{news} Colin Bennett in New Haven Register

[David Bedell]

http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12975391

Westbrook man joins Senate race

Walt Platteborze , Register Correspondent  09/22/2004

WESTBROOK — A town resident has turned the 33rd District state Senate race 
into a three-way affair.

Colin D. Bennett, 25, recently filed petitions to get himself on the Nov. 2 
ballot as the Green Party candidate in the sprawling district, which 
includes 14 towns from Portland in the north to Westbrook in the south.

Bennett needed 333 signatures of registered district voters to get on the 
ballot and collected nearly 400.

Major party candidates on the ballot, who were nominated by district 
conventions, are six-term incumbent Democrat Eileen Daily of Westbrook and 
Republican Emanuel Misenti Jr. of the Moodus section of East Haddam.

This is the second political campaign for Bennett, an East Pond Meadow Road 
resident. He ran unsuccessfully for the town Board of Education in 2003, 
receiving 225 votes as the only Green Party candidate on the ballot.

Bennett has lived in Westbrook for nine years. He is a Fire Department 
volunteer and a member of the town’s Forest Commission.

Forest Commission Chairman Randy Bell said Bennett replaced Democratic state 
Rep. Brian O’Connor earlier this year because O’Connor had moved from 
Westbrook to Clinton.

"He has a lot of interest in nature, he’s young and energetic, and that’s 
what we need," Bell said of Bennett’s performance on the commission, which 
supervises management of town-owned forestland.

Bennett, who studied environmental education at Southern Connecticut State 
University, is a fourth-grade teacher at St.

Mary School in New London. He also is founder and president of Great Land 
Conservation Trust Inc., a nonprofit land-acquisition and education 
organization.

Bennett said his campaign will focus on environmental protection, education 
and election reform.

He said he intends to oppose "ill-advised development" to help protect the 
environment for future generations, adding that such development can put 
greater strain on already overburdened local governments.

Bennett said he will work toward ways to curb "skyrocketing" tuition costs 
at state colleges and to increase state financial help for struggling public 
school districts. He further pledged to introduce legislation leading to 
state campaign finance reform.

Although Daily has handily won the last six elections in the district, 
Bennett said he believes he has a chance of winning in November. He said no 
politician should remain in the General Assembly a half-dozen or more terms.

"It should be a citizens’ legislature of a few terms (of duration), with new 
ideas. It shouldn’t be a career choice," he said.

Bennett said he will try to appeal to young people and voters who have 
remained outside the election process through a low-budget, grassroots 
campaign.

©New Haven Register 2004

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/