The Job Is the People: Re-elect Jennifer Leeper

To the Editor:

Emily Hau has published another long report. This one is close to 4,000 words on the Penfield Pavilion, and it's billed as only the second in a series. It is carefully sourced, with meeting minutes, FEMA records and hours of recordings. And it ends the way these reports always end: with a list of questions and no answers.

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There is no proposal in it. It offers no plan to pay for flood protection, no idea for bringing state resilience dollars to the beach neighborhoods, and no voice from the families who live behind that wall. It reads as a case file, assembled from behind a screen.

Ms. Hau signs off by telling readers she "reads the fine print." She is not the only one. Jennifer Leeper holds a master's degree in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked as a data and policy analyst. Since she first ran in 2020, she has said the same thing: she uses data to find common ground and make progress. The difference between these candidates is not whether they can analyze. It is what each does with the analysis.

That is what a state representative's job actually is: listen to people, take their problem to Hartford, and come home with something that helps.

When UI proposed a disastrous transmission project, Jenn worked closely with neighbors and business owners to fight back. She checked the facts on the land and the pole heights, then helped write and pass a law to fix the process.

She secured a 75 percent state reimbursement for the Dwight Elementary rebuild, saving local taxpayers an estimated $57 million. She has brought more than $15 million in state funding home to Fairfield and helped end property taxes for 100 percent disabled veterans. As House Chair of the Education Committee, she is shaping how Connecticut funds schools and special education, which are costs that land on every Fairfield tax bill.

None of that came from a document archive. It came from relationships: with constituents who trust her enough to call, and with colleagues on both sides of the aisle who trust her enough to work with her. Much of it never made a headline, and a lot of constituent work doesn't. It's the resident whose problem gets solved quietly because their representative picked up the phone.

Fairfield doesn't need a representative who can tell us, years later and at great length, what went wrong. We need one who is in the room when decisions are made, and who delivers. Jennifer Leeper is that representative. Please join me in re-electing her on November 3.

Chris Carroll

Fairfield RTM D-8