Student elected to RTM; Flatto re-elected

Popular images of New England town politics do not exactly incite massive student interest at Fairfield University.

Kerry Rose ’05 hopes to change that.

Rose, a Democrat who lives in Claver Hall, won a spot on the town’s Representative Town Meeting in part of a huge victory for Fairfield Democrats. The RTM is the town’s form of government, with members elected by the residents of the 10 voting districts of the town.

Rose will be one of five members representing the fourth district, in which the university is located.

“I’ve always been interested in the relationship between students and town residents and also town politicians,” said Rose Tuesday night. “I’ve always been interested in politics anyway, and I’m just looking to get my feet wet.”

Rose beat out the closest Republican candidate in the district by only nine votes, 516-507, and will serve on the RTM for a two-year term.

She described her campaign as informative and gave credit to Ken Flatto, who was re-elected in a landslide as the town’s First Selectman.

“I went door to door for three hours every weekend for the past month,” she said. “There was no negative reception to what Ken Flatto has done in Fairfield. People were surprised that I was running, but I got nothing but support.”

Flatto and his running mate Denise Dougiello pummeled Republican First Selectman candidate E. Penny Hug and her running mate, Stephen Elworthy.

The three-member Board of Selectman that handles the administrative affairs of the town will be composed of Flatto, Dougiello and Elworthy. Even though Hug was the Republican candidate for First Selectman, she received the least votes out of the four candidates.

Though student turnout at the polls has been historically negligible, Flatto said town-gown relations were important in a debate held in the Oak Room last week. He also said that he would “look into more ways for the town to do events with the school and SBRA, as well as promote on-campus activities.”

Democrats won the vast majority of offices decided Tuesday, including a majority of the spots on the town Board of Finance, Board of Education and RTM. In a part of the country commonly thought of as predominantly white, wealthy and Republican, Rose said she was surprised by the results.

“I was shocked, but shocked in a very happy way,” she said. “Town politics aren’t always necessarily partisan, it depends on how people feel about the issues, and that helped out a lot.”

Rose said she has no clear agenda to address in her term on the RTM, but she hopes to listen to students and other constituents and represent them as well as she can.

She also predicted that the issue of land use in the town would come to be very important.

“The open space issue is big,” she said. “More and more buildings are being built for businesses and homes, and that means there is less of the ecological space that Fairfield is known for. Environmental issues will be very important.”