To the Editor:
As former Chairman of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee from 2025 to 2026, I had my fair share of disagreements with Joe Kelly. That’s exactly why I’m writing to support him for State Senate in the 36th District, which includes New Canaan along with Greenwich and part of Stamford.
I’ve known Joe for a decade. Behind the scenes, we’ve argued over strategy, candidates, and priorities more times than I can count. But every single time, we’ve worked through it, found the fair conclusion, and moved forward as a team. Joe doesn’t dig in for the sake of winning an argument. He listens, compromises, and he puts the outcome ahead of his ego. That is precisely the temperament we need in Hartford, and precisely the temperament that is vanishing from our politics.
Joe’s character was forged long before he entered public life. He grew up in modest circumstances in the Bronx, and he never forgot it. He and his wife did the most admirable thing a family can do: they gave foster kids a home, not for a photo op, but because that’s who he is. He has poured himself into his community for years, including as Chairman of the Greenwich Board of Education, where a politically divided board elected him unanimously, Democrats and Republicans alike. Think about that. In an era when boards of education across the country have become battlegrounds, Joe earned the unanimous trust of members from both parties. He now serves on the Board of Estimate and Taxation, where he has continued that same collaborative, results-first approach.
Contrast that record with his opponent, Jill Oberlander. In her years in Greenwich government, she has never once meaningfully split from her party. When Hartford came for our zoning in 2021 with S.B. 1024, the Desegregate CT bill that would have overridden local zoning near transit, residents of Greenwich and New Canaan pleaded with their leaders to speak up. Fred Camillo and Lauren Rabin were willing, however, as Selectwoman, Ms. Oberlander declined to take a stand against it, admitting at the time she hadn’t even read the legislation. That silence tells you everything about what kind of senator she would be: another reliable vote for the Hartford supermajority, not a voice for the towns she would represent.
Look at her running mates. Representatives Steve Meskers and Hector Arzeno campaigned on protecting local control. Yet when H.B. 5002, the omnibus housing bill imposing “fair share” quotas and transit-oriented development mandates on our towns, came to the floor, both voted for the strike-all amendments that transformed a narrow homelessness bill into a sweeping assault on municipal zoning authority. That is how the game is played: campaign on local control at home, enable its removal in Hartford. For New Canaan, with two stations on the New Canaan Branch, transit-oriented development mandates are not an abstraction; they are a direct threat to the character of the town.
If you think it can’t get worse, look at what happened on Primary night. Roughly a third of Democratic primary voters statewide backed Josh Elliott, the Mamdani-aligned challenger, over their own sitting governor. In the 1st Congressional District, Luke Bronin, whose wife founded Desegregate CT, the leading force behind stripping towns of zoning control, decisively defeated John Larson, a progressive who served for nearly three decades. The First Congressional District has now gone full out Socialist. The Connecticut Democratic Party is not drifting left; it is lurching, and its most radical wing is now setting the agenda.
Here is what that means for us. Democrats already hold veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. A supermajority that can override any gubernatorial veto can pass any zoning mandate it wants, no matter who sits in the governor’s office. If it does, the only check remaining is the margin in the Senate. Every seat matters. Ms. Oberlander would be one more cog in that supermajority, a guaranteed vote for whatever Hartford’s ascendant progressive wing demands of Greenwich, Stamford, and New Canaan.
Joe Kelly would be something different: an independent voice with a proven record of working with Democrats without surrendering to them. He has spent his life bringing people together, on the rugby pitch, on the Board of Education, in his own home. He knows how to disagree without being disagreeable, and how to fight for his community without burning bridges.
I’ve disagreed with Joe plenty. I’d trust him with the future of Greenwich, New Canaan, and Stamford without hesitation. On November 3rd, vote Joe Kelly for State Senate.
Michael E. Hahn Former Chairman, Greenwich Republican Town Committee
