Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim pulled off another victory against his Democratic rival John Gomes on Tuesday night in a special court-ordered election that was scheduled after the city’s 2023 Democratic primary was overturned because of widespread absentee ballot fraud.
About an hour after polls closed, both campaigns received numbers that suggested Ganim won the in-person vote tally by roughly 274 votes, which was enough to position Ganim for a win as the absentee vote count was finalized.
An unofficial count of absentee ballots gave Ganim another 1,339 votes and Gomes 566, a margin for Ganim of 773 absentee votes.
Ganim and his political supporters quickly claimed victory at his election night party, and they took to the stage to celebrate what they characterized as a decisive win.
Bridgeport City Council President Aidee Nieves, one of Ganim’s supporters, suggested the win should send a message to both state officials and state Superior Court Judge William Clark, who tossed out the results of September’s primary.
“I think the voters wanted to send a clear message to the state of Connecticut and also to our judicial system that the voters will decide who they want to be mayor of the great city of Bridgeport,” Nieves said. “How many times do we have to win? This will be three times Mayor Joe Ganim has won.”
Winning the in-person vote count was something that Ganim was unable to accomplish in his previous two elections against Gomes last year.
In both the September 2023 primary and a general election in November, Ganim had to rely on an overwhelming number of absentee votes to make up for Gomes’ win at the polls.
Ganim argued the strength of his victory on Tuesday provided him with a clear mandate to lead Bridgeport, a city of roughly 148,000 residents, for another four years.
“I’m humbled more than I could imagine by the overwhelming support that helped us win on the machines,” Ganim told his supporters. “Over 1,000 more people came out to vote today than did in the primary in September, and that’s a strong message.”
The nearly 7,000 registered Democrats who turned out in person on Tuesday was surprising for a special election in January, which featured only one race on the ballot.
The results of the court-ordered primary bring Ganim one step closer to retaining power in Connecticut’s largest city, where he returned to office in 2015 after serving a seven-year prison sentence on federal corruption charges.
But before he can be sworn in for his eighth term as mayor, Ganim will likely have to win a new general election in February.
It will be up to Clark and several other candidates, including Gomes, to decide whether that general election takes place in February.
After the election results came in, Gomes told his supporters that he was disappointed by the results. But he suggested that he could push the race into a second general election next month.
“We will sit down over the next few days and consider our options,” Gomes said.
“This is not a concession speech. Because we will never give up,” he added.
Ganim closed his remarks on Tuesday by referencing Gomes and the potential for another election in February.
“I want to reach out to John Gomes and all that supported him and take a particularly hard look at where we’re at,” he said. “I extend the branch to everyone who cares about the city of Bridgeport, maybe with different views, including Mr. Gomes and all that supported him. Let’s work harder to make this city the best we can by working together.”
The outcome of the special court-ordered primary, Ganim argued, ended any doubt that he was legitimately elected.
“I think, for better or for worse, this election got a lot of attention, but all of those issues go away when you win overwhelmingly like we did tonight,” Ganim said.
The reason Bridgeport voters were forced to vote in the middle of January is because several of the mayor’s political supporters were caught on video surveillance footage allegedly stuffing absentee ballots into drop boxes in September.
That video evidence led Clark to conclude that the primary results were marred by what he described as “shocking” evidence of “blatant” ballot harvesting.
In the aftermath, dozens of complaints were filed with Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission, and Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas appointed two new election monitors to police the absentee balloting process in the city.
In recent months, Clark’s decision to overturn the primary results also captured national and international attention, with the city frequently being characterized as a hotbed for local election fraud.
But that did little to change the campaign tactics in Bridgeport, where absentee votes frequently decide elections.
Ganim and Gomes both had teams of campaign staff and political supporters dedicated to signing people up for an absentee ballot ahead of the court-ordered primary on Tuesday.
The dueling campaigns collectively requested more than 6,000 absentee ballot applications in preparation for that push, and they eventually assisted more than 2,700 people to request an absentee ballot using those forms.
Roughly half of the absentee ballots cast in Tuesday’s election stemmed from the city’s 136th, 137th and 138th voting districts, which include a significant number of public housing units and senior living facilities.
CT Mirror staff writers Jaden Edison, Ally LeMaster and Luke Feeney contributed to this report.