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MY STORY
I'm proud to be running for State Representative from the 98th District as a common-sense, problem-solving Republican. I understand firsthand the struggles of working families and small businesses in our State, and respect the fundamental right of ALL parents to determine the best interests of their own children.
I've lived in Connecticut since age 12, and in Guilford for the last 27 years, with my wife Susan and two children, who attend public schools. I was born on Eastchester Bay, off City Island, in the Bronx. It was then a boat-building and sailmaking center that employed hundreds of people in highly skilled, well paid jobs, and hundreds more in supply-chain manufacturers in Connecticut. By the early 1970s, political corruption and mismanagement of the City's finances drained the police, schools, parks and infrastructure of resources, despite endless tax increases that disincentivized businesses to remain. The area's excellent public schools and safe neighborhoods became plagued by crime, violence, and drugs. Families like mine, afraid for their childrens' safety, and businesses struggling with crime and uncontrolled "stagflation" started leaving New York.
My father, a printing press plate maker, worked two jobs, and sometimes three, to save enough money to buy a house in rural Brookfield, CT. Connecticut at that time was like paradise to us. It was a Republican state with no income tax, whose state and local governments tended to leave you alone. Brookfield didn't even have a police force - only a resident State Trooper three or four days a week. In this healthy business environment, my father started a small printing ink manufacturing company, which he later sold to the George Schmitt Co. in Guilford. Its owner and CEO, Bob Gunther, Sr., kept my father on as a manager while I was in college. Although my father had only a high school education, he and Bob became friends out of their mutual love of boats, especially of the America's Cup yachts, most of which had been built on City Island until 1983, the first year the US lost the cup. In those years, I grew to love Guilford and revived my own childhood attachment to the sea.
The loss of the America's Cup race in 1983 is symbolic to me of the decline not only of world-class boat building on City Island, but of our entire manufacturing base, and the loss of millions of good jobs that once enabled "ordinary" Americans, like my father, to support a family on one income. Having already seen the destruction of a vibrant working community, I now fear that similar government policies are being aimed at CT. Businesses are abandoning our state, even in the formerly dominant insurance sector. Crime is rising, and people are leaving. We are told that "those jobs are gone forever" because Americans cannot compete with low-wage countries like China. And yet, the German economy is doing just that, at higher average wages and benefits than Americans earn. For decades, the manufacturing sector has been expanding in Germany while shrinking in America. Germany uses a "team" approach to solving economic problems that brings manufacturing businesses, unions, local government and research universities to the same table to work on shared problems. German manufacturers have thus kept ahead of low-wage producers like China through technological innovation and by solving the actual problems of actual manufacturing firms. We could learn from this example.
After graduating from Cornell with a bachelor's degree in American history, I earned an M.Phil. degree in International Relations at Cambridge University and pursued a Ph.D. in History. Self-financed as a foreign student in England, I returned to the US and started a printing supply business and built a plastics converting factory in New Milford, CT. This let me continue working on my Ph.D. for two more years as a visiting graduate student at Yale, and to return to Cambridge for another year. Ultimately, I earned a law degree from the University of Connecticut at night while running a small business during the day. I'm proud to be running for State Representative from the 98th District - the first Republican to challenge the Democrats for this seat in eight years. Join our team and help take back our district and state.
Sincerely yours,
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