I agree with Mayor Ganim that he is the better choice in our upcoming primary. Why I Fired John Gomes, CT Post Jan. 11, 2024 . The problem is that both he and Mr. Gomes are different hues of the same failed color.

In his recent interview with Lisa Wexler, Mayor Ganim related that he came from Republican stock, and suggested that he was moved to become a Democrat because it is the “more compassionate” party. I laud that compassion, and have no doubt of Mayor Ganim's love for our city.

However, compassion becomes a curse when something else is necessary, the classic example being the butterfly that never properly forms because a human has tried to help it out of its chrysalis.

Unfortunately, Democrats willingness to double down on “compassionate” programs instead of recognizing the debilitating costs of the unintended (at least we pray they were unintended) consequences has given us much of the ills our cities suffer from today.

We are still living the hell given by Johnson's “Great Society.” America's negro population was making huge strides towards having an equal share in the American enterprise before Johnson's great social program. The single motherhood rates that bureaucrat, later Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan lamented in the 1965 Department of Labor report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action has almost tripled since then. “There is no bigger predictor of poverty for women than single motherhood.” Dr. Sarah E. Hill, Evolutionary Psychologist (no affiliation with my campaign). With that come increased rates of crime, poor socialization, especially of males, poor academic achievement, a fraying of our societal fabric.

Moynihan got it backwards and the Dems have doubled down. With the Great Society, we have seen an emptying out of the churches, a bloat of entrenched bureaucracies, and very little result.

Instead, we have an attack on truth, a proliferation of Marxist ideas of victimhood-oppressor narratives, whether Black Lives Matter (do they really? we don't act like they do), LG alphabet movements, Critical Race Theory, men pretending to be women to trounce them, Discrimination Exclusion Indoctrination (DEI), attempts by the government, big corporations, in collusion with the press, also owned by big corporations, to suppress speech, a religious antipathy to religion, a church of environmental crisis, and we wonder why we can't make progress.

Most recently in this city, we had a call to support terrorism, the Miscellaneous Committees Resolution 20-23. It's easy to condemn what you know nothing about, which it could be argued I am doing in the previous paragraph (but at least I'll admit and have a conversation about it). Our leaders should take a stand against this shameful resolution.

There is a culture of condemning people for microaggressions, cancelling them for having the wrong opinion or using the wrong term, applying different standards (I've been told on the streets of Bridgeport, where I am a minority, that only whites can be racist) and then turning around and standing in solidarity with murderers.

Neither Mayor Ganim nor Mr. Gomes are willing to stand against their party's shameful history in creating the modern failed city. Neither has shown the backbone to stand against the disturbing trends that are sweeping our nation. If you have to pick one, go with the devil you know, but the more intelligent choice would be to choose what works: transparency, a commitment to truth, respect for our history, a faith in G-d, and a focus on industry, great jobs and the family.

Mostly what works is when we celebrate the ability of each individual to make his own path and take the government and perverse government incentives out of his way.

To be clear, I will not force an election on February 27th if Ganim and Gomes are willing to bury the hatchet (cultural appropriation: I should be excoriated) after their primary.

But if they continue the battle, I will stay in the fight against them, and you will continue to have a meaningful choice.

David R. Herz, Republican, for Mayor of Bridgeport