secret in the city.
Between 2019 and 2021, political insiders witnessed countless behind-the-scenes dust-ups between the two camps that, on occasion, have spilled into the public arena.
In 2021, supporters of Roberto Alves accused incumbent Democrats of not supporting Alves' candidacy by not distributing his campaign material (a claim incumbents whom I talked about the accusation have denied).
Shortly after Alves's defeat, criticism directed toward the incumbents in the 5th and 6th ward reached a new low with a shortly-lived, unattributed blog highly critical of Visconti, Rotello, Perkins, and Chianese.
While supporters of the 5th and 6th ward representatives accuse Alves, Santos, Salvatore, and their allies of authorizing the blog, no one has claimed responsibility for the website.
While infighting and fractures within Danbury Democrats are nothing new, this is the first time in my memory that a SITTING Democratic elected official has publicly rebuked his party's choice for mayor in term of multiple campaign contributions.
This moment at the Democratic Town Committee picnic in August seems like a lifetime ago...
On September 26, 2007, ten plaintiffs filed suit in response to an arrest of aday laborers at a public park in Danbury, Connecticut. Plaintiffs amended their complaint on November 26, 2007.
