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Segarra Doesn't Get A Labor Endorsement

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With the field of candidates in Hartford's mayoral race thinning, some Democratic insiders are already calling the race for incumbent Pedro Segarra.  But not everyone is.  As WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, Segarra did not get a recent endorsement of the Greater Hartford Central Labor Council.
 
More than 12,000 members of the union organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO voted on whether to endorse a candidate. Segarra got about 40 percent of the vote.  Edwin Vargas, one of his remaining opponents and a union veteran, got around 60 percent.  
 
That means no formal endorsement from the organization -- which needs a two-thirds majority to get behind a candidate.
 
Leo Canty is a vice president of the labor council, whose member unions represent workers in and around the city. He says Vargas was a known quantity, while Segarra -- who took over last year after the resignation of Eddie Perez --  is still relatively new.
 
"A lot of the folks I talk to just have no clue as to who Pedro Segarra is other than he kind of landed as mayor, by a circumstance that really wasn't of his doing."
 
There's an interesting twist to the story.  After the vote, Canty sent an email to fellow union members saying that he heard from Segarra's camp.  That email was provided to WNPR by the Vargas campaign.
 
Canty says Segarra's campaign manager Phil Sherwood  called him...
 
"...to tell me how disappointed he was in my activism and how there is going to be some consequences.  They were very nebulous -- nothing specific, like he said he was gonna come after...But it was clear in my mind that there were some kind of threats going on there and I just don't think that that's how this is supposed to work."
 
Reached by phone, Sherwood said he made no threats and that Canty can't point to specifics.
 
Still, Canty said the phone call gave him pause.
 
"If you think that you can win on the merits of your candidacy, then you don't need to win on the fear factor.  And he was definitely trying to throw a fear factor my way."
 
The city's Democratic Town Committee meets next week to endorse a candidate.  Meanwhile, Segarra has announced the support of the city's two state senators and four of its six representatives. 
 
For WNPR, I'm Jeff Cohen.
 

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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