Malloy Claims Victory; Recount Possibility Looms

HARTFORD — Claiming victory over his opponent's calls for a recount, addressed a cheering crowd in Hartford late Wednesday afternoon, bringing to an awkward pause a contentious state race that was too close to call overnight.

Malloy announced he would name Tim Bannon, the current president and executive director of the Board of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, as his chief of staff.  Bannon, a 1977 graduate of the Yale University School of Law, has background in government, legal practice and the pharmaceutical industry.

He and Lieutenant Governor-elect Nancy Wyman will co-chair Malloy's transition team, the Stamford Democrat added.

"The people of the State of Connecticut expect an administration to take office on Jan. 5 to deal with the massive issues that face the state: jobs, electric rates, balancing the budget," Malloy said to a room of exuberant supporters and members of the press in the state capitol late Wednesday afternoon. "We have to move forward."

The Stamford Democrat and Wyman, his running mate, four hours earlier had been declared victorious by Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz by a margin of just 3,103 votes. Those figures are being by Greenwich Republican Tom Foley, who ran for governor with Mark Boughton. In question are how many votes were cast in Malloy's favor in a dozen polling places in Bridgeport between 8 and 10 p.m. last night — a judge-approved, two-hour extension to normal polling hours, spurred by an unexpected shortage of ballots in the face of strong voter turnout.

Foley had said during his own press conference earlier in the day: "First, we need to know how many people actually voted [in Bridgeport] between 8 and 10 p.m. It may not even be a significant number, and if it's not, then there's no point in bringing [the subject of a recount] up."

Malloy maintained his confidence in his camp's estimated final lead of 11,000 votes—which included absentee ballots "in some cases," he said—and predicted Foley's challenge would fall flat.

"I want to be very clear," Malloy said. "[Foley] can do what he wants to do."

Asked for comment on a recount — which will be required by law should Malloy's lead in the final tally fall to less than 2,000 votes — Malloy simply said "it won't come to that," and that he was confident because his campaign team had "done [its] homework."

He continued by shifting focus from the troubles of Election Day and describing his plan for administering the governorship of Connecticut.

"This is going to be a very different type of administration than those that served in the past," Malloy said. "We're going to be more transparent and open, and I have a different style of leadership — I will hire the best people for jobs and give them general direction as opposed to having one individual trying to do all things."

One of dozens of races that's drawn national attention as GOPers on Election Day sought to wrest control of Congress and many states from the Democratic party, Connecticut's race for the governor's mansion pitted two Fairfield County residents with vastly different backgrounds against each other.

While the tone of the campaign often bordered on aggression, Malloy dismissed it as water under the bridge at Wednesday's press conference in an ornate room in the state capitol.

"I'm not going to spend time in the past," he said. "Campaigns are campaigns. I'm a little bruised and battered. I just finished a long process of running for office — the convention, the primary, the general election … ultimately our strategy worked, and it's time to turn the page."

, 55, a former prosecutor, cited his 14-year track record as Stamford's mayor as credentials for becoming governor. He presided over an economic turnaround in that city and says he can do the same for Connecticut.

Saying Connecticut needs to create new jobs while protecting existing ones, Malloy vowed to get state spending under control in several ways. One is by reducing the number of state agencies by a third through mergers and other consolidations. He also wanted to freeze compensation for all political appointees and to work with state labor leaders to find other savings.

Malloy also said he'd use research and development tax credits to create a billion-dollar fund to expand research and advanced manufacturing, a plan he says will generate thousands of new jobs. He also wants to expand state investments in bio-medical fields and in the state's three deep-water ports.

As Stamford's mayor, Malloy said he proposed balanced budgets every year while holding the line on taxes. Foley has pledged no new taxes, but Malloy calls that unrealistic and says his successes expanding jobs and the economy in Stamford will work on the state level as well.

Foley, 58, had never held an elective office, and he sought to leverage outsider status and career of turning around troubled businesses as assets. He said Connecticut needed an outsider who will make decisions unhampered by special interests. State government's budget problems are a result of too much spending, not a lack of revenue, Foley argued on the campaign trail.