Susan Bysiewicz | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bysiewicz in 2023 | |
| 109thLieutenant Governor of Connecticut | |
| Assumed office January 9, 2019 | |
| Governor | Ned Lamont |
| Preceded by | Nancy Wyman |
| 72ndSecretary of the State of Connecticut | |
| In office January 3, 1999 – January 3, 2011 | |
| Governor | John G. Rowland Jodi Rell |
| Preceded by | Miles S. Rapoport |
| Succeeded by | Denise Merrill |
| Member of theConnecticut House of Representatives from the 100th district | |
| In office January 3, 1993 – January 3, 1999 | |
| Preceded by | David Lavine |
| Succeeded by | Theodore Raczka |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1961-09-29)September 29, 1961 (age 63) New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | David Donaldson |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Duke University (JD) |
Susan Bysiewicz (/ˈbaɪzəwɪts/BYE-zə-wits;[1] born September 29, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 109thlieutenant governor of Connecticut since 2019.[2] She previously served as the 72ndsecretary of the state of Connecticut from 1999 to 2011 and a member of theConnecticut House of Representatives from 1993 to 1999.
She was briefly a candidate forgovernor of Connecticut in2010, before dropping out to run forConnecticut Attorney General. She was disqualified from running for the office by theConnecticut Supreme Court and announced in 2011 that she was running for theUnited States Senate in the2012 election to replace the retiringJoe Lieberman but lost the Democratic primary to U.S. RepresentativeChris Murphy, who went on to win the general election.
In 2018, Bysiewicz filed papers to run for governor of Connecticut but withdrew shortly before the Democratic Convention, in order to run for lieutenant governor asNed Lamont's running mate. She was nominated for lieutenant governor during the state primary.
Bysiewicz was born September 29, 1961, inNew Haven and raised on a farm.[3] The daughter of Stan and Shirley Bysiewicz, she was raised by a Catholic family of Polish and Greek descent inMiddletown, Connecticut.[4][5][6] She received herBachelor of Arts fromYale University and herJuris Doctor fromDuke University School of Law. During law school, she wroteElla: A Biography of GovernorElla Grasso.[7] Bysiewicz practiced law inNew York City for two years as an associate ofWhite & Case (1986–88). In 1988 she became associated with theHartford firm of Robinson & Cole, L.L.C. where she practiced for four years, and then joined the legal department ofAetna where she was employed from 1992 to 1994.[8]
After the redistricting that followed the 1990 Federal Census, she decided to run in the newly redrawn Connecticut's 100th Assembly District, and defeated Republican Joseph Milardo by a margin of 61–39%.[9] She was a part of the largest Freshman class of the state legislature since 1974.[10] In 1994, she won re-election to a second term with 67% of the vote.[11] In 1996, she won re-election to a third term with 66% of the vote.[12]
She was elected state representative for the 100th Assembly District of Connecticut for three successive terms starting in 1992, representing until 1998 about 22,000 constituents living in parts of the towns ofMiddletown (64% of her constituents) andMiddlefield (10%), and throughout the town ofDurham (26%).[13]
In the House, she investigated the political power ofCounty Sheriffs and Connecticut's last vestige ofpatronage politics at the local level. The sheriffs are only political positions ofConnecticut county government, which was eliminated in 1960. Democrats control theHartford County Sheriff's Department, for example, and of the 288 deputy and special deputy sheriffs working, the Program Review and Investigations Committee found just two Republicans.[14]
In 1998, Bysiewicz sought the Democratic nomination forSecretary of the State. At the state Democratic Convention, she lost the party's endorsement for the nomination, to Representative Ellen Scalettar, but won enough delegates' votes to qualify to run for the nomination in aprimary. During the primary campaign she charged her opponent opposedMegan's Law and was soft on sex offenders.[17] She won both the nomination, and, in thegeneral election in November, the office itself. She won re-election in 2002, but in 2005, while serving, she announced hercandidacy for the Democraticnomination for thegubernatorial election of 2006. She withdrew from that race in September 2005, and on November 7, 2006, won a thirdterm (running through 2010) as Secretary of the State.
In her time as the chief elections officer and business registrar of the state, she has made technology a focus of her administration. Bysiewicz developed Connecticut's first electronic filing system for voter registration to prevent fraud and encourage registration.[18] She also instituted an electronic business searching system called CONCORD that allows users to search a database of all the registered companies in the State of Connecticut. In 2006-07, she implemented new voting technology including adoption of the optical scan machine and a vote-by-phone procedure so that Connecticut voters with disabilities are able to vote securely and independently. She advocated with success at the legislature for the passage of a constitutional amendment that would allow 17-year-olds to vote inprimaries.[19]
On February 7, 2010, theHartford Courant reported that Attorney General Blumenthal was investigating whether Bysiewicz violated the law by using e-mail addresses obtained by her office in their official duties for campaign use—soliciting campaign support and donations.[20] In September, both Blumenthal and Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane concluded that she had not broken the law, and that no charges were warranted.[21]
On January 27, 2009, Bysiewicz made public her intention to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Connecticut in the2010 election.[22]
That February,Quinnipiac University conducted a poll in which they asked: "If the Democratic primary for governor were being held today and the candidates wereDannel Malloy, Susan Bysiewicz and Jim Amann, for whom would you vote?" Of the Democrats who responded, 44% said they would vote for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, 12% said they would vote for Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy and 4% said they would vote for James Amann, former Speaker of the House.[23]
In a poll conducted by the Susan Bysiewicz gubernatorial exploratory committee in October 2009, support for incumbent governorJodi Rell fell to 47% in a head-to-head contest with Susan Bysiewicz, who received 41% of the respondents' vote. When asked how they would vote if the election was held between Rell and Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, poll respondents said they would vote 52% for Rell and 31% for Malloy. In Bridgeport alone, those taking part in the poll were asked who they would vote for if the primary were held that day and they said Bysiewicz 31.44 percent, Malloy 14.56 percent.[24]
In January 2010 Bysiewicz dropped her bid for governor, choosing to run forattorney general. On January 21, 2010, Quinnipiac University released its results a poll of the primary for attorney general which found that Susan Bysiewicz had a 52-point lead (Bysiewicz 62, Jepsen 10, Undecided 24, 593 Democratic Voters, MOE +/- 4%).[25]
After Bysiewicz announced her bid for attorney general, a number of observers questioned her legal qualification to hold the post, citing a state statute that requires the attorney general to have spent ten years in "active practice" of law.[26] Bysiewicz claimed that her years managing the Secretary of the State's office should be applied against this requirement. She sought an opinion from the current attorney general,Richard Blumenthal on the issue.[27] Blumenthal responded that he believed the law to be valid, but the question as to whether Bysiewicz met the requirements had to be decided by the courts or the legislature.[28]
Bysiewicz also had to explain filing a form seeking a waiver of a state fee, when she claimed not to be actively practicing law. Her spokesperson said she had made a mistake.[29] While Bysiewicz vowed to continue her campaign despite the qualifications controversy prominent Republicans suggested she was "cooked"[30] and "delusional."[31]
Under deposition on March 31, 2010, Bysiewicz admitted that "she has never argued a case before a judge and couldn't remember being in a courtroom to observe litigation since law school."[32] On May 5, 2010,Superior Court Judge Michael Sheldon ruled that Bysiewicz was legally qualified to run for state attorney general.[33] However, when the case reached theConnecticut Supreme Court on May 18, JusticeFlemming L. Norcott Jr. handed down the court's 7-0 unanimous ruling that Bysiewicz failed to meet the requirements of General Statutes Section 3-124, which outlines the qualifications for state attorney general.[34][35] In consequence, Bysiewicz was unable run for attorney general in 2010, leaving formerState SenatorGeorge Jepsen the sole remaining Democratic candidate in the race, which he subsequently won.[34]
On November 3, one day after the general election, Bysiewicz announced that Democratic candidateDannel Malloy was the unofficial winner of the race, beating RepublicanTom Foley.[36] Later that evening theAssociated Press, who had also called the race largely based on Bysiewicz's announcement, "un-called" the race when it found that Foley actually led in its vote count.[37] One major reason for the election discrepancies was the conduct of the election in Bridgeport, where local officials ordered an inadequate number of ballots to meet turnout.[38]
President Obama had paid a last minute visit to the City of Bridgeport, and introducedDannel Malloy,[39] and the resulting increase in ballot requirements took the local election board by surprise.[40] Bridgeport Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala, one of two officials responsible for ordering the ballots, noted that other communities ran out of ballots. She disputed the widely quoted figure of 21,000 ordered ballots, but didn't provide an alternative number. Ayala said, "We base the number of ballots we order on prior elections. The Republican and Democratic registrars agreed on that number.".[41]Bysiewicz cited these counting delays—including a bag of uncounted ballots found after Election Day[42]—caused by the ballot shortages in Bridgeport for the confusion; despite her role as Chief Elections Officer she denied bearing any responsibility for the ballot shortages.[43] Bysiewicz said she had directed local officials to order enough ballots but had not monitored Bridgeport officials to ensure the directive was followed, as she had no legal authority to do so.[43]
Bysiewicz answered Tom Foley directly, on a local Connecticut NPR radio program, who complained that she had improperly announced a winner. Bysiewicz argued that she had made it clear the results were "unofficial", and that she was merely "sharing information"; she promised to send Foley any information he required upon his request.[44]
She had planned to announce the official winner of the election on Friday, November 5, after receiving all of the official ballot results.[45] Late in the afternoon of Friday, November 5, Bysiewicz announced Dannel Malloy as the official winner in the gubernatorial election by a much larger vote total of 5,637 votes, which differed from the early results announcement two days earlier when she declared Malloy the unofficial winner by 3,103 votes.[46]
On January 18, 2011, Bysiewicz announced her candidacy in the 2012 election for the U.S. Senate seat which had been held byJoe Lieberman, who retired at the end of that term. Her campaign was endorsed by numerous elected officials as well as thepolitical action committeeEMILY's List. Bysiewicz was subsequently defeated byUS RepresentativeChris Murphy, who defeated RepublicanLinda McMahon in the general election.
Two years later, Bysiewicz returned to private practice, joining the newly established New York andStamford law firm of Pastore Shofi & Dailey, where she headed their newGlastonbury office. Her practice concentration consisted of "corporate law and finance, banking, securities and contract negotiation."[47] Bysiewicz said that while she did not have "any immediate plans to pursue public office" she would not rule out re-entering politics.[citation needed]
On April 18, 2017, Bysiewicz announced that she was forming an exploratory committee for a possible race for Connecticut's 13th senate district. She said that since the election in 2016 of Len Suzio, the first Republican elected in the district which encompasses the cities ofMiddletown andMeriden for several decades, she had been prevailed on by many Democrats eager to regain the seat. (The 2016 election tied the state senate at 18-18.) Bysiewicz attacked Suzio as an "extremist" pointing to his sponsorship of a bill requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortion.[48]
On April 3, 2018, she announced her intention to run for Governor of Connecticut. In early May Bysiewicz received the endorsement of the Democratic PACEMILY's List.[49] Despite the access to a national donor's network and assistance on social media and other platforms that the PAC provided, Bysciewicz dropped out of the governor's race the week before the state Democratic convention and teamed with candidateNed Lamont to run on a ticket as his running mate.[50] To do so, however, would require that both she and Lamont obtain the party's nominations, and as of the date of the announcement, May 15, 2018, Bridgeport mayorJoseph P. Ganim and former commissioner of the stateDepartment of Veterans Affairs Sean Connolly were seeking places on the party's primary ballot for governor and state senatorGary Winfield of New Haven and Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, a union organizer from Newtown, planned to contest the nomination for lieutenant governor.[51]
Bysiewicz is the chair of the Connecticut Complete Count Committee for the 2020 Census, and of the Governor's Council on Women and Girls, a platform for women engaged in politics and public policy.[52]
Bysiewicz met her husband, David Donaldson, while she was attending law school at Duke.[48] Donaldson ran his father's insurance business inManchester,[47] now the Bysiewicz/Donaldson Agency.[53] The couple has three children, daughters Ava and Leyna, who attended Wesleyan University, and son Tristan, who graduated from Middletown High School.[47]
Bysiewicz told the Times: "I was brought up on a farm, and I've learned that every opportunity that I've had in my life has come from hard work and persistence."
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| Connecticut House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by David Lavine | Member of theConnecticut House of Representatives from the 100th district 1993–1999 | Succeeded by Theodore Raczka |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forSecretary of the State of Connecticut 1998,2002,2006 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forLieutenant Governor of Connecticut 2018,2022 | Most recent |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Secretary of State of Connecticut 1999–2011 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut 2019–present | Incumbent |
Statewide elected officials and legislative leaders ofConnecticut | ||
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