What Went Wrong?

Back in the Stone Age -- about 20 years ago -- West Haven had two REAL political parties. We used to call them the "Democrats" and the "Republicans".

What happened?

Well, the Republicans, about 1987 or so, began to run out of viable candidates for office. This was due to the arrogance of Larry Minichino, who ran and won the Mayor's Office solely on his appearance of a maverick: and he'd clean City Hall out.

Unfortunately, Larry proved to be no better than the rest (and ended up in jail in Florida after he lost).

Worse yet, Larry fashioned the Republican Town Committee in his own image: he forced onto the WHRTC the sycophants who would do his will and continuously support him...even over the Republican Party's best interests. In short, Larry put his interests before his Party...and his City.

This got so bad that Minichino lost to an old-guard Democatic party guy, Sal Guerra...who proved to be so ineffective and so unpopular that he in turn lost to Clem Evangeliste.

Clem was picked by the WHRTC (dominated by Minichino's anointed followers)...and proved to be as bad (or worse) than Guerra.

(Part of the problem lies in the fact that this City had been mismanaged since the 1960's: we the voters had allowed those we knew, and those we were "comfortable with" to run the City without asking what the heck they would do. And the politicians ran with that...we ran after them.)

So then came Richie Borer: a young, energetic candidate. Rich promised to sweep the "bad old days away" and start our City anew. And we believed him, and elected him.

(To be continued.....)