Bridgeport mayor wins do-over election in race marred by ballot-stuffing
A Connecticut mayor whose September primary election win was invalidated after ballot-fraud allegations won a do-over primary Tuesday, months after his case became a flash point in conservative arguments about debunked theories of voter fraud.
As Donald Trump barrels toward the Republican nomination and continues promoting debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he and his allies have seized on this case out of Democratic-leaning Bridgeport. They see the case — which resulted in a mayor formerly convicted of conspiracy winning a general election that had been voided by the courts — as evidence that Democrats are committing widespread fraud. Elections experts say those claims are baseless and that the Bridgeport case is unique.
“There is no indication to say that what took place in Bridgeport is happening nationally,” said David Levine, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. “But election deniers just need a toehold to get greater traction on a bigger claim. For those that want to make mountains out of molehills, it’s incumbent on them to bring the evidence to support those accusations.”
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Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, whose supporters allegedly stuffed absentee ballots on his behalf, won reelection over John Gomes in the Tuesday Democratic primary, according to the Associated Press.
Gomes lost to Ganim in their first faceoff Sept. 12 by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast. Soon after, Gomes’s campaign released videos showing a woman putting documents inside a drop box outside a city hall annex. She did it three times between 5:42 a.m. and 6:38 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 5. The same woman then appeared to go inside the annex and give more documents to a man who later deposited them into the absentee ballot box.
That seemingly broke a Connecticut law that requires absentee voters to personally drop off their filled-out ballots or assign relatives, caregivers, election officials or police to do so. Gomes, the incumbent’s former acting chief administrative officer, challenged the results in a lawsuit against the city, and in November a judge ordered a new primary after he found evidence of wrongdoing.
“The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary,” Superior Court Judge William Clark wrote.
The decision came less than a week before the November general election. The judge said he did not have the power to postpone it, so voters went to the polls in an election that had no standing.
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Ganim similarly alleged that supporters of Gomes committed election fraud, though no evidence has surfaced to substantiate those claims. The mayor, long embattled and previously convicted of corruption, also has said his supporters broke the law but that he had “no knowledge of what was going on.”
Gomes called the Ganim administration “corrupt” in a Wednesday interview with The Washington Post while alleging there could have been additional fraud in the do-over primary. Ganim did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump, Elon Musk, the legal defense fund of MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell and Republicans in Connecticut, among others, have used the Bridgeport fraud allegations to question how common cheating is nationally. They have also used the case in fundraising appeals.
“This is just a ‘tiny’ part of what’s happening in our country with voting,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It’s all a giant scam!”
Claims of voter fraud more broadly have continued even as some Trump lawyers have been criminally charged and censured, and as right-wing outlets such as Newsmax slowed their spread of the unsubstantiated theories in the face of lawsuits and threats of legal consequences. About two-thirds of Republicans, polls show, believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Some Connecticut Republicans have used the incident to instill doubt in ballot boxes and absentee voting generally. Among them is state Rep. Doug Dubitsky (R).
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“How do we know that it’s only Bridgeport?” Dubitsky said during a legislative debate over the city’s controversy, according to the AP. “This exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state. We should get rid of these boxes completely.”
In 2023, at least 14 states passed laws that made it harder to vote. Those limitations included requiring more information on a mail ballot application, narrowing the window to request a ballot and banning drop boxes, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In Connecticut, Levine, of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, said it was particularly important for the state to ensure there was no additional fraud in the redo primary, since more eyes would be on Bridgeport this time around. In response to the allegations, the State Elections Enforcement Commission launched an investigation, and legislators and the secretary of state installed election observers and issued clearer guidance on absentee voting that they said would make the election more secure.
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State Sen. Marilyn Moore (D), who ran against Ganim for Bridgeport mayor in 2019, pointed to the video cameras catching the alleged cheating and the response of the courts and state as evidence that the system is working, and that election fraud is still rare.
“We want to make it convenient to vote, and also make sure there is integrity in our elections,” Moore said. “But I do not want to see us ban the ballot boxes.”
Ganim finished roughly 1,100 votes ahead of Gomes.
This is not the first time the incumbent mayor or officials in Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, have been the subject of allegations of election fraud or corruption. Ganim was mayor from 1991 until 2003 before he was convicted of racketeering, extortion and conspiracy. He served seven years in prison before winning election again for mayor in 2015.
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In 2019, three people tied to his campaign were accused of illegally collecting completed absentee ballots from voters, among other charges. Last summer, elections officials recommended the people for criminal charges, though a judge found that there was not enough evidence to overturn that election.
But ballot fraud in the city goes back further, at least to the 1980s, and as recently as 2022, when another such allegation prompted a judge to order another primary in a race for the state legislature.
It is unclear exactly how Bridgeport’s mayoral race will move forward, though a general election is scheduled for next month. Ganim could face a Republican, another candidate and Gomes, who is currently listed on the general election ballot as an independent. Gomes told The Post he has not yet made a decision on whether he will join them and challenge his former boss for the fourth time in months.
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