Ousted party chairman Dan Quigley vows to bring Greenwich Republicans back into the Democrat fold
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Oh gawd, Mitt, that’s our freind Dan, hanged by his heels!
Dan Quigley, former chair of the RTC, is one of the people who said he sees a Republican threat hidden in the list of RTM candidates.
Quigley is working with other RTM candidates — James Waters, Stephanie Cowie, Jeremy Kostin, Arline Lomazzo, Jaysen Medhurst, Skip Parker, Steve Rubin and others — to form a bipartisan slate to defeat what they said they see as an extremist push to take the body.
“This effort by the RTC and Greenwich Patriots is literally an effort to take over town government,” he said.
“We have no room for radicals in this town”, Quigley insisted to FWIW (or would have, had he had the chance). “The hometown of George Bush, neighbor to Nelson Rockefeller — we were the ‘go along to get along’ party, and the epicenter of "The Land of Steady Habits", where we always honored Connecticut’s ancient tradition of assuring political stability through repeatedly electing the same officials to high office.
“Now these terrorists have thrown all that, and me, overboard, in order to bring in their radical doctrines that will end the teaching of critical race theory in our schools, limit spending, and prohibit taking on the huge, long-term debt so necessary for our plans for low-income housing and care centers for the homeless. My friends in the Democrat party are horrified, of course, but so am I: we were one happy family here in Greenwich, steadily moving together towards a more just, enlightened state of consciousness, and now these awful people have just ruined that! It’s all so unfair, so ungrateful, and so undeserved that I could just cry; in fact, I think I’ll go do just that — excuse me.”
Mr. Quigly then wandered off the stage, assisted by a concerned, doting Jim Waters, and the interview was deemed concluded.
The link above leads to Greenwich Time’s fawning coverage of Quigley’s quest; the link below is an editorial appearing in Greenwich Sentinel by someone or some people who don’t share Quigley’s and his fellow wuz-beens/haz-beens’s terror, nor appreciate Greenwich Time’s “reporting”:
In his ill-informed piece “Is a far-right 'takeover' of Greenwich's RTM possible? If so, bipartisan coalition aims to fight it”, Andrew Blye presents a biased perspective along with incorrect information and partisan fear mongering. His story should have focused on the response by mainstream, concerned citizens to a multi-year effort by Democrats to move the town further and further left. The people who stepped up are volunteers who are of several affiliations, and who want to serve our town based on simple values expressed in a web site.
Mr. Blye didn’t understand the data he was given and misrepresented it. The clerk’s office did not receive the number of petitions he claims. There have NEVER been 272 or even 220 petitions. In 2023, there are 330 candidates on the ballot, but 160 are returning candidates who did not need a petition.
Yet the real error is Mr. Blye’s misleading use of numbers. He should have dug a bit deeper (data from
the Greenwich election history). One has to wonder why he did not?In the six elections (2005-2015) prior to 2017, the RTM averaged 225 candidates for 230 seats. In 2017 that jumped to 292 (including 18 registered write-in candidates). In 2017 there were 80 new candidates who were mostly recruited by activists from local chapters of national Democrat organizations including the local chapters of Indivisible and March-On. These local chapters were set up along with a PAC called “Voices for Democracy” by former Democrat Selectman Sandy Litvak, Joanna Swomley and Nerlyn Pierson, with help from Mareta Hamre and Scott Kalb.
Their purpose was to reshape the RTM by using Trump as a bogeyman to galvanize Democrat women. And reshape the RTM they did, under false pretenses. The result in 2017 was shocking. 73 new RTM members (out of 230) were elected, most pushed by this organized effort by these nationally-funded Democrat organizations. Their false pretense being that this effort would make the RTM “younger.” The result was more Democrat women, but their average age (60) did not change.
… Mr. Blye also did not know or forgot to mention that in 2021, Mr. Waters was busy circulating an RTM slate (image at bottom) which included many Indivisible Greenwich members like co-founder Nerlyn Pierson, as well as far-left DTC members Lucy Von Brachel, Scott Kalb, and Matt DesChamps, and Democrat State Reps Stephen Meskers and Hector Arzeno. Conspicuously missing from Mr. Waters’ list were ANY prominent Republicans, including Mr. Quigley, who at the time was Chairman of the RTC. Also missing from Mr. Waters’ 2021 list were even mild-mannered and centrist Republicans.
Clearly, Mr. Waters and Mr. Quigley are political animals mainly concerned with their own re-election. This is attested by Mr. Quigley’s sudden about-face and by Mr. Waters’ strategically changing party affiliation to and from Republican while promoting far-left Democrats (in slates) and Democrat ideals like high-debt, increased taxes, and wasteful spending on his pet projects.
Mr. Quigley’s decided to join the Democrat chorus after being ousted from the RTC in a primary election. Quigley lost by over 30% of the vote in his home district of downtown Greenwich, not least due to his support for state “Affordable Housing” initiatives which he reaffirmed with recent RTM votes.
The Democrats attempts to mislead voters (with fake organizations, like Mr. Waters’ below and misleading signs), pre-dates any new RTC members. Since 2017, Democrats and their media allies have been seeing imaginary red hats everywhere and name calling anyone who disagrees with their policies a “Nazi” or “anti-Semite” (link, link), while feigning distaste for name calling and claiming they are fiscally responsible.
But the real takeaway here is not Messrs. Waters’ and Quigley’s sour grapes or underhanded tactics, it’s that the Greenwich Time is a partisan source, parroting talking points, devoting little space to opposing perspectives, not doing their research, and failing to check the data they present.
