Stratford won’t have three registrars next year

STRATFORD — The town will not have three registrars of voters come January.
Jim Simon and Lou DeCilio won 14,320 and 9,768 votes, respectively, to be the town’s Democratic and Republican registrars of voters, according to the Secretary of State’s website Tuesday evening.
The results aren’t a huge surprise — and ordinarily, registrar races aren’t often the most heated political contests.
But this year the incumbent Democrat, Rick Marcone, petitioned his way onto the general election ballot despite a decisive loss in an Aug. 13 primary to Simon, a journalism professor at Southern Connecticut State University, by a vote of 2,731 to 1,192.
That meant that, depending on how the results played out, the town could have had three registrars of voters come January, per state law.
However, Marcone’s challenge came up short Tuesday, with the down-ballot challenger picking up only 1,126 votes, according to the unofficial SOTS numbers.
A former DTC chairman who won the party’s “Democrat of the Year” award as recently as 2015, Marcone angered members of his party with a donation to longtime friend and GOPer Jim Connor, who won a close race against Simon for Town Council last year.
Party insiders snubbed Marcone for the registrar’s endorsement in May, after which he collected signatures for a primary and general election fight.
He said late Tuesday he wasn’t expecting a win given how the primary played out.
“Things normally don’t work out well for petitioning candidates, but I was not going to be bullied by the Democratic party in telling me not to run,” he said. “I did what I did and I have no regrets.”
In a prepared statement, Simon said the results could indicate a desire for further change.
“Tonight’s results show that Stratford voters are unified in wanting someone to take a fresh look at the registrar’s office, looking to see how we can protect and expand voting and bring new ideas to Town Hall,” he said.