Updated, 3 p.m. July 26, quotes from King; 1:11 a.m., videos added
NORWALK, Conn. – The growing field of potential Democratic District A Common Council candidates got another entrant Wednesday when Laoise King announced her interest in running.
King joins a group that includes incumbent Eloisa Melendez and former mayoral candidate Steve Serasis, who have publicly indicated their intentions, and possibly former Town Clerk Andy Garfunkel, who is rumored to be considering a run.
Not in the field: two-term incumbent David Watts, who said he will not seek another term.
King is not widely known in Norwalk, but has a deep resume that includes positions with Denver, Colo., and New Haven. According to her resume, she is a lawyer licensed to practice in Colorado (1999), New York and Connecticut (both 2006).
Employed since August 2011 as vice president of education initiatives at the United Way of Greater New Haven, King worked in New Haven government in various capacities from 2006 to 2011, starting with a brief stint as assistant corporation counsel. She left that position to become deputy chief of staff/legislative director for Mayor John DeStefano from July 2007 to January 2010. She then became chief of external affairs for New Haven Public Schools until going to work for the United Way.
In Colorado, King worked as an assistant city attorney for the city of Denver (2002-2005) and spent three years (1999-2002) working as staff attorney for the National Association of Counsel for Children, a national membership association of child welfare attorneys. In that position, according to her biography, King oversaw the organization’s federal policy agenda and conducted numerous trainings around the country on effective local, state and federal lobbying.
She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts and her Juris Doctor from the University of Denver College of Law.
Born in Ireland, her family moved back to the United States when she was 4 years old, and she was raised in Saugatauk, King said in her letter of interest to the Norwalk Democratic Town Committee. She and her husband bought their home on East Avenue in 2013, she said.
On Thursday, King introduced herself in person to District A members. (See video below.)
As a child, she knew many people in Norwalk, she said, and family friends include former Mayor Bill Collins and his wife, Tish, and Councilman Bruce Kimmel (D-At Large) and his wife, Kay Anderson.
After living in Denver for 10 years, she moved back to Connecticut and transitioned into New Haven politics by meeting then-gubernatorial candidate DeStefano and running his campaign in the 4th Congressional District. This led to being assistant New Haven corporation counsel, and she represented the police department and the parks and rec department, working on traffic and parking issues and handling a lot of litigation for the city, she said. It wasn’t long before she became the mayor’s deputy chief of staff.
“That was, I have to say, one of the best experiences of my life, being deputy chief of staff,” King said. “I got exposed to the work that every single department in the city was doing. I worked with them on developing their legislative priorities and also had an opportunity to be up in Hartford, really getting a deep understanding about how state funding impacts municipalities and advocating for monies to come back to municipalities.”
She became interested in education and helped New Haven launch a “very comprehensive school reform,” which did not mean going to war with teachers as has been done in many municipalities, she said. This meant working with the New Haven Federation of Teachers and bringing in the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
“We came up with a model agreement that is now being used all around the country as ways for teachers unions to work cooperatively with school districts to achieve better results. So I was a big part of those negotiations with the unions as well,” King said.
She and her husband lived in New Haven from 2006 to 2013, when they “needed to decide where we wanted to be for the rest of our lives,” she said.
Answer: Norwalk.
“This is exactly the kind of community that we want to be a part of,” King said. “We love the diversity, we love the energy of the people here and we are just excited to live here. One of the things though that had been frustrating to me since I got here was kind of seeing kind of this lack of unity amongst the Democratic Party. I saw that there were roadblocks to us being really able to get our agenda moved forward. I think that with my experience and knowledge about how municipalities work as well as my experience with consensus building, working together, my skills as an attorney of being able to really quickly learn things, absorb which pieces are important, take into consideration different arguments and be able to bring people to a consensus, is a real strength. So I would love to bring that to the Common Council.”
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