Hartford City Hall (Courtesy Photo / Grondemar / CC BY-SA 3.0)
Hartford’s new mayor will be Arunan Arulampalam, the 38-year-old CEO of the city’s Land Bank nonprofit.
Arulampalam, who won the September mayoral primary with outgoing Mayor Luke Bronin’s endorsement, carried the city with about 64 percent of the vote against a Republican challenger.
One of the 38-year-old’s key campaign pledges was to create a fund to provide capital to help locals start small businesses and buy homes in the city. He has also been vocal about being aggressive in cleaning up trash on city streets and other “small things” and going after multifamily landlords who provide “uninhabitable” housing.
In his current job at the Hartford Land Bank he leads an organization that collects blighted properties and trains residents to redevelop them. He is also a former deputy commissioner in the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection under Gov. Ned Lamont, who also endorsed his run.
Bronin leaves Hartford City Hall after two terms in which he reduced the city’s heavy tax rate for the first time in many years despite deep vacancies in the downtown office market, while pushing forward redevelopment plans focused on housing downtown. Arulampalam held his own victory party in one of the marquee fruits of that development effort, the Dunkin’ Donuts Park minor-league baseball stadium.
Another Democrat took a major municipal prize elsewhere in the state Tuesday night, but it’s uncertain if he’ll be able to keep it.
Speaking to supporters shortly after midnight, with the city’s vote tally showing him with a 175-vote lead, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim called on his strongest challenger, John Gomes, to withdraw from a court fight that has the election probably headed to a do-over.
The people of Bridgeport cast their ballots Tuesday knowing the results might not settle anything.
A judge last week tossed out the results of the Democratic mayoral primary and ordered a new one, citing “mishandled” absentee ballots that left the court unable to determine who won. A judge last week tossed out the results of the Democratic mayoral primary and ordered a new one, citing “mishandled” absentee ballots that left the court unable to determine who won.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
