Finkle Opts Out of Three-Way Contest for Mayor

The difficulty of running a three-way mayoral race in a heavily Democratic Party town led to the decision by John Finkle, the Republican candidate, to drop out.

Republican Party leaders and former mayor Joseph Maturo have reportedly come to an agreement that will make Maturo the party’s nominee and combine Maturo’s third-party under-ticket slate with the GOP Town Committee-endorsed under-ticket slate.

Maturo, who led the town for five terms as mayor until 2007 when he was defeated by Mayor April Capone, this year.

Capone, the Democratic Party incumbent running for a third term, did not respond when asked for a comment about her Republican rival’s decision.

Finkle said he dropped out to give Maturo a better chance at beating Capone. "I’m a firm believer that the administration has got to change," he said.

"I’ve been involved in politics long enough to know that a three-way race always favors the incumbent," Finkle explained.

He said only 2,600 of the town’s 18,000 voters are Republicans, while half of the rest are Democrats. "If the roles were reversed we’d have more of a base to rely on," Finkle said.

"Hopefully, Joe will take the Republican nod and take it back into a two-way race," he added.

Republican Town Chairman Louis Crisci said party rules allows the Town Committee Executive Board to fill vacancies on the GOP ticket.

Republican Town Committee Treasurer James Farrell, a Finkle supporter, portrayed Finkle’s decision as one that put the interests of the town’s taxpayers ahead of his personal ambitions.

"It looks like the Town Committee is going to endorse Joe," Farrell said Tuesday, the day after Finkle announced he would drop out.

Finkle was by a 38-22 vote of the Town Committee in July.

"The ultimate goal is to get April out of office," Farrell said. Based on Maturo’s poll, Farrell said Finkle couldn’t win, although he noted Maturo hadn’t actually shown his poll to the Town Committee leaders.

Maturo said a public opinion poll conducted for his campaign indicated that .

He said 13 candidates on his under-ticket would take Republican spots on the ballot, although some of them were already on the GOP line as cross-endorsed candidates.

There are a total of 26 under-ticket spots, although some appear in only a single voting district.

He said the arrangement means that some Republican Town Committee-endorsed candidates would be replaced by registered Democrats and independents. This is allowed under Republican Party rules, and it would create a party ticket that "truly represents the people of our town," he said.

Maturo did not have the names of the swapped candidates or the ones they would replace.

"Instead of splitting the vote, this gives us a better opportunity here," he said. "It puts us back on the road to fiscal responsibility."

Maturo predicted the election would focus on town finances and he was prepared to run on his five-term record. After taking office in 1997, he said he got East Haven off Connecticut’s Distressed Municipalities list and improved its credit rating.

He disputed that his administration was responsible for the town’s financial problems since the end of 2007.

Capone has said Maturo’s last budget relied on overly optimistic projected tax collection rates, which she was forced to correct. Maturo said the town’s annual audit reports prove that wasn’t true.

"She may claim that her first budget was my budget and she came up with a deficit. But I only had control of that budget for three months," Maturo said.