
Corrections: Heidi Keyes’ WFP and UNK totals were mistakenly subtracted from Sherelle Harris’ vote totals. We have corrected the error below.
NORWALK, Conn. – Harry Rilling would not have been the most popular politician in Norwalk last week if not for Working Families Party (WFP) votes – at least that’s what a questionable bit of math shows.
In response to a story posted Sunday, a NancyOnNorwalk reader asked to see what the vote tallies would be without “WFP” and “UNK” votes.
“I read your article about Warren Peña and what the results might have been had he gained the working parties endorsement,” the reader wrote in an email. “I also read your article with all of the candidates’ vote numbers. I would like to see the results with straight votes, minus the working families or any other endorsement. Can you provide those numbers in the format of a city-wide horse race minus the outside endorsements in the same succinct format? It would be interesting to see where Warren and some of the other candidate fell with WKF and UNK endorsements out of the equation.”
OK, that’s at the end of this story. First some information about the Working Families Party from Democratic District D Chairman Vinny Mangiacopra.
“The party is established to represent working class people,” he said. “There are voters out there that go and they vote for those people because they believe that party is going to represent their families or their lifestyle. So a select group of voters will look for people who are on that line and support them. I would say 80 percent of the time those voters are traditionally Democrats, absolutely.”
Democrat Deb Goldstein, a 3-year resident of Norwalk, said that, in New York, she would vote the WFP line if a candidate had it, but vote for the candidate as a Democrat if they didn’t.
“I would give them the vote on that line just as a message to the party in general that if a percentage of their vote is coming from a more liberal party endorsement, they’ve got to stop catering to the middle,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s what they do here or not. Based on the number of blanks, my guess is that people went in and voted for mayor, what they knew, and nothing else.”
Democratic Registrar Stuart Wells said the “UNK” on his list of total votes stands for “unknown,”voters who blackened both the WFP and Democrat ovals.
“This counts as one vote, which is assigned to Unknown Party,” he said in an email. “Eventually these votes are allocated to the actual parties based on the number of votes the candidate received from those parties. If a candidate got 80 votes on the DEM line and 20 on the WFP line, then 80 percent of the votes on the UNK line are allocated to the Democratic party and 20 percent are allocated to the Working Families Party.”
We won’t find out who write-in votes went to.
“Write in votes are only counted if they are for a registered write in candidate or for a candidate already on the ballot,” he said. “There were no registered write-in candidates this year. That law prevents people from writing in a vote for Mickey Mouse, or themselves, and having it appear in the newspaper and in the official election records.”
Now for the requested list:
Rick McQuaid 9,972
Anna Duleep 8,198
Ralph Depanfilis 8,182
Harry Rilling 8,146 (his total without 346 WFP votes and 514 unknown voters)
Doug Hempstead 7,806
Richard Bonenfant 7,586
Richard Moccia 7,514
Glenn Iannaccone 7,497
Bruce Kimmel 7,465
Warren Peña 7,285
Fred Bondi 7,231
Olivia Dardy 7,183
Brenda Penn-Williams 7,119
Ray Dunlap 7,070
David Jaegar 7,002
Joe Kendy 6,948
Artie Kassimis 6,917
Heidi Keyes 6,858 (her total without 522 WFP votes and 137 unknown votes)
John Romano 6,812
Sharon Stewart 6,716 (her total without 447 WFP votes and 215 unknown voters)
Nikitas Handrinos 6,702
Peter Andreoli 6,592
Sherelle Harris 6,574
Deidra Davis 6,567
George LaMonica 6,526
Sue Haynie 6,500
Shirley Mosby 6,473 (her total without 586 WFP votes and 285 unknown votes)
Ari Disraelly 6,356
Chrisley Ceme 6,325
Haroldo Williams 6,234
Art Scialabba 6,173
Lauren Rosato 6,109
John Bazzano 6,130
Steve Colarossi 2,074
Andres Roman 1,795
Two in-district candidates also got Working Families votes. Common Councilman David Watts (D-District A) got 93 WFP and 42 unknown votes. He got a total of 1,531 votes, easily topping the third-place finisher, Republican Robert Mercurio.
John Kydes got 133 Working Families votes and 71 unknown votes in his successful effort to get elected as a District C councilman. Kydes had a total of 2,022 votes, compared to second place finisher Michelle Maggio’s 1,779.
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