Last week, we looked at a somewhat obscure mayoral election in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim declared victory by a very slim margin, but his challenger, former municipal employee John Gomes was challenging the results. Sour grapes in politics are nothing new, but the huge number of mail-in ballots had raised concerns, particularly among Gomes’ supporters. Rather than backing down, Gomes has now announced that he is filing a lawsuit seeking to place a hold on the certification of the election and he may seek to have a do-over election held. (Aren’t people supposed to go to jail for that these days?) But new evidence that Gomes introduced may wind up proving that some dirty dealing may have taken place and his complaint could be valid. The courts will have to make the initial decision in this regard. (CT Mirror)

John Gomes, who challenged seven-term mayor Joe Ganim in Bridgeport’s recent Democratic primary, announced Monday that he was filing a lawsuit seeking to halt the certification of the election.

The legal challenge comes nearly a week after the closely watched primary election and several days after the Gomes campaign released city surveillance footage that allegedly shows a Ganim supporter delivering absentee ballots to a drop box outside the Bridgeport government center…

“This is bigger than the John Gomes campaign,” Gomes told reporters at a press conference at his campaign headquarters on Monday. “Right now, there’s a black cloud hanging over Bridgeport.”

The new evidence that Gomes has introduced certainly seems intriguing enough to warrant further investigation before the election is certified, and the police have opened an investigation into it. Gomes produced a video purporting to show a Ganim supporter removing presumably blank ballots from City Hall and later feeding a stack of ballots into an early voting ballot box in the middle of the night. (You can watch the video on the Gomes campaign Facebook page.)

The woman in the video is claimed to be Wanda Geter-Pataky, a Bridgeport city employee and Ganim supporter. While that hasn’t been officially confirmed, she certainly looks like other known photos of Geter-Pataky. And this could prove to be important for two reasons. First of all, Connecticut election laws restrict who can collect and deposit ballots. Aside from the registered voter, the only people allowed to transport and drop off ballots are “their family members, police officers, local election officials or someone who is directly caring for someone who receives an absentee ballot because they are ill or physically disabled.”

Unless Geter-Pataky has a lot of disabled relatives that we haven’t been told about (which is always possible, I suppose), this activity clearly seems questionable. On top of that, the locals are familiar with Wanda Geter-Pataky for another reason. She was one of three people who was investigated for possible election fraud during the last mayoral election in 2019 by the State Elections Enforcement Commission which recommended pursuing charges to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

So there may not be fire (yet) but I would say there is more than enough smoke here to warrant a closer look. As far as the Mayor goes, he seems to be more concerned about how Gomes got hold of the video than what is shown in it. The video has timestamps and markers suggesting it was collected by government cameras. So someone must have leaked the video to Gomes. But is that really the bigger concern here?

The hilarious part of all of this is that the Democrats continue to insist that the Republicans are the ones who are trying to rig or steal elections. But these are two blue-state Democrats slugging it out in a primary race. “Take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)