On an evening when the Monroe Democratic Party held its first Blue Legacy Gala since 2013, organizers put together a star-studded event featuring Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Attorney General William Tong and State Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, D-22nd.
The dinner at the Stone Barn honored three women, who have served in the party for a combined 125 years: Susan Koneff, Dee Dee Martin and Patricia Paniccia, and formally introduced the Democrat’s candidate for first selectman, Leon Ambrosey, a longtime mechanic in town who serves on the Monroe Planning and Zoning Commission.
Monroe Democratic Town Committee Chair Chrissy Martinez asked for a moment of silence in honor of the late Monroe firefighter, Dennis Cassia, who died this week, and thanked past first selectman candidates Jerry Stevens and Dan Hunsberger for trying to flip the town blue.
“They worked so hard and we’re almost to the finish line, Martinez said, before recalling how Ambrosey expressed interest in running this year. “So here we are with Mr. Leon Ambrosey, who has decided that he might want to lead our community, and I can’t think of anybody better.”
She said Ambrosey has lived in the community for over 30 years, raised his family in Monroe, started a horse barn with his wife Cindy and owns Cross Hill Service in town.
“Most importantly he has been dedicating his time on our Planning and Zoning Commission and Leon is one of the lone voices that is really fighting for our community and making sure that the people of Monroe are heard,” she said. “He’s our friend, he’s our neighbor, he cares about us. And if you know Leon, that’s true. He will do anything to help anyone within our community.”
Ambrosey thanked Koneff, Martin and Paniccia for their service and dedication to the town and outlined his stances on important local issues, particularly the need to accommodate the rapid growth of student enrollment that is putting a strain on Monroe’s public schools.
“We need to start taking better care of our schools,” Ambosey said, adding, “I support the local businesses and I want to preserve our rural character in our town.”
Ambrosey shared his belief that the Planning and Zoning Commission he serves on is approving some developments that should have been denied due to the strain that will be placed on town schools.
He also expressed support for reopening Chalk Hill as a school, because he said Superintendent Joseph Kobza told him Monroe had the second highest growth in enrollment in the state this year.
“If we don’t look to Chalk Hill, we will have no place for these students,” he said.
An infrastructure study was done showing the schools are falling apart, Ambrosey said, while questioning town officials’ commitment to invest more money in the buildings.
He said the town can no longer afford to kick the can down the road to avoid raising taxes, only to pay for more expensive solutions in the future.
Ambrosey also called for more investment in the maintenance of the town’s roads.
“Our roads, he’s coating them but he’s not getting to the root of the problem,” Ambrosey said. “The roads are deteriorating underneath. Coating them is not going to solve the problem.”
In a story on the town’s roads, First Selectman Terry Rooney and the deputy public works director said coating certain roads extends the life and improves safety for drivers, while highway crews do more extensive projects on roads in need of more serious repairs.
“I see people who volunteer in this town who are not getting recognized for the hard work that they do,” Ambrosey said. “It’s not the way it should be.”
He said a lot of volunteers see their hard work going nowhere, while not getting the respect they deserve.
Ambrosey said customers have talked to him about problems they encounter without knowing about things going on in town that directly affect them, adding it was the late first selectman Thomas Buzi, whose wife Pam Buzi attended Friday’s gala, who first encouraged him to get involved in town government.
“I’m going to be open minded with everybody,” Ambrosey said, “and if you have a problem, come see me and we’re gonna talk about it and we have to come up with a plan.”
The Teacher of the Year
Monroe Democratic Town Committee Chair Chrissy Martinez said Friday night was a celebration of strong women in leadership.
Bysiewicz and Gadkar-Wilcox presented citations honoring Martin, Paniccia and Koneff, who also received official citations from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who could not attend the dinner due to a session in Congress ending late.
Koneff has been a member of the Monroe DTC for four decades, serving as both vice chair and vacancy chair. She taught at Chalk Hill and Jockey Hollow middle schools for 27 years and was named Teacher of the Year in 1994.
She served as president of the Monroe Education Association and attended school board meetings.
After retirement, she served as a registrar of voters for 12 years, a constable for 10 and has been a justice of the peace for 15 years.
Koneff currently serves as a trustee on the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library Board and helps run Friends of the Library’s Book Sale room.
“It’s been a pleasure working for the Democratic Party,” Koneff said. “I always felt like this is the thing to do. This is the right thing to do and I wish more people today were doing the right thing.”
“It’s been an honor for me to work with everyone,” she said. “There’s so many people here who have worked 10 times harder than me to make this party a success and to bring the right ideals to our town and our country. Thank you very much.”
‘Miss Dee Dee’
Many who went to the Gingerbread School House in Monroe fondly remember their former teacher Dee Dee Martin as “Ms. Dee Dee.” She had taught at the preschool for 31 years.
Martin had served on the DTC for 39 years and was on the Monroe Town Council for 29 years, where she served as minority leader. She has also served on several non-elected boards and commissions, including the Board of Health, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Masuk Renovation Committee.
She served on the town vacancy committee, the Great Hollow Development Committee and the Monroe Bicentennial Committee.
Martin is a past president of the Junior Women’s Club.
She said her neighbor, the late Joe Iannucci, and his wife Denise got her to attend a Town Meeting at Masuk High School when she and her husband Fred moved to Monroe.
“People were screaming and yelling. There were hundreds of people,” Martin recalled of the budget meeting over education funding. “I was like, ‘I like this.'”
During the gala, Martin mentioned her long friendship with former Monroe first selectwoman Karen Burnaska, who attended the dinner with her husband, Robert.
“Karen’s the one who said to me, ‘you know, you should really come to a Democratic Town Committee meeting,’ that was 1979, 1980 maybe,” Martin recalled, “and the rest is history as they say. I couldn’t have imagined a better person to spend that time with, to learn from. You all should still tap into that unbelievable wealth of knowledge over there. She’s the best. She’s what got me here. She’s the one who made me believe it was worth it, doing what we’re doing.”
“Thank you for this,” Martin said. “I really appreciate it. The fastest 30 years of my life.”
The longtime party chair
Patricia “Patty” Paniccia joined the Monroe DTC in 1979 and held many positions including DTC chair. She served on the Library Board of Trustees, the Historic District Commission, the Charter Revision Commission and the WMNR Commission.
She is the former chair of the Monroe Federation of Democratic Women, was president of the Connecticut Federation of Democratic Women and vice chair of the Connecticut State Central Committee.
Paniccia was the 32nd District’s representative on the Democratic State Central Committee. She has been vice chair of the Eastern Division of the Democratic National Committee and has served as a delegate to several Democratic National and State conventions.
Paniccia said she and her husband Dom moved to Monroe from Bridgeport in 1978 on the week of the blizzard that closed the Merritt Parkway. She later met Leon Capoccitti, who was chairman of the Monroe Democratic Committee and she has been a member ever since.
She expressed her appreciation to everyone who served on the committee over the years and ran for office and thanked her four sons for their patience, while she and her husband attended town meetings.
Paniccia called her husband her biggest influence. “My husband served as town chair 10 years and I think that’s how I got the bug. We’re partners in everything,” she said.
When Monroe had a town manager form of government, Paniccia said her husband had an idea of changing to a form of government in Monroe with a first selectman.
“Through the controversy, through the opposition, we worked so hard and that’s how we got here today,” she said.
Of the current election, Paniccia said, “this is our opportunity right now. Leon, we’re counting on you and everyone in this room has to commit to Leon. We asked for this form of government. We got it passed. Thank you for this wonderful honor and thank you everybody for what you do for the Democrats.”
The dignitaries
Tong, Bysiewicz and Gadkar-Wilcox talked about national politics and the effect on the state of Connecticut.
“Right now we have to take the fight to the Republicans,” Tong said. “We cannot sit back. Every day in the office of the attorney general I am taking the fight to Donald Trump. I now have sued him 32 times and, in many cases, we are winning.”
Tong said the president and Education Secretary Linda McMahon were not going to pay Every Student Succeeds Act funding on July 1, which would have “put all of our cities and towns in a really hard place.”
“We stepped up. We sued. We stopped him and that money is flowing now,” Tong said.
“He tried to cut medical research funding,” Tong said. “We sued Donald Trump over National Institutes of Health funding. We stopped him and that money is flowing right now.”
He said Connecticut also sued the president over tariffs.
Tong spoke against the president sending troops to U.S. cities.
“If Donald Trump thinks he’s going to send American soldiers into Connecticut against American citizens on American soil, he will have to come through me and all of us — and we are not afraid of him,” Tong said.
Bysiewicz said she and Gov. Ned Lamont have provided “competent, compassionate and consistent leadership” in the state.
“The way the governor and I get through every day, we say, ‘what are we gonna do to make sure our families get the opportunity that they need?'” Bysiewicz said.
“We lead because other states say, ‘oh good one Connecticut, paid family leave. Good one Connecticut, raise the minimum wage to $16.94 come January.’ That is a way we are leading and we’re leading through fiscal responsibility,” she said.
Bysiewicz said the legislature passed its seventh balanced budget with Senator Gadkar-Wilcox’s help.
“We paid down $10 billion of debt, which is going to leave us $800 million every year in saved debt service payments that we can invest in people and lifting people up through job training, through early childhood education with greater access to healthcare,” Bysiewicz said.
Gadkar-Wilcox, who is a scholar of the U.S. Constitution, talked about nonpartisan issues of electoral reform, fair districts, access to voting, due process, free speech, federalism, separation of powers and birthright citizenship.
“Today, we are seeing a federal president punish his political opponents for their speech, sending federal agents to disrupt lawful court proceedings in state courts, and ignoring state officers in the process, closing executive departments created by a representative Congress,” Gadkar-Wilcox said.
“In this political climate, we must not ask the usual question: ‘with whom do I agree?'” she said. “Instead, our first question must now be: ‘who can I trust to uphold the Constitution, even if it means standing up to your own party, and even through disagreement, who can I trust to embody the principles of democracy that so many Americans fear we have lost?'”
