GOP Candidates Forum—

Five Contenders For The Fifth District Seat Make Their Case

By John Voket

All five GOP hopefuls running to win the Fifth District congressional seat this fall came to Newtown February 22 to meet with local Republican Town Committee members and guests during a 90-minute candidates forum at the Senior Center.

Lisa Wilson-Foley, Mark Greenberg, Andrew Roraback, Mike Clark, and Justin Bernier all took their turns introducing themselves and fielding questions that were submitted by the audience. All five hope to fill the seat of departing Congressman and US Senate candidate Chris Murphy in November.

(Listen to a full audio transcript and see video clips from the forum at newtownbee.com)

The 2012 forum followed a successful model that the local town committee established several years ago. Rather than staging the activity as a debate, organizers provided time for candidates to introduce themselves, field a half-dozen questions, and make a few brief closing remarks.

The five fielded questions on subjects ranging from providing defined benefit pensions for state military service veterans to how they can beat a Democratic challenger to their positions on the national debt and abortion.

Mark Greenberg

According to his introductory remarks and his candidate bio, Mr Greenberg is an independent businessman and entrepreneur. After graduating from Cornell University, he founded two successful companies.

His first company, Adirondack Mobile Telephone and Adirondack Radio Telephone, supplied mobile telecommunication service throughout upstate New York and to the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. In 1980, Mr Greenberg created MGRE, a firm that is now one of the largest real estate management firms based upon residential properties managed.

He opening several local businesses, including The Market, a food market specializing in natural fish, meat, and groceries, and Goshen Hardware. Mr Greenberg and his wife Linda founded The Simon Foundation, Inc, an animal rescue shelter in Bloomfield. He and his wife live with their four young children in northwest Connecticut.

Mr Greenberg complimented the local RTC for providing a forum where all the current candidates could present their views.

“I believe we have to send people of substance down to Washington, people who have had businesses, people who have met payroll, people who have written their names on the front of the checks, not the rear of the checks,” Mr Greenberg said.

Mr Greenberg said he believes he is capable of winning the Democratic-leaning Fifth District, and he is willing to do it by campaigning to make himself known in the cities and among the working people and unions representing the district’s workforce and families.

Lisa Wilson Foley

Ms Foley began her career as a physical therapist and went on to received her master’s in public health from Yale University. At the age of 29, she opened her first business, starting a physical therapy service for nursing homes and rehabilitation centers that grew to employ more than 300 therapists serving clients throughout New England.

The candidate started several companies in the health care, family entertainment, and sports and leisure industries across Connecticut, which currently employ more than 1,500 people in 14 of the 41 towns in Connecticut’s Fifth District. Always on the cutting edge, Ms Foley’s golf course in Avon was the first in the nation to offer daycare to its employees and customers, and her new institutional pharmacy in Plainville provide new technologies to reduce waste and inefficiencies in the medication distribution process.

Her rehabilitation company continues to stress research and education and is one of only seven in the country to offer a Geriatric Residency Program for physical therapists. Ms Foley won Hartford Magazine’s Business Leader of the Year Award in 2011; was honored as INC Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year for Southern New England in 1995: and has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She also serves on the Board of the Bushnell, the American School for the Deaf, and is a past president of Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

She told the Newtown GOP that their party is “up against the ropes” this year.

“We have an election that is going to be a battle for the minds and hearts of our country’s people,” she said. “Democrats want to turn our country into an entitlement society. I want to keep our economy growing, not our government.”

Justin Bernier

Mr Bernier was born in Hartford in 1975 into a middle-class family. He graduated from the Farmington public school system and earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts.

Mr Bernier graduated from Fordham University in 1997, and later earned a master’s degree in international security and economic policy from the University of Maryland, and a second master’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University.

He also graduated from the Engalitcheff Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems, a program of The Fund for American Studies at Georgetown. Mr Bernier, his wife Jennie, and their daughter Renée live in Plainville.

A lifelong Republican, Mr Bernier has volunteered for GOP candidates at all levels of government since he was 20 years old. He launched Republican Majority PAC in 2011 to help the party elect candidates to key offices across Connecticut.

After 9/11, he joined the US Navy as a reserve intelligence officer volunteering for duty in Afghanistan in 2007 where he was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal. Upon his return to Connecticut, Governor M. Jodi Rell asked Mr Bernier to serve as executive director of the Office of Military Affairs, where he became the youngest cabinet member in the state.

He was chairman of Connecticut’s Military and Defense Advisory Council and served voluntarily on the state’s Council on Education for Children in Military Families.

Earlier in his career, Mr Bernier was a senior legislative assistant in the US House of Representatives. He worked in the private sector for SAIC, a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering, and technology applications company. He was a laborer on construction sites during his graduate and undergraduate studies.

Mr Bernier told the Newtown GOP that he is very different on policy than the other candidates.

“I would say to you as we move toward the endorsement on May 18, think about how we can lead and how we can win,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s moving to the left and running the most liberal candidate. I believe it’s by showing daylight between us and the Democrats.”

Mr Bernier said if state Republicans are afraid and put up a candidate who does not embody true GOP principles, the party is risking a loss in November.

Mike Clark

Mr Clark received a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Rowan University in 1976 and went on to teach at the high school level and coached for five years while earning his master’s degree at night from Seton Hall University.

In 1983 he accepted an appointment as an FBI special agent where he served in the Albany, N.Y., and New York City Divisions. In 1990, he was transferred to Connecticut where Mr Clark investigated and fought corruption in municipal and state government.

In recognition for his work, he was awarded the 2005 US Attorney’s Award for investigative excellence and service to the citizens of Connecticut. Upon his retirement from the FBI, Mr Clark began a second career as the manager of international investigations and security for Otis Elevator and its 60,000 employees.

In 2005, he was elected and served three terms as the chairman of the Town Council in Farmington. As the chief elected official in the town he helped maintain the third lowest tax rate in the region while paying off 20 percent of the town’s bonded debt.

Under his leadership, Farmington’s municipal bond rating from Moody’s rose to AAA, the town’s Grand List has grown each year. Mr Clark has been married to his wife, Sue, for 33 years, and they have four children

He told the forum audience that his body of experience has brought him to the race, and it makes him the most winnable candidate.

“I want my country back,” he said. “I feel in many ways our country has turned a corner, and it’s just not reflecting the country that I was so fortunate to grow up in.”

Mr Clark said in his elected role in Farmington, he felt the effects of mandates from Hartford and Washington. And he touted his electability, saying the GOP needed a candidate who not only has work and government experience, but one who has been a successful political campaigner.

Senator Andrew Roraback

Mr Roraback told the local forum his family has called Litchfield County home for five generations, He was elected nine times to the General Assembly, and subsequently to the Senate from 2001 until today.

In the 17 years that he has served, Sen Roraback told the forum that he has never missed a roll call vote, casting 8,468 consecutive votes. He is the only one out of 187 legislators who can claim this record.

As the Senate Ranking Member of the Legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, Sen Roraback has consistently voted against borrowing to pay for nonessential projects at a time when Connecticut’s economic outlook has been downgraded by Moody’s.

He has been widely recognized for his work on education, criminal justice, domestic violence, and environmental issues. In 2006, Sen Roraback was named to the Aspen-Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership as one of the nation’s top young elected officials.

Born on March 29, 1960, in Torrington, he is a 1983 cum laude graduate of Yale, and he received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1987. He works with his father, brother, and sister at his family law firm, which was started in Torrington by his great-grandfather in 1883.

Helives in Goshen with his wife Kara and their son Andrew Kevin.

He opened his remarks telling the Newtown audience that the GOP has to win congress back one seat at a time. He took aim at the national debt, and took the Obama Administration to task for working to create “an entitlement society.”

“I am a Republican, make no mistake about it,” Sen Roraback said. “But I’m an American before I am a Republican. I’ve always believed the end game should be advancing the common good.”

The senator touted his listening skills and his numerous campaign victories, often against worthy Democratic opponents, as strong qualifiers for his candidacy.

“I stand ready to hit the ground running,” he said, “to represent your interests, and to allow Connecticut to have a voice in the United States Congress that reflects the views of the people who live here.”