Wallingford Democrats Announce Exploratory Candidates
The Record Journal published a story about Wallingford’s Democratic Town Committee’s plans to endorse a slate of candidates this election cycle. I’m honored to be running alongside an outstanding group of candidates, who bring a level of passion and determination unlike anything we have seen before. I can already confidently say that this is going to be a great year for our town.
By Lauren Takores
WALLINGFORD — Democratic Board of Education member Patricia Pursell won’t be seeking re-election this fall, but hasn’t ruled out another run in the future.
Pursell, a retired physical education teacher who is in her fourth year on the school board, said Monday that she wants to spend more time with her family, including her seven grandchildren.
The school board, which meets four to six times a month, has been meeting virtually since the start of the pandemic. This has allowed Pursell to participate from wherever she is, but when in-person meetings resume at some point, she anticipates not having the time anymore.
“I’ve enjoyed doing it, I feel like I've really contributed,” she said. “I may some day go back to it, I don't know, but right now, the way my life is, I need to spend time with family.”
Pursell’s bowing out of the race comes as the Wallingford Democratic Town Committee is exploring which candidates to endorse for the local election this year.
Municipal offices on the ballot include the mayoral seat, the nine seats on the Town Council and and the nine seats on the Board of Education.
Each party generally runs a slate of six candidates for Town Council and six for the Board of Education — the maximum number of seats a single political party can occupy on each body, as stipulated in the Town Charter.
No endorsements will be made officially until the party’s caucus in July. There is an important deadline before then — the Town Clerk must file all candidate paperwork to the state Secretary of the State by May 6.
The Wallingford Democratic Town Committee is getting an early start, forming an exploratory candidate committee and reaching out to local Democratic voters.
“We want to know if the vision of the WDTC aligns with our voters,” party chair Alida Cella said via email Monday, “and ask our voters to come help us make that vision a reality.”
She added that the DTC’s vision includes investing wisely in schools, updating technology, not letting physical infrastructure, such as Community Pool, crumble beyond repair and helping small businesses by ensuring a town planner is in place and pursing grants.
Candidates seeking the DTC’s endorsement for Board of Education include current members Patrick Reynolds, Kathy Castelli and Mike Votto, as well as Maureen Reed and Mike Urban.
Republican Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., 74, has been in office since 1984, racking up 19 consecutive terms.
For the mayoral race, the DTC is considering current Town Councilor Vincent Testa, Riley O’Connell and Jacqueline MacFarlane.
Testa, 61, challenged Dickinson in 1997 and 2011. He said Monday that he has “every intention of running for council again” but considers himself an exploratory candidate for mayor.
“I'm just exploring the possibilities like I do every two years,” he said. “Because we're approaching it the way we are, I thought it was important and fair to anybody else who's considering it to at least say, “‘well I'm thinking about it, too.’”
O’Connell, 25, left his job in Washington, D.C. as a paralegal specialist at the Department of Justice to focus on his campaign for mayor full time.
A Wallingford native, O’Connell graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall and earned a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, double majoring in political science and environmental studies with a minor in psychology.
“It's really planning for the future,” O’Connell said about what made him want to run. “We haven't really seen any of that foresight in our town government for far too long, and I think we're seeing the effects of that now.”
He said he’s very concerned with state and local population demographics, as more young people and young families leave the state.
“There's just not that many people that I grew up with in town that are still here,” he said, “people that very much love the town … but it just wasn't easy to find good paying, entry level jobs for everyone in the current dynamic that our town has.”
No one from Generation X or the Millennial generation has served as Wallingford’s mayor due to Dickinson’s long tenure.
MacFarlane, 36, moved to Wallingford from West Haven six years ago to raise a family with her husband and two children.
She works as a banking analyst for Transact Campus, but her education is in music — she has a bachelor's in classical performance and is a classically trained soprano.
She calls herself a “concerned citizen” and repeated many of the DTC’s new talking points about the state of the school facilities, lack of investment in town infrastructure and development of our downtown small businesses.
“Dickinson has been there since before I was born,” she said, “and I think it's time for for new leadership.”
MacFarlane would be the second woman ever to challenge Dickinson.
Lucille Trzcinski ran for mayor as an unaffiliated candidate in 2007, garnering 19.8 percent of the vote. The Democratic candidate that year was James Vumbaco, who came in at 22.8 percent.
Door-knocking has begun
Seeking DTC endorsement for Town Council are current councilors Gina Morgenstein and Jason Zandri, as well as Bruce Conroy, Alexa Tomassi, Sam Carmody, Nicole Barillaro and Whitney Mooney.
Mooney and Tomassi have started canvassing, going door to door surveying the community.
Mooney, 27, is a graduate of Lyman Hall High School. She recently moved back to Wallingford from Boston, although she’s still working remotely for YWCA Cambridge as a development and marketing manager.
She said it’s always been a dream of hers to get involved in local politics, and she’s been honing in on the Town Council for the last three or four years.
“I spent the last two years really educating myself,” she said, “and learning about issues that affect people, because I want to make change, and I know that the only way to do that is to learn and listen and then be at the table, be the voice for people.”
Tomassi, 30, graduated from Sheehan High School. A lifelong town resident, she works at the Yale School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics as associate communications officer.
She’s been involved with the DTC since 2018, volunteering and campaigning for others. A run for office herself has “always sort of been on my radar,” she said.
“In the last year, everything has changed,” she said. “Life is just not what it was. We've done a lot of things the same way for a long time in this town, and so I thought, what better time than now for a change.”
Wallingford has 29,734 registered voters as of Feb. 1, according to the town data.
Of those, 8,218 are registered Democrats, 6,357 are registered Republicans, 544 belong to other parties and 14,615 are unaffiliated.
