Then-Republican mayoral candidate Andy Conroy, second from right, discusses the Walk Bridge in October. With him from left are James Anderson, Ellen Wink, Bill Dunne and Peter Halladay, none of whom won election to the offices they were seeking.NORWALK, Conn. – Andy Conroy denies a rumor related to his Norwalk mayoral campaign, after his obviously divided Republican Party took a shellacking in the polls.
NancyOnNorwalk has been told by several Republicans that Conroy was expected to step aside at some point, so Republicans could cross endorse unaffiliated candidate Lisa Brinton Thomson. His withdrawal would have been attributed to the knee surgery he had after being nominated in July, they say.
“I don’t know where this thing is coming from,” Conroy said, when asked if he had been a “placeholder.”
While Conroy confirmed recently that some Republicans asked him to step aside late in the race to clear a path for Brinton Thomson, he emphatically denied ever having been a placeholder, sending NancyOnNorwalk to review a video of his speech at the Republican convention in July.
The video shows Conroy saying, “Enough with the placeholder stuff,” as soon as he took the microphone. “We’ve got to go out and work. The only placeholders we have tonight volunteered this evening… if they want to continue on, I am more than happy to have them.”
A placeholder in politics is a candidate who has no real intention of running, put forward because names need to be put forward by a certain time, a source said. A placeholder secures the spot until someone else steps up or is recruited to run as the real candidate, at which point the placeholder withdraws his or her name from the race. There has been times when placeholders do actually run, usually because another person fails to step up. Sometimes they win.
Conroy finished third in the mayoral race, behind Brinton Thomson. Almost all Republican candidates running under Conroy lost, with the exception of veteran Council member Doug Hempstead, who won Norwalk’s most Republican district by a mere 12 votes although he faced a newcomer.
“I haven’t had anyone say to me, ‘You didn’t run a credible campaign,’ rather they have said the issues did not resonate across the voting public,” Conroy wrote. “The approach needed to be much more ’emotional’ and the mechanics of the campaign needed to be stronger and more fluid. I am fairly sure I now know how to achieve a much better result. I consider that proprietary info.”
One Republican told NancyOnNorwalk before the election that Conroy was going to kill the party if he finished behind Brinton Thomson, expressing a desire that Conroy drop out.
Evidence of division among Norwalk Republicans emerged in the NoN comments section weeks after that, just prior to the election, as acting Republican Town Committee Chairman Victor Cavallo and RTC member Peter Nolin argued after Cavallo posted a letter endorsing Conroy.
Nolin began the exchange by stating that “dozens” of Republican town committee members, and other Republicans serving in government, were supporting Brinton Thomson. Cavallo’s reply announced that he was on “Dirty laundry patrol,” going on to refer to RTC bylaws which state that RTC members should “achieve the success of Republican candidates at the polls by directing and actually participating in the election campaign efforts of the Republican party.”
“Disclose the dozens. Then tell me which of us should not be nominated for re-election to the RTC from District E,” Cavallo said.
Nolin replied:
“Vic please pound sand 🙂 Its a free country and when candidates lie to their parties they don’t deserve support. You know all these facts but wish to pretend otherwise. You like me know of the dozens of R’s who tried to get Andy to step down in favor of Lisa. I kept my mouth shut publicly until you misrepresented the facts. But there it is; you put the issue out there so it is on you. If you want me off RTC next go around please do what ever you think appropriate.”
To which Cavallo said:
“I am committed to rescuing the Republican Town Committee from the clutches of the toxic David-McCarthy wing of this party. Comprised of less than a dozen of you, as I see. Seems that you’ve succumbed. That’s not what we’re all about. I pay mind to our heritage, our tradition and our legacy members who are around and who may have departed, sadly, who helped us captain this ship; who laid out a map leading us to success and and principled greatness. And now some of us seem to be beholden to a toxic someone with one foot on a U-Haul gas pedal with a GPS aimed for Boca.”
McCarthy, a former Council member, is said to be headed for Florida once the house owned by his wife is sold. Neither Cavallo nor Nolin would explain their comments to NoN. McCarthy declined to comment.
After the election, a Republican said Conroy was nominated as a placeholder who then refused to back off and did not run a credible campaign, thereby dragging down the ticket.
Conroy said on Nov. 14 that he had been willing to step down before the convention if a highly electable candidate came forward. There was one other person talking about running, but that person decided not to just before the convention.
Former City Clerk Ellen Wink said in May that she was planning to run, but eventually dropped it and ran for the Council.
Wink, in a Nov. 19 text message, said Conroy was not a placeholder.
There was never any doubt that he would make a serious run for mayor, there was just a debate about whether or not he should have his knee surgery before the election, Conroy said, explaining that the debate was between members of the RTC executive committee, that McCarthy and Nolin were not involved and did not know about it.
“I am not going to say I lied because I didn’t lie,” Conroy said.
Nolin knows that Conroy tried to talk Brinton Thomson into running as a Republican, right up until the convention, Conroy said.
Brinton Thomson “kept leading me on,” promising to support Republican candidates as a quid pro quo, he said.
“That was part of her pitch to me, why she should be our candidate,” he said. “I said I am not buying it. I don’t believe she is going to do it. I think it did turn out that way… Look at the results.”
Brinton Thomson won 1,147 votes in District E while Republican Council candidates Ernie DesRochers and Josh Jewett got less than 550 votes each, according to tallies compiled by the Democratic Town Committee.
“Ernie and Josh, they tanked worse than anyone else,” Conroy said. “You would think they would have picked up her coattails. Then why didn’t they do better? Her crew was supporting the Democrats.”
“Republicans also supported her, that’s obvious,” he said, explaining that he saw ballots during the District D recount and people had voted for Brinton Thomson and then marked the Republican line, straight through.
Brinton Thomson declined to comment.
Conroy said McCarthy and Nolin “beat him up on the phone” as the election neared, claiming that Brinton Thomson was way ahead, that she was going to raise $50,000 for her campaign.
“McCarthy will tell you any damned thing,” Conroy said. “…McCarthy does a lot of misleading stuff, its’ sort of his operandi. I think he should go work in Washington.”
McCarthy in a Nov. 16 email said, “Mr. Conroy has obviously been under a lot of stress during the campaign and is not dealing very well with it, I wish him a speedy recovery of his mental health. His recollection of the call is not at all accurate…you can talk to Peter Nolin if you want corroboration. We were asking him to drop out because he had failed to mount any campaign, and we have never felt a need to make that public. He made up excuses and said that the next week he had people going out to do things like putting up signs in West Norwalk…that never happened and the rest is history.”
Asked about a phone call, Nolin in an email said, “It is not for me to reveal what was a forty minute private call with Andy. Nor is it for me to explain his loss, if he wants to do so it is his right. Not sure why he wants to go on record about his disastrous race. So I will just ensure {the} record is correct as to me.”
He continued, “Two things are true. I suggested he should drop out and predicted he would run third, which is why I asked him to drop for his sake and sake of party. By running Third I predicted and told him he would harm down ticket candidates. Obviously, I was correct. Nothing else he says about the call is accurate.”
“Their estimate was she would do better than I,” Conroy said. “To get it over the top, she needed me to drop out, for a Republican endorsement. I said I didn’t buy it because she is anti-party. ‘The party system broken.’ Now she’ll appear on Republican line – are you kidding me? She would lose as much as she gains.”
“Let’s try truth-telling on for size. Her campaign had a poll which indicated she was ahead of Harry by four points nearing Election Day. Obvious fabrication,” Conroy said in an email. “I think we know who fabricated info about their campaigns.”
An alleged poll was distributed via social media before the election, claiming that Brinton Thomson had passed Mayor Harry Rilling, with Conroy a distant third.
Rilling won with 55 percent of the vote; before the election, he told NancyOnNorwalk that was what a poll indicated would happen.
Brinton Thomson received 22.8 percent of the vote, and Conroy came in third in the four-way mayoral contest, with 15.3 percent.
“She believed her total votes plus mine would beat Harry. That assumed Harry held to about 40%. Further assumes mine fully transferable to her. Not,” Conroy said in his email.
“My stock in trade: I am straightforward, I am honest, I don’t mislead,” Conroy said Thursday. “If they (feel they) are misled, I apologize and try to work it out.”
But obviously the electorate didn’t buy his campaign commentary warning that the state financial troubles would be creating problems for Norwalk, that Republicans would be able to handle it better, or, “I would have done better,” Conroy said. “I did pretty badly.”
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