To The Editor:

I keep reading letters calling Rob Blanchard a devoted part of "our community," someone who cares deeply about Newtown's schools and wants to protect what makes this town special. I'd genuinely like to know when that happened, because as far as I can tell, it happened sometime after Memorial Day.

Rob Blanchard spent years building his political career in Fairfield, not Newtown. Elected to Fairfield's Representative Town Meeting in 2023. Ran for this exact Senate seat from Fairfield in 2024 and lost. As recently as this spring, when he announced this campaign, he was still describing himself as a “Fairfield official” raising his family there. Then, sometime this summer, he moved to Newtown. His own supporters have said as much, in this very paper.

His actual job has been working inside Governor Lamont's office. Not Newtown's. Not really Fairfield's either. Hartford's. A state senator from this district is supposed to answer to us. I'd like to know how that's supposed to work when the paycheck's been coming from somewhere else the whole time.

I don't doubt he can say nice things about Newtown now. Anybody can, once they've moved in. But there's a real difference between having actually lived somewhere for years and moving into a town right before an election in which that town happens to be part of the district you're running to represent. Call me cynical. I call it noticing a pattern.

Amybeth Laroche has put in the time and lived this life, not arrived to it a few months before Election Day. If you want someone who already knows what it's like to raise a family here, pays Newtown taxes, and sits on this town's boards before she ever needed anything from any of us, you don't have to take it on faith. You have an actual option on the ballot.

Rob Blanchard is the Hartford choice. Amybeth Laroche is the Newtown choice.

Sue Goodridge

Newtown