To the Editor:

In serving as the Chair of the Republican Town Committee, I have the opportunity and privilege to hear from voters of many party affiliations and to constructively discuss and debate matters of importance to us all. Recently, independent voters have shared decidedly negative attack ad mailers that they’ve received which target incumbents Hwang and Bolinsky. These bits of literature attempt to boil down complex issues, such as safety in parks or electric utility legislation, to single sound bites in an effort to denigrate the opposition.

To the informed reader, what these pieces actually do is to call into question the challengers’ ability to consider sophisticated issues with depth, willingness to synthesize information to reach good outcomes, and inclination to operate with the empathy and collaborative spirit needed to achieve bipartisan solutions. The challengers’ lack of proven leadership experience at the state level comes through. Misleading by deliberate omission, the challengers conveniently leave out facts such as Hwang authored and now passed legislation increasing penalties for school related crimes, their own party’s call to ban school resource officers, and Bolinsky’s bipartisan work that stayed rate increases from Eversource.

Newtown is a fantastic place to live. Our fellow citizens reach out time and again to help one another through storm and other trials. For me, that ever-present sense of community and common good renders these negative attacks far less disconcerting than they might otherwise be. I’m confident that voters will take the time to get the whole truth and the full story behind such allegations before being influenced by them

We’ll send incumbents Hwang and Bolinsky back to Hartford where they can continue their work to further improve Newtown and the state for all of us.

Please be sure to vote.

Dennis Brestovansky

Longview Heights Road, Newtown October 15, 2020