Caligiuri, Waterbury mayor in 2001, eyes state Senate
By Caroline D. Porter | Record-Journal staff 11/30/2005
Southington – Sam Caligiuri, a Republican who served as mayor of Waterbury for six months in 2001 when former mayor Phillip Giordano was arrested, plans to file papers today to run for the state Senate in the 16th District, a seat Christopher Murphy now occupies.
Murphy, a Democrat, plans to challenge U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson for her 5th District seat.
Caligiuri, 39, is an attorney with the Day, Berry & Howard in Hartford, and specializes in banking, insurance regulation and municipal finance. He has been named a partner in the firm, effective in January.
Caligiuri was also a deputy legal counsel to Gov. John G Rowland for 2 ½ years from 1995 to 1997. He left that job to work in private practice, right before serving on the Waterbury City Council, seven years before Rowland resigned effective July 1, 2004, when facing indictment on federal charges.
Caligiuri got his start in politics as an aide to Rowland when Rowland was a congressman.
“To me, those early years were among the best years,” Caligiuri said. “Everybody had high hopes about that we would be able to accomplish. There was never an issue about whether buying the cottage was appropriate, just the renovations. He may have gotten an opinion on the purchase of the cottage itself. I wasn’t involved in that. A lot of stuff ended up happening long after I left. I was disappointed and disillusioned. It’s not something that was part of the culture when I was there.”
Caligiuri qualified his statement later on Tuesday and said the state Ethics Commission found he had been charged too little for two sets of tickets in The Meadows ticket scandal, but he never got anything for nothing.
“I thought I was doing everything letter-perfect,” he said. “I learned from those lessons. I tried to apply those lessons to my work when I was the mayor of Waterbury; I worked on a number of reforms. I thought it was important to really learn from that. That’s why I changed the towing. Waterbury was in-
Famous for handing out towing based purely on patronage.” He changed it so that all qualified towing companies were put on a rotation.
The Waterbury resident, who was president of the Board of Aldermen when Giordano, facing sex charges, had to leave his office, is in favor of helping business and not allowing the state government to grow to fast. He says that’s important to prevent having to shrink and lay people off, ask state workers to take pay cuts or raise taxes.
“I saw firsthand in Waterbury, if government gets too big and your ability to generate revenues doesn’t match, you’re going to have built-in deficits, and your going to drive businesses out,” Caligiuri said. “When you grow government, it’s hard to scale it back; there’s a lot of pain in scaling it back.”
No one else had filed as a candidate in the race according to Dan Tapper, spokesman for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz. Caligiuri said Tuesday that he filed so early, before party caucuses, because he’s serious about winning the seat.
“I’m not really thinking about any other candidate,” he said. “I’m the only candidate in the race or I will be tomorrow. I made the decision to run based on whether I had value to add. The nominating process will work itself out.”
Recently, he has sat on Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s commission on public primary and secondary education financing. Caligiuri earned his law doctorate at the Catholic university of America in 1994.
Outside of Waterbury, state Reps. Bruce Zalaski, D-Southington, and John Mazurek, D-Wolcott, have talked about running for the Senate seat. Edward Pocock III, a police officer and Republican Town Committee chairman in Southington, has expressed interest as well, as has Southington Town Councilor John Barry, a Democrat. The district includes all of Wolcott and Southington and parts of Waterbury and Cheshire.
“I think it’s good when there’s competition,” Caligiuri said. “It means we have a better, more complete debate. From the Republican Party perspective, we get to say who can be our best standard bearer.”
Pocock said he hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for state Senate.
“The decision of whether Sam is deciding whether to run has absolutely no impact on my decision at this point,” he said.
Ernie DiPietro, chairman of the Democratic Town Committee in Cheshire, said Caligiuri did well as mayor of Waterbury and is “a strong candidate.”
cporter@record-journal.com (203) 317-2214
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