The End of Erin Stewart's Inevitability
She was supposed to be the future of the Connecticut GOP. Her own voters lost patience first.
It was her husband’s 40th birthday and Erin Stewart bought 40th birthday candles, cocktail napkins, Trump-inspired “Let’s make 40 great again” gag cards, an arch made of balloons, a vest, a hat, swimming trunks and t-shirts.
She paid for it with her New Britain city credit card and the purchases were listed as office supplies. They were delivered to her house.
For most of the last decade, these weren’t the type of stories you’d hear about Erin Stewart.
You heard about the 26-year-old wunderkind when she won. You heard about the Republican winning in a Democratic city, the daughter of a former mayor, who was blunt and telegenic. You heard that she could be the future of the Connecticut GOP. The New York Times profiled her. She had the kind of coverage that turns local politicians into stars.
But the crack was there if you looked. In 2018, when she made her first moves towards statewide office, she finished a distant second for the lieutenant governor nomination at the GOP convention. The reporters and power brokers pontificating about her rise were never quite the same people voting in Republican primaries.
Last month, the Mirror reported that Stewart had asked New Britain for a partial pension benefit that the city charter doesn’t include. She actually wrote to HR herself: “Based on my 14 years of service, I calculate my eligibility for a deferred partial pension benefit of approximately 35% of my annual salary, payable upon reaching the eligible age of 55.”
The city has no such benefit for someone with under 20 years of service.
When asked why she made the request, she told the Mirror, "Why wouldn't I?"
The whole aura around Stewart rested on competence. In a state this small, reputations compound slowly over time and collapse all at once.
Connecticut only has 169 towns and maybe 400 people or so who actually run its politics. Most of them have known each other for decades. Stories travel quietly for a long time before they hit the public.
Before Republican primary voters started drifting to the state senator from Greenwich, New Britain already had their own verdict on Stewart. Her hand-picked successor lost to Bobby Sanchez last November. Mayor Sanchez is the one who hired the law firm and released the records.
We’re only hearing about this stuff now because the city she ran for 12 years is no longer run by her people.
Erin Stewart’s argument was competence. Her proof was New Britain. And now New Britain is the source of the questions.