Anyone can go to the Election Night campaign parties. There are no tickets, no bouncers. Nobody asks for your ID at the door to verify your address. Most people are set to unwind after months of campaigning or being surrounded by it.
We stopped by the Democrats’ and Working Families’ celebrations on Tuesday, more for the early numbers than the festivities. To get official results, you wait for the Secretary of the State to provide. As of Thursday evening, the Secretary of the State has not posted Hartford’s results, though other municipalities have already submitted theirs.
The unofficial numbers are those turned over to the campaigns, with results broken down by district. These are basically ballots with handwritten numbers scribbled in. If you know the right people to ask, they’ll share this data. There is reluctance to rely on the unofficial numbers because they do not always account for write-in votes, or the possibility of a recount in narrow margin wins.
At the main event held at Real Art Ways — “main” because Hartford is still very much a Democrat-controlled city — the media outnumbered the non-media folks initially. After the polls closed, this flipped. People waited anxiously for the arrival of the incoming mayor and City Council members; the former arrived after Gov. Malloy and Lt. Gov. Wyman.
At Majorca on Park Street, almost in West Hartford, some of the Working Families Party gathered to celebrate and commiserate. There was disappointment that their mini-slate (Bermudez-Blanchfield-Kardulis) did not all get in, but they considered 30% of that to be enough of a win. Plus, Deutsch was re-elected. The room they had reserved was still being used for a painting party; in the meantime, patrons spilled out of the bar, which was staffed by one.
Cynthia Jennings, WF incumbent who maintained her seat on Council, was not around during the height of the event. Neither was Joel Cruz, whose signage was consistent with the colors used by other WF candidates, but who was never endorsed by the party for his mayoral bid.
With both parties’ events in Parkville, moving between the two was easy and more than a few people did just that.
If the Republicans had an event, our invitation to that got lost in the mail.
