Editor's note: This report was modified at 1 pm on November 29 to add a response by Rep Tony Scott.

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Connecticut Representative Mitch Bolinsky (R-106) now represents more of a “one town district” when recent redistricting added Sandy Hook, but Newtown lost representation when Rep Raghib Allie-Brennan’s (D-2) and Rep Tony Scott’s (R-112) Districts were shifted out of Newtown.

The community will be gaining additional representation, however, as part of Rep Stephen Harding’s 107th District will incorporate some neighborhoods in Hawleyville and northern Newtown.

A bipartisan committee of legislators voted unanimously November 18 for a new map that redraws the district boundaries for the Connecticut House of Representatives, reflecting the state’s westward shift in population toward the New York border.

The plan creates a new seat in Fairfield County, incorporating Wilton and portions of New Canaan and Ridgefield. Meanwhile, a district in southeastern Connecticut is being eliminated. It’s currently held by Republican state Rep Mike France of Ledyard, a candidate for Congress who is not seeking reelection to the General Assembly.

“I think overall, we made a lot of difficult decisions trying to keep a lot of the core districts intact, but recognizing the fact that with population changes so do come changes to various districts,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, who called the Reapportionment Commission “one of the best processes in the country.”

“We are truly a bipartisan process,” he said.

Senator Tony Hwang (R-28) offered a public welcome to Rep Harding and said he was committed to work with representatives whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

“We’re all on the same team,” Hwang said. “Newtown first.”

Newtown’s 106th-District remains a contiguous “Single-Town District”, represented by five-term assistant House leader, Mitch Bolinsky. The 106th-District has grown slightly to represent 24,581 Newtown residents. Geographically, it has expanded to the south and west and contracted to the north.

All of Sandy Hook and Botsford to the southern border are now in District 106. District 112 shifts south and Rep Scott will no longer represent part of western Newtown. All of Dodgingtown to the western border, south of Hattertown Road and down Poverty Hollow Road are now included in District 106. District 2 shifts to the west and south and Rep Allie-Brennan will no longer represent part of Newtown.

The area north and west of I-84 from the end of The Boulevard and west of Echo Valley Road folds into District 107 and will now be represented by Rep Harding.

Hwang acknowledged the work of Rep Scott and Rep Allie-Brennan in representing Newtown.

“I’m grateful and appreciative of their collaborative work,” said Hwang. “I hope they continue to hold Newtown in their thoughts and policy-making.”

Hwang said the theme is instead of losing Reps Scott and Allie-Brennan, Newtown is gaining a representative in Harding who “knows how important it is to represent Newtown.”

“There are a lot of challenges ahead; we want to be sure we can marshal legislative collaboration and support,” said Hwang.

Rep Bolinsky said it had “been great working with” Rep Scott and Rep Allie-Brennan.

“I’m going to miss them both,” said Rep Bolinsky. “[Rep Scott and Rep Allie-Brennan] are both still neighbors and I’ll see them in the legislature. We’ll still count on each other when we need support.”

Rep Scott noted that his 112th district "has changed a bit." It now includes a portion of Trumbull and Easton, but Newtown will no longer be included in the district.

"I will continue to serve the needs of constituents in Newtown until January 2023. While I wish Newtown would continue to be in the district for the next decade this is, unfortunately, a required change, but I am confident that they will be equally represented in their new 106th District,” Rep. Scott said. “My constituents in Monroe can count on me being there for them, to listen to their concerns and address issues that arise within the district until the end of the term in 2023," Scott continued. "I look forward to meeting the people of Easton and Trumbull.”

Rep Bolinsky said that Newtown will “still be in good hands” with Rep Harding.

“Stephen is a classy guy,” Rep Bolinsky said.

Bolinsky said he was “pleased” to be picking up Sandy Hook, Botsford and Dodgingtown.

“Those pieces are at the heart of the district,” said Rep Bolinsky. “Many of the people I’m picking up think I’m their representative already anyway. That’s a tribute to how we’ve worked as a team; we work together, take our bows together, and take our lumps together.”

Bolinsky did, however, lose the northernmost section of the town to Rep Harding.

Extra Time Sought

Commission members said they expect to also approve a redistricting plan for the state Senate in time for a November 30 deadline. However, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said he expects the panel will likely ask for the Connecticut Supreme Court to grant them extra time to finish redrawing the state’s congressional district boundaries.

“Given the late nature of the data that we received, it was a challenge to get the General Assembly done,” said Ritter, referring to the late release of U.S. Census data due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ritter said he believes the group will be able to reach a bipartisan deal if they have a couple more weeks.

Sen Hwang said he hopes his district, one of 36, stays in Newtown.

“I made a strong request to continue representing Newtown,” said Hwang. “It is near and dear to me.”

In 2011, the last time boundaries were redrawn, lawmakers couldn’t reach agreement on the congressional district boundaries and the Connecticut Supreme Court ultimately named a special master to redraw the lines. This year, the map was approved unanimously by a bipartisan committee.

Despite population losses, Hartford appears likely to still control six House seats, thanks to mapmakers crossing the Connecticut River to place 3,282 South Windsor residents in the 5th District represented by Rep. Brandon McGee, D-Hartford. The district already included the southern third of Windsor.

Stamford, the state’s second-largest and fastest-growing city, picked up a seventh House seat, a reflection of nearly all population growth recorded in the 2020 Census coming in Fairfield County.

No one seeking reelection in the 151-member House was drawn out of their current district, but several face harder races as a result of revisions, most notably a freshman, Rep. Brian Smith, D-Colchester, and a progressive leader, Rep. Anne Hughes, D-Easton.

Neighboring incumbents, two Democrats and a Republican, should have easier races. One is Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, a prominent conservative who was reelected by just seven votes over Democrat Jim Jinks of Cheshire. Fishbein’s redrawn 90th District no longer will include Jinks’ neighborhood.

“Now, he doesn’t even have the opportunity to run again. It is an egregious thing,” said Courtney Cullinan, the Democratic town chair of Cheshire. “It’s so blatantly political. And I understand redistricting. Look, I’m doing it.” Cullinan is deputy chief of staff to the Senate Democrats.

Fishbein’s new district will have more of Wallingford, all of Middlefield and none of Cheshire. The changes make Fishbein’s district more Republican, while benefitting Rep. Liz Linehan, D-Cheshire, and Rep. Michael Quinn, D-Meriden. Quinn’s district, which now includes suburban Middlefield, is wholly within Democratic Meriden in the new map.

The closely guarded map was posted on the Reapportionment Commission website after the unanimous vote, giving the public and rank-and-file House members their first glance at Connecticut’s new political terrain.

Hughes, the leader of the House Progressive Caucus, immediately saw that the eastern portion of Easton, near where she lives, now was in a district with neighboring Monroe.

“I just texted as soon as I as soon as I saw the map, and I was like, ‘I’m still living my district, right?’” Hughes said.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, the cochair of the commission, assured her that was the case.

Her 135th district actually got safer for Democrats, but Easton will be a weaker base if she is challenged in a primary by a Democrat from neighboring Weston, which has the bigger share of voters and nominating convention delegates.

Smith, who won a special election in 2020 in the 48th District, succeeding the late Linda Orange, lost a portion of Democratic Mansfield and picked up Bozrah and Franklin. The changes will make the district friendlier to the GOP.

Despite the loss of Democratic voters, Smith had no complaints about changes that put all of Colchester, as well as Bozrah and Franklin, in one district. His existing district was widely considered to favor political considerations at the expense of respecting geographic boundaries. It includes sections of Colchester, Lebanon, Mansfield and Windham.

“Most people, myself included, have always been of the opinion that that was a very strange district,” Smith said. “This one makes more sense.”

If the 48th makes more sense, the adjacent 139th represented by Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, no longer does. With the loss of Bozrah, the 139th rises from Montville and claws through the middle of Norwich.

The recently announced retirement of Rep. Whit Betts, R-Bristol, eased the way to accommodate Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato, R-Bristol, who is moving to a new home in Betts’ 78th District.

“It was interesting because Cara would have retired and run possibly in the 78th when Whit retired,” said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford.

Instead, her 77th District was revised to encompass her new neighborhood in Bristol.

Changes Out East

In northeastern Connecticut, the 52nd District of Rep. Kurt Vail, R-Stafford, had to be redrawn due to the population loss seen in much of the region, plus an additional one: By virtue of a new state law, inmates no longer are counted where they are imprisoned; they are counted in the communities in which they had resided before imprisonment.

Vail’s district includes Somers, the home of two prisons. To accommodate the population loss, his district now will include Union and a portion of Woodstock.

As speaker, Ritter was in a position to protect Hartford’s districts, but he noted there were more than parochial interests in doing so: One of the goals of redistricting was to promote the influence of minority communities or, at the very least, do nothing to diminish it.

“We did not dilute one of those districts,” Ritter said. “They’re all the same as they were. That was not negotiable for anybody in the room.”

To achieve that goal, one Hartford district, the 5th, will cross the Connecticut River, apparently for the first time, and another will spill into a corner of West Hartford. It is not the first Hartford-West Hartford district: a previous version was represented by the speaker’s uncle, John Ritter.

The 6th District represented by Rep. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, will draw from a portion of West Hartford represented by Rep. Kate Farrar, D-West Hartford. Farrar’s 20th District, now wholly in West Hartford, will reach south into Newington.

Lobbying by Wilton and Goshen succeeded in the new map centering a district in Wilton and placing all of currently divided Goshen in the sprawling 64th District of northwestern Connecticut.

The new district covering Wilton is dubbed the 42nd, underscoring the loss of population in the east and the gains in the southwest. Under the current map, the 42nd crosses the eastern rural towns of Ledyard, Montville and Preston, and is represented by Rep. Mike France, R-Ledyard. He is running for Congress instead of reelection, meaning its disappearance will not dispossess an incumbent.

The Reapportionment Commission actually functions as two separate units: Four House members, two from each party, working on House districts; and four senators, two from each party, focusing on Senate districts.

As required by the state Constitution, the eight lawmakers appointed a ninth member, former Senate GOP Leader John McKinney, as a tiebreaker, if necessary.

Only the four House members saw the House map before voting, and Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme, noted for the record he was voting to accept the work of the House without seeing it.

The Senate still is working on its map, and negotiations on a congressional map will wait until the Senate is done.

Editor’s note: Content in this localized report originally appeared at CTMirror.org, the website of The Connecticut Mirror, an independent, nonprofit news organization covering government, politics, and public policy in the state.

Reporter Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.