Bridgeport, Connecticut, like other towns in that state, is hold local partisan elections on November 3, 2009. In Bridgeport, and certain other Connecticut towns, no one political party is permitted to run a full slate of candidates. This guarantees that local legislative bodies will not be comprised entirely of members of the strongest party.
Because the second-biggest party is guaranteed to win some seats, generally the Bridgeport city council and School Board are composed of Democratic and Republican nominees. However, this year, observers feel that it is not clear whether the Working Families Party or the Republican Party will win the seats reserved for the second strongest party. And, in the School Board race, one Republican member, Sauda Efia Baraka, who was denied renomination by the Republican Party is running for re-election as the Working Families Party nominee. See this story.
It appears that the minority-party representation law only applies to the school board. The city council is elected by 2 members from 10 districts, and is currently 20-0. Incidentally, Bridgeport is the most populous city in Connecticut and had P.T.Barnum as a long time mayor.
Minority-party representation on school boards appears to be a statewide law with several different options. In some cases, there is limited voting, with voters restricted to voting for half of an even number of members, and a bare majority of an odd number (e.g. 3 of 5).
In other options, voters may vote for as many seats as are available, but only half (or a bare majority) may be elected from one party.
It is not clear which system is used in Bridgeport.
Old Phineas — the great showman — only served one term as mayor of Bridgeport, but served four terms in the Connecticut legislature. He was also defeated in a bid for Congress as a Republican in 1867, losing narrowly to his third cousin, William H. Barnum — the longest serving Democratic national chairman in history.
A more interesting Bridgeport political figure, I would argue, was the picturesquely-named Jasper McLevy, the fiscally-conservative Socialist mayor of that city from 1933 to 1957. Having failed in numerous attempts to capture the mayor’s office dating back to 1911, McLevy, who ran for mayor on at least 23 occasions, was eventually swept into office during the Great Depression and was routinely re-elected for almost a quarter of a century thereafter.
As mayor, McLevy cut spending and reduced the city’s mounting debt while consistently holding the line on taxes, prompting industrialist Vivien Kellems, a principled foe of the federal income tax, to say that McLevy was more of a Republican than most Republican politicians.
A year after McLevy’s election, the Socialists won five seats in the Connecticut legislature — all from Bridgeport — including three in the State Senate, where they held the balance-of-power between the Democrats and the Republicans.
In 1938, the colorful Bridgeport mayor garnered a staggering 166,253 votes, or 26.3%, as the Socialist Party’s candidate for governor of Connecticut — no small feat considering the state’s Socialist Party was badly split during that period, with the party’s left-wing faction — led by brilliant Quaker pacifist Devere Allen — breaking off and forming a rival Labor Party.
Bridgeport has had a rich political history involving third parties and one can only hope that the Working Families Party continues that tradition with a couple of unexpected victories on Tuesday.