A panel with the state Democratic Party upheld the nominating convention results in Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District, dismissing a complaint by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s challenger, Andrew Rice, who fell short of getting a spot on the August primary ballot.
A redo seemed unlikely. The three-member panel voiced skepticism at last week’s hearing about the remedies proposed — holding a new convention or placing him on the ballot — as well as whether a different outcome would be possible if the rules were adopted. Rice, who’s looking to unseat the longtime congresswoman, called the decision “disappointing but not shocking.”
But Rice’s challenge — and the push by several congressional candidates to petition their way onto the primary ballot in Connecticut — underscored the frustration and anti-incumbent sentiment happening across the Democratic Party. And the complaint put a spotlight on the state’s strict ballot access laws and convention process.
Rice, a 37-year-old scientist running to the left of the congresswoman, challenged the May 11 nominating convention, where he failed to reach the 15% threshold. DeLauro received nearly 87% of the 339 delegates, compared to Rice, who got a little over 13%.
As he seeks to collect enough petition signatures by next week’s deadline as another avenue to get on the ballot, Rice filed a complaint seeking to invalidate the convention. He accused the chair of the 3rd Congressional District convention — New Haven Democratic Town Committee Chair Vincent Mauro Jr. — of not following the proposed rules, which were ultimately not adopted during the convention.
DeLauro, 83, easily surpassed the majority-vote threshold to secure the endorsement. She’s the longest-serving member in Connecticut’s delegation and hopes to reclaim the gavel of the influential House Appropriations Committee if she wins a 19th term and Democrats retake control of the House in November.
“We’re gonna win the midterms,” DeLauro said last month, according to the New Haven Independent. She cautioned about the redistricting fight but still voiced confidence about her party’s chances this fall. “They want to play this game — we can play it too, but I think there’s going to be an overwhelming vote in November.”
During Thursday’s tense hearing over Zoom, Rice’s lawyer, Alex Taubes, alleged that the rules weren’t adopted and points of order weren’t addressed. He also argued that some delegates would have switched their vote at the conclusion of the first ballot, but they weren’t afforded the 10-minute window to do so.
“We’re the Democratic Party, we’re not the Republicans,” Taubes said. “We are the people who are supposed to be for fairness.”
“In my entire life, we have not had the opportunity that we now stand on the precipe of having a contested primary within our party to see who should be the person who represents us in Washington, D.C.,” he said later, “and that’s because we set the bar so high for people to even be able to make their case and give voters a choice at the ballot box, instead of simply deciding in closed rooms where not everybody gets a say.”
Rice’s team said there were two people who attested they would have switched their votes if given the chance. At the hearing, another delegate who couldn’t attend the convention said his proxy voted for DeLauro, but that’s not how he would have voted. Panelists sounded skeptical that Rice didn’t have six people who said they would have changed their vote. That number would have gotten him to 15%.
When given a chance to present his own arguments, Mauro had nothing to add, but later said he did not provide the 10-minute window for vote switching. He also said it was a mistake that the rules weren’t adopted and that no parliamentarian was appointed.
“My mistake, there’s nothing nefarious about it, I’ll tell you that,” Mauro said. “The vulgarities being hurled at me from all points of the room were a little distracting, to say the least.”
The three-member panel issued a 10-page decision Monday that they would not take up Rice’s proposed remedies. Kevin Reynolds, the Connecticut Democratic Party’s legal counsel, facilitated the hearing. The panel consisted of Democratic state central committee members Sharon Mounds, Nicholas Vegliante and Thomas Gaudett.
They acknowledged that Rice’s team “raised legitimate procedural flaws” but that it ultimately didn’t provide evidence “that the outcome of the convention was placed in serious doubt.”
“Like elections, conventions are a snapshot in time and they cannot ever truly be duplicated,” the decision said. “Redoing conventions will almost certainly yield a different result to some degree. Thus, when the results of a convention are vacated, the delegates that attended said convention are essentially disenfranchised.”
“The Panel unanimously agrees that the Complainant failed to meet its burden of showing that Mr. Rice would have received 15% of the votes cast but for these errors and flaws,” the panel concluded. “Accordingly, the complaint is dismissed.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Rice pushed back, arguing Democrats should provide voters with more choices, including someone who is an openly gay candidate.
“The Democratic Party would rather disenfranchise working- and middle-class voters than allow their incumbent’s record to stand for itself,” Rice said. “If the Democratic Party is not going to give people a choice, people should not give the Democratic Party their vote. Otherwise, we enable their corruption.”
Petitioning to get onto the ballot
Rice has since been collecting signatures after failing to make it onto the primary ballot through the more conventional route. He needs at least 2% of registered Democratic voters in the New Haven-based district to sign his petition. He has until late afternoon on June 9 to collect nearly 3,400 signatures.
But making the ballot through petition signatures is a difficult and tedious feat. And there isn’t much of a history of getting on the ballot via a petition.
Four years ago, Democratic candidate Muad Hrezi sued to get a spot on the primary ballot to challenge U.S. Rep. John Larson in the 1st Congressional District after failing to collect enough signatures. A judge ultimately denied Hrezi’s effort and upheld the state’s election laws in 2022. (Taubes was Hrezi’s lawyer at the time).
So far, Connecticut’s only contested Democratic primary is in the 1st Congressional District: a three-way primary between Larson, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford. It’s the first time in modern state politics that an incumbent lawmaker will face a primary.
At the nominating convention last month, all three reached the 15% benchmark to get a spot in the primary. On the second ballot, Bronin clinched the endorsement, a major upset over the 14-term incumbent. Bronin and the others challenging Larson have said they are mounting a challenge because they are seeking generational change.
Ruth Fortune, a fourth candidate who is a member of the Hartford Board of Education, ended up with less than 1% at the convention in the first ballot. She’s currently trying to collect several thousand signatures to join the pack and make it a four-way contest.
The Democratic candidates competing at the other congressional conventions held the same night didn’t have much success.
In addition to Rice and Fortune, candidates like Kyle Gauck in Connecticut’s 2nd Congressional District and Joseph Perez-Caputo in Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District didn’t get enough support — and are also pursuing the petitioning process.
Rice was collecting signatures on Monday at the same Pride event in New Haven where DeLauro and Gov. Ned Lamont were featured speakers. He said there’s an urgency for more Democrats to step up and run for office, arguing that many of the Democrats in Congress aren’t doing enough to take on Republicans and the Trump administration.
“People like me and Kyle Gauck and Joe Caputo and Ruth Fortune, we just had it. It’s like, enough is enough,” Rice said Monday. “I think it’s just a sentiment that has carried around the country is that it’s kind of now or never.”
CT Mirror reporter Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.
