Running under different circumstances

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – Steve Dunn says the problem with college is that “there is no one” telling students “to get up in the morning, or to go to class or to get their homework done.”

“Some students struggle with all that freedom after being supervised by adults until they’re 18 years old,” said the Democratic former Brookfield first selectman.

When Dunn was a freshman at Manhattanville College he worked assiduously for two months on a project for a Philosophy course, his major area of study.

After he submitted it, the professor, J. Brooks Colburn, said, “Steve, I know that you can do better than this.”

Dunn replied, “But I did a good job.”

Colburn countered, “You did a good job, but I know you can do better.”

Sitting in the Brookfield Democratic headquarters that recently opened on Federal Road, Dunn said, “That is one of the things that has always stuck with me: That you always can do better.”

Dunn said that initially it was difficult to land a job with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy.

"Some employers found it confusing," he explained.

However, isn't that to be expected? Don't we live in a society of specialists? Aren't undergraduate college degrees too much of a practice in moderation?

Said Dunn, "I told them, in college it is about getting a broad base of knowledge and it really doesn't matter what your major was."

He got hired as a sales representative and over time earned a master's degree in Business Administration from Fordham University.

He became a vice president at J.P. Morgan Chase.

Dunn said his master's degree “was helpful because it taught me an incredible amount about finance, accounting and how to run a organization from a high position" - skills that also benefitted him when he was first selectman from 2015 to 2021.

He grew up in suburban Pound Ridge, N.Y. in a family with a father who was devout Republican and a mother who was a devout Democrat.

He said his mother was more political, and even ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the five-member Town Council..

She took their family to Bobby Kennedy’s funeral in New York City in June 1968. Dunn was 13.

“It was an unbelievable event,” he recalled in an interview with Patch.com. “The pain and the sadness on people’s faces. I will never forget that.”

He called the nation’s 35th chief executive, Democrat John Kennedy, “ a great president.”

However, there are two Republicans on his admiration list.

“I didn’t always agree with John McCain on the issues,” commented Dunn on the longtime U.S. senator from Arizona. “But he was a man of incredible fortitude.”

He said that he voted for Republican former President George H.W. Bush.

“I think he was a pragmatist,” said Dunn. “He was able to get both sides to work together to improve the condition of most people.”

Dunn announced earlier this month that he would again seek the Democratic nomination for first selectman and that his running mate for one of the other selectmen seats on the three-member Board of Selectmen would be longtime former Republican Bob Belden.

They have underscored their experience: Dunn with six years as first selectman and Belden as the current chairman of the Board of Education and as a former chairman of the Board of Finance.

Belden initially ran for the Board of Finance 20 years ago on the Republicans United For Brookfield ticket headed by Jerry Murphy, who would be elected to two terms as first selectman.

Belden, then a vice president with IBM, quickly emerged as the finance board's point person on assembling data to determine how big a tax increase Brookfield voters would accept at the budget referendums.

In a phone interview with Patch.com, state Sen. Stephen Harding (R-30) of Brookfield said, "I have a ton of respect for Bob."

During brief remarks to the audience at a meet and greet event at Twins on Junction Road, Belden told an audience of about 50 people, "I have always been non partisan."

Belden had been a prime volunteer for Republican Bill Tinsley, who was elected in 2013 and then was ousted by Dunn, a Democrat, in a landslide in 2015.

Tinsley has said that he not only admired Belden's intelligence but the countless hours of work that he devoted to GOP campaigns, including his own bids for first selectman.

Dunn said "in a way" he doesn't "find it surprising" that Belden is now his running mate.

"Bob and I have always been about what is best for Brookfield,” he remarked.

"We're both fiscally conservative and socially moderate," Dunn added.

As Mark Boughton said when he was mayor of Danbury, "There is no Republican or Democratic way to plow the roads during a snowstorm. Either it gets done or it doesn't."

Belden lauded Dunn for his management of municipal government.

"There was a lot of divisions between some of the boards in town when Steve first took office and he did a lot to bring the boards together to work effectively." He said he also was impressed with Dunn's management of the municipal work force.

Patch.com has reported that Harding has praised Dunn for his work in getting the $78.1 million Candlewood Lake Elementary School project approved at referendum in 2019. The school will open later this year with students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.

In an interview with Patch.com, Zoning Commission member Phoebe Holmes, a Democrat, said, "Steve was so impressive in the way he managed the Macroburst," which in May 2018 had left tree limbs strewn across Brookfield.

Belden said in a phone interview with Patch.com that after 48 years as a Republican he changed his registration to unaffiliated in November 2020 after the national GOP challenged the results of the presidential election, a position that he calls "ridiculous."

"It had noting to do with anything that was going on in Brookfield," he explained regarding his decision to register unaffiliated.

Based on November 2022 figures from the Secretary of the State's office, Brookfield has 5,966 unaffiliated voters, 4,081 Republicans, 3,453 Democrats and 246 registered with minor parties.

On election night 2021 after the results showed that Republican Tara Carr, who had spent 25 years in the U .S. Army, had scored a 218-vote plurality, Dunn told his supporters: “We can get it back in two years, but it probably is not going to be me.”

Why did he decide to run again when it is difficult in politics to get back to a job that you once had?

Dunn, who currently is one of the Other Selectmen on the board, said some residents spoke to him in January about seeking his former job. He noted that even though he lost in 2021 he garnered about 200 more votes than in 2019 when he was elected to a third term.

He said that he spoke with Sue Slater, who had been his running mate starting in 2015, about running again for a seat as an Other Selectman. However, Dunn indicated that Slater said she would not be available due to her activities with the Brookfield Lions Club. He said that by February he was meeting with Belden.

Dunn said that Belden will help attract more Republicans and unaffiliated voters to the Democratic ticket.

In 2009, longtime Republican Bill Davidson, a former chairman of the Board of Finance and former member of the Board of Selectmen, changed his registration to unaffiliated and as the Democratic nominee captured a three-way race for first selectman. He won a second term in 2011.

Dunn said the Democratic Party is more energized this election, largely due to the efforts of Aaron Zimmer, who was elected chairman of the local Democratic Town Committee about a year ago.

Zimmer helped raise money to open a permanent headquarters and has organized periodic meet and greet events. Dunn said he has met several of the participants for the first time.

Carr is being challenged for the Republican nomination by Matt Grimes, a former chairman of the Board of Education and former member of the Zoning Commission. He has been managing municipal campaigns since he helped direct his grandfather, the late Board of Finance member Fred Standt, to victory in the race for first selectman at the 1997 Brookfield Republican caucus. Standt later lost to incumbent Republican Bonnie Smith in the GOP primary and then, running as a petitioning candidate, in the general election.

Dunn said he has known Grimes since he became a member of his Boy Scout troop 30 years ago.

“I like Matt, although I disagree with him on just about everything,” he said.

“I think this will be a harder election [than 2021] for the Republican side" since, among other things, the nomination may not be determined until a primary in September, said Republican Austin Monteiro in a phone interview with Patch.com. "I think the Democrats have a stronger ticket than what the Democratic Party had two years ago."

Monteiro, who has endorsed Carr, commented, “Matt definitely has a chance to win. He has been involved for a long time. He knows a lot of the ins and outs of government through his work as an attorney.”

Monteiro was recommended by the Republican Vacancy Committee two years ago to be the party's nominee for seat as an Other Selectman. But incumbent Republican Other Selectman Harry Shaker was later endorsed by the Republican Town Committee. Monteiro then petitioned to run for first selectman against Carr and Dunn.

He is now seeking the Republican endorsement for either a seat as an Other Selectman or a seat on the Board of Education. The Republican Vacancy Committee should be announcing its recommendations later this month.

Remarked Harding, "If there is a primary it usually doesn't bode well for the party in the general election."

There has not been a Republican primary for first selectman in Brookfield since 2003. There were four between 1995 and 2003 with the eventual GOP nominee ultimately prevailing in the general election.

Over the last 24 years, five first selectmen in Brookfield have been defeated while seeking re-election – Republican Bonnie Smith in 1999, Republican Martin Foncello in 2003, Republican Jerry Murphy in 2007, Republican Bill Tinsley in 2015 and Dunn in 2021.

In each case it appeared that there was a perception of the incumbent making errors and the challenger created campaign enthusiasm that rivaled the Christmas In August Sale at Crazy Eddie.

For example, in 1999 Smith held an unannounced meeting in which some chairmen of the municipal boards met with a developer for an off track betting facility on Federal Road to determine the feasibility of the proposal. Some residents expressed outrage that such a project was even being considered. Within months there was news coverage on disharmony between the leadership and the officers in the municipal police department.

Foncello, now the state Representative from the 107th state House District, ran an aggressive campaign, won the Republican primary by 39 votes and then prevailed easily in the general election.

In February Twitter suspended Carr's account after she sent controversial posts regarding the Chinese balloon that hovered over the United States. Critics, including Dunn, have said she was advocating the assassination of President Joe Biden.

In a statement posted February 22, Carr wrote, in part: "Unfortunately, some on the fringe of the political spectrum, who are more interested in engaging in vitriolic statements and fabricating their own truths, rather than intelligent discourse, took these comments out of context and made ridiculous and false assertions that somehow, I was promoting violence against our nation’s President. This is a complete lie.”

However, some of the criticism apparently wasn't partisan.

Hartford Courant political columnist Kevin Rennie objected to Carr's posts under a headline that read: "Brookfield First Selectwoman Tara Carr's abhorrent statement on Biden can't be undone."
Rennie is a former Republican state legislator who had praised Carr more than a year earlier on his Daily Ructions blog.

A CT Hearst editorial also raised concerns about Carr's behavior, stating that she "was elected by a Brookfield electorate that was well aware of her views, which she has never been shy about disclosing. The 'fringe' she accuses of attacking her is in fact the Democratic leadership in her town and others, people who are likely wondering why a first selectman is weighing in on such matters at all, let alone so recklessly."

Monteiro commented, “I think the general person in Brookfield is probably unaware that this even happened. I don’t think it is going to play a major role in the election.”

“Like a lot of things in politics, things get blown out of proportion," he added. "You can easily see what she is referring to.”

“If those tweets hadn’t happened there wouldn't be much to hit her on,” remarked Monteiro.

Harding said he is not endorsing either candidate and will support whichever Republican wins the party caucus in late July.

However, he said that Carr has "done a lot of positive things."

"I think she has worked hard to look at costs as they relate to town finances," Harding explained. "I think that she has tried to look at development and work with the land-use boards to foster positive development and not overdevelopment."

Dunn said that in the last seven years there has been $35 million in construction in the 198-acre Brookfield Town Center along the northern tier of Federal Road.

During the 2021 campaign Carr was critical about the scope of development in the emerging New England-style central business district.

She told Patch.com in August 2021 that “major apartment buildings are being built throughout the phases of the whole project. . . Where you have an uptick of people, you’re going to have an uptick in responses. We continue down this trajectory of continuing to build and putting up potentially three or four more huge apartment buildings, and that is creating more people, more drain on our resources. So my question is: What is the return on our investment?”

Dunn indicated in the recent interview that Carr has not delivered on her campaign promises.

In an e-mail message to Patch.com, Carr disagreed.

"As far as my campaign promises, within the first few months I delivered on several of them, most notably the 6 million dollar town wide communication system upgrade and distribution of ARPA funds," she wrote. " The former Mr. Dunn had 3 terms to accomplish and got nowhere and the latter Mr. Dunn sat on and put into committee while businesses and individuals suffering from the sharp economic downturn triggered by COVID needed it urgently."

Monteiro gives Carr high marks on her interpersonal skills and constituent service.

“The role of the job is that you are the face of the town,” he remarked. “I think she had bought that to Brookfield. In the community, she has been more of a presence online. She has been more of a presence at events, which I think is a very important part of this role.”

“She has been supportive of people in town who have come to her with certain issues,” said Monteiro. “She has been able to offer support to these groups and resolve issues.”

He commented that when he recently contacted her on a constituent issue, “She replied to me literally in five minutes and put me in contact with t he town attorney to get this situation resolved.”

Harding remarked, "The residents that I have spoke to have generally been satisfied with the quick response and with the service that they have been provided."

Monteiro said, “I’ve become close to Tara in the last couple of years. We align on a lot of items.
There obviously is a learning curve there. I think she has picked up on that leaving curve at this time" and has become better at running meetings and more familiar with the town charter.

Belden said he believes that during the term that will begin in December "big things," such as what an enlarged or new police station and a new library "might look like" will be prime issues before the selectmen. He also said residents are looking for "calm" management and "sound budgets."

Grimes, Dunn and Carr all have announced support for a new or revised police headquarters, indicating that the current facility on Silvermine Road is inadequate.

Said Dunn, "Our current facilities will not meet the requirements" of the Police Accountability Act.

He noted that there is not a locker room for the female personnel.

Dunn said that the town should begin preparations for an expanded or new police headquarters now in hopes that elected officials can seek support at referendum in or around 2026 when the town's debt service will decrease after the final payment for the 2006 Brookfield High School renovation project.

Grimes indicated in an interview in May with Patch.com that based on a survey they he had sent to residents - the top issue was property taxes.

On another topic, Dunn said that he supports building a skate park, an issue that has been discussed since at least 2021. However, he said the most viable route might be similar the project that he and his wife, Cassie, then a cross-country and track & field coach at Brookfield High School, pursued in 1996-1997.

Their committee raised $130,000 to resurface the dilapidated school track and secured $60,000 in municipal funds.

Also, Dunn applauded the work of municipal controller Marcia Marien, who has been with the town since 2018. He called her "the single best financial director in the state."

On a separate subject, Dunn is critical of the recent 2-1 vote by the Board of Selectmen in which Carr and Shaker opted not to appoint the selection of the Brookfield Library Board of Trustees and the Democratic Town Committee to succeed longtime member Cathy Lasser on the library board.

He said that the vote was partisan.

In an e-mail message to Patch.com, Carr stated, "although the DTC [Democratic Town Committee]may have recommended a Democrat, the RTC [Republican Town Committee]also submitted a recommendation for a Republican. The former composition of the board consisted of five unaffiliated voters, three Democrats and one Republican. Since both willing volunteers were duly qualified, the Board of Selectman voted 2-1 for the Republican nominee making the current composition five unaffiliated, two Democrats and two Republicans."

Resources:

Interview with Steve Dunn, Patch.com, Thursday, June 8, 2023.

Interview with Aaron Zimmer, Patch.com, Thursday, June 8, 2023.

Phone interview with Austin Monteiro, Patch.com, Thursday, June 8, 2023.

E-mail message from Tara Carr, Patch.com, Sunday, June 11, 2023.

E-mail message from Tara Carr, Patch.com, Thursday, June 15, 2023.

Phone interview with Bob Belden, Patch.com, Monday, June 12, 2023.

Phone interview with Stephen Harding, Patch.com, Monday, June 12, 2023.

Interview with Matt Grimes, Patch.com, Sunday, May 7, 2023.

Interview with Phoebe Holmes, Patch.com, Tuesday, June 13, 2023.

Bob Belden remarks, meet and greet at Twins, Tuesday, June 13, 2023.

https://www.ctpost.com/opinion...

Tara Carr statement, Tuesday, February 21, 2023.

Mark Boughton talk at Western Connecticut State University, Tuesday, February 19, 2013.

https://patch.com/connecticut/...

https://www.courant.com/2023/0...

https://patch.com/connecticut/...