Dan Drew To Run For Mayor As Democratic Candidate

Dan Drew, a 29 year old Wesleyan Hills resident, has decided to make a bid in the upcoming mayoral election.

"I'm not new to politics," Drew said in a phone interview today. "But this is my coming out."

Drew worked as a communications consultant for the short-lived mayoral campaign of Common Council member Ron Klattenburg.

"It gives me a leg up," Drew explained. "The strategy we began to work out for Ron will be completely applicable in my campaign. I can tell you this. I plan to get to know the people of Middletown, and to introduce myself by knocking on a lot of doors."

Drew, a grant writer for Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport, moved to Middletown 5 years ago with his wife and two children. They are currently expecting a third child.

"I chose Middletown specifically," Drew said. "It's a great community, but we need to work to help people who are worried about taxes, worried about keeping their jobs, worried about raising their families, and worried about the schools their kids will attend. And we need to attract and keep young people and young families here to broaden the tax base.

"I bring a new perspective as a young husband and father," he said.

Asked how he would approach the job in the way the current mayor has not, Drew was philosophical.

"The committees and boards of this town deserve respect," he said. "The Common Council deserves respect for they job they're doing. I would carefully and respectfully work with the council and the other boards. I would pay attention to my leadership role, and think about the diverse constituencies in town I need to represent."

Before his work at Sacred Heart, Drew held positions at the Community Renewal Team, and was a reporter for the Connecticut Post, the Potomac News and while in college he was editor-in-chief of UCONN's Daily Campus. While at UCONN he was involved in what he calls a first-amendent skirmish concerning student-funding for the newspaper that gained him national attention and landed him on the Bill O'Reilly show. The paper ran an ad that some students felt was offensive. They petitioned the university to stop student financial support of the Daily Campus.

"I wasn't defending the ad itself," Drew explained. "I was defending the right of the newspaper to accept ads to support the paper which might say things some students didn't like."

As mayor, Drew said he hopes to use all his experience as a journalist, political consultant and family man to make Middletown a better place.

"I think I have a unique perspective," Drew said. "I think a change is needed in Middletown, but not one that alters the town's character and heritage."