A longtime member of the Republican Town Committee and four-time mayoral candidate has decided to exit the party just weeks after attending the GOP’s national convention. Former West Haven Republican Mayoral nominee Steven R. Mullins has left the party to become an unaffiliated voter.
At issue is the recent vote of the 60-member panel not to re-elect Mullins as a Justice of the Peace, a position he has held for more than a quarter-century. Mullins lost his bid for re-election, receiving only 14 votes. He has served in the position for 25 years. West Haven has a panel of seventeen Republican Justices of the Peace.
The failure to re-elect the longtime member is the latest evidence of a rift in the party that has been festering for some time. Last year’s three-way primary for the party’s mayoral nomination exposed the factions within the city’s minority party when Mullins and eventual mayoral nominee Barry Lee Cohen challenged endorsed candidate Paige Weinstein. Weinstein ended up second in the balloting, with Cohen losing to Democrat Dorinda Borer in the general election.
That primary produced sores within the party that have yet to heal.
Of note is the fact in the July RNC Convention, Mullins was joined by Weinstein and her husband Andrew as part of the Connecticut delegation.
The May snub was not forgotten. At Mullins’ request, Town and City Clerk John Lewis appointed him Justice of the Peace in the unaffiliated category. Mullins, meanwhile, believes the current state of the party in the city is not the one he joined as a teenager.
“I don’t feel that I left the West Haven Republican Party, but that the party left me,” said Mullins, who served 16 years as Planning and Zoning Commissioner and is currently chairman of the city’s newly revamped Fair Rent Commission.
“I have served West Haven Republicans since I was in the sixth grade in 1986, putting “Evangeliste for State Rep” signs together at headquarters. I feel that this departure is unfortunate, but necessary, considering that the position has been a part-time job for me for over two decades,” Mullins said.
Indeed, in years when attempting to find candidates to fill party slates were difficult, Mullins was one of the go-to candidates.
Mullins said he has been a registered Republican since he registered to vote at age 18 and a member of the Republican Town Committee since 1996.
“Regardless of the letter next to my name on the voter rolls, I will continue to believe in the fiscal and social conservative principles of the Republican Party,” Mullins said.
Meanwhile, the city’s minority party has not had a successful campaign since 1989, when Republican Clem Evangeliste eked out a win over two-term Democrat Azelio “Sal” Guerra. Evangeliste served only one term as mayor losing to H. Richard Borer, Jr. two years later.
The one-term mayor presented a budget that was grossly underfunded and led to state receivership of the city. That election put the GOP in the doghouse with voters, and the party has yet to find a way out of the loss column.