Republican Registrar Doyle Lyons qualifies for Aug. 12 primary

NORWALK, Conn. – Republican Registrar Karen Doyle Lyons has gotten more than enough signatures to force an Aug. 12 primary, she said Tuesday.

Doyle Lyons, who has been registrar for 13½ years, lost the Republican endorsement at the recent Republican Town Committee meeting to John Federici. Lyons said she has 575 signatures, 152 more than required to make it onto the ballot.

The deadline to turn in signatures was 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Doyle Lyons is emphasizing her experience and record of “smooth and trouble-free elections” but the insider RTC baseball turned ugly before the May 22 RTC vote, with RTC District C Chairwoman Carol Andreoli accusing Doyle Lyons of personal grudges, character assassination and vendettas in a letter sent to committee members. Doyle Lyons said Tuesday that she didn’t know what Andreoli might be referring to.

“There’s no vendettas,” Doyle Lyons said. “I think they’re going back to history when there was someone else across the hall. I don’t know how many years they’re going back, but Stuart and I work very closely together. We have quite a cohesive office, so I don’t know what she is talking about.”

RTC Chairman Pete Torrano declined on May 22 to say what the vote total had been in the election between Doyle Lyons and Federici. Federici won by four votes, according to a statement from The Friends of Karen Doyle Lyons, which Doyle Lyons said is her registered campaign committee.

Torrano and former RTC Chairman Art Scialabba said Doyle Lyons has not been providing accurate information to Republican candidates. Doyle Lyons said Tuesday that she could document sending voter information to Scialabba 22 times in one year.

Doyle Lyons has said that Torrano told her she spent too much time working with veterans. Torrano said her allegation that he told her not to work with veterans is absurd, given that he served two years in Vietnam in the 298^th Medical Company, evacuating wounded soldiers via helicopter.

“There’s a lot of false claims and you just have to ignore them,” Doyle Lyons said Tuesday. “The Memorial Day parade is not a ‘Karen’s parade’ it’s a city parade. I’ve had permission from four mayors to assist the Veterans Memorial Committee in their endeavors for the city.”

According to her press release, prior to becoming registrar, Doyle Lyons served two terms on the Common Council, two terms as a First Taxing District commissioner, five years as the special assistant to the U.S. Senate and as a clerk in the Connecticut State Legislature on the Human Rights and Opportunity Committee. She also is “one of the most senior trainers in the state of polling place moderators as well as chief election official for the office of the Secretary of State,” according to her statement.

“It’s a campaign only on my qualifications. I’ll just have to ignore the rest of the politics. There’s no politics in this office. This office is non-partisan.”

Democratic Registrar Stuart Wells backed her up on that one.

“It’s run that way, yes,” he said. “You don’t have to be non-partisan but you have to run it non-partisan. I’m sure she thinks I have some very strange political views. I certainly think she does but we get along fine.”