CAMPOSANO: The Candidate Without A Debate

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As we continue our election coverage here, we're a month
out from election day. Make sure you're doing your homework,
make sure you turn out, make sure you vote. To
that end, we go to the Project Hotline right now.
Welcome to the show, Anthony Campazano. Who uh If you don't,
I don't know why. I was just going to say, who.
I don't know why. I was going to call you

(00:20):
ann as if I've known you for years? But do
we have you? You were on once before. I think
last time you ran correct, yep, yep, I was, yeah,
welcome back to the show. This race is turning out
to be I don't even know if race is inaccurate word,
in the sense that you can't even get a debate
out of the guy.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, this is kind of surprising. I wasn't expecting that.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
We'll let me ask you, Anthony. Uh, in all honesty,
you insulted by that. I'd be insulted by that.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I don't know. That's what a lot of people are
going to see. It's more insulting to the residence. I
wasn't expecting this. I was kind of shock and disbelief.
I find it somewhat comical and it's a perfect example
of why I'm running, why I got involved four years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah. Uh, and of course I moderated that debate and
then that was it was a heck of a debate.
How do you You felt very passionately at that debate
you were going, Uh, do you feel like in the
four years since then you were right about everything? Things
have gotten worse? How do you feel now four years later?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I feel that everything I said in a debate is
still relevant now. Yeah, nothing's changed.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
They're still trying to deceive people, mislead the public, and then,
like this letter shows, they just lie and then deflect.
That's their strategy.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel as if, if if because
the letter you reference was written by the campaign manager,
do you feel that the campaign manager's letter is an
accurate reflection of how the mayor himself actually feels? Well?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
The mayor actually a couple of days after that doubled
down and released his own letter. That's right, pages just
restating the same the same things, the same excuses.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah. Yeah, So what to do now? Just continue knocking
on doors your own campaign and accept that there will
be no debate because I keep asking roun you know,
forgive my naivete. I even had to be told by
Jimmy Jay and here my producer, who actually, I mean,
he doesn't know anything. But I'm like, you can't get

(02:42):
away with that. You have to debate. I didn't realize
you can. No, I don't have to debate if I
don't want to, I don't.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, and that's that would have been fine. I wasn't
really expecting him not to debate. I thought he would
do at least one debate. I was trying to get
two or three out of him so we can cover
a lot of issues. But yeah, this is surprising. And
then now that like he didn't have to send this
whole letter three pages of excuses of basically I see

(03:11):
just three pages of nonsense of trying to take my
platform and flip as those are his accomplishments already, and
he expects the residence just to believe everything in this
letter just because it's written.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
And the word inexperienced is used a lot, which a
lot of people could say inexperienced or an outsider, because
it's all in the spin, right, you know, the outside
are a lot of people like that. Of course, an experience
haven't done the job before. I'm you know, I'm not
a politician by nature can spin it as a good thing.

(03:52):
I hesitate to use the word spin, but it's true.
How did you feel when you know, you hear the
word inexperience because my responsored to be like correct, I
have not done the job. I have no experience doing
the job. I will be experienced once they get it
absolutely like.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
I wasn't groomed to be a politician. I started off
as a concerned resident. I got involved because I wanted
to protect my family and the future of our town.
And I went to meetings, asked questions and tried to
find the answers. But instead of giving an answer to
the public, they make you have to go and file

(04:30):
a foil request prep information request, okay for the simplest
of public information, and then they still will just make
you jump through hoops to try to get that information.
A year ago, I think about ten months ago, I've
been waiting for a foyer request I filed about the
town's legal expenses that even at a town meeting, I

(04:51):
brought up and asked if I can get those The
town attorney Lozi said yes, you just have to file
a foil request. I filed it about six months ago.
He said, Oh, by the end of the week, we'll
have it ready for you. Still six months ago, I
still don't have the information. Wow, they do these run
around games and they discourage people from getting information. I

(05:13):
don't know what they're hiding, but I'll find out as
soon as i'm air.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, and it's crunch time. It's six months later and
you're still waiting. And now it's crunch time again. We're
with Anthony campus On running on the Republican ticket in
the East Haven race. You know, I see you getting
a lot of love at a lot of the posts
on social media anyway. But you know, at the same time,
while you're getting a lot of love from folks and

(05:38):
a lot of support, a lot of people are kind
of baffled by this refusal to debate. I did get
hit from a few people telling me something about a
State Elections Enforcement Commission investigation. You want to talk about that? Here?
Own that right here? What's up with that investigation?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Is that the first part of at Sabatino's letter about
me contacting through his official email address.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Oh is how that is? I mean, I thought I
know that.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
How wet were they to accuse. I don't know what
he was trying to play there. If they're just incompetent,
or they don't understand what the law is, or they're
just trying to pass it off and confuse people and
make people think that me using their official email is
somehow illegal.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, how else were you supposed to request this debate?
Was it through the campaign manager and not the mayor himself?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
I don't understand what what they were trying to get
at there. I think they're just trying to They don't
have anything to go after, so they're just trying to
grasp that straws and throw a bunch of stuff together
to make excuses.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, I just see here it says the State Elections
Enforcement Commission opened a formal investigation case number two zero
two to five DASH zero five to three. If that's
what it's tied to.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Oh so that's yeah, so that's a different thing. That
is something for the RCC. So the RCC is separate
than my campaign, So he's trying they're trying. What they're
trying to do is basically link that issue to my campaign,
as if I had something to do with it. Okay,
help buddy the water and link me in with those issues.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Okay, I'm following. Now, let's talk a little bit about
tweed too, Anthony, because tweed actually came up. It was
really interesting, man. I moderated the New Haven mayoral debate
a couple of nights back, and I thought what the
mayor said there was kind of great. I don't know
how it hasn't blown up. A couple of his statements

(07:42):
have blown up, but not this one yet. And I
think I think it's due to the fact that East
Haven folks haven't heard it yet. But tweed came up
at the debate, and he you know, traffic, the traffic
that it's creating, et cetera, et cetera, the noise, ordinances,
all all the stuff tied to it. You know, I'm
born and raised Morris Cove, so I was born and

(08:04):
raised down the street from Tweet. I don't know how
far are you, because I know you're an East Staven lifer, right, yeah,
but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
YEA lived around the airport, okay, but half of it's
just around the airport, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah. You know, I didn't know if you were a
Fox and guy or what you know with high Ridge,
what have you I mean, I know, mess staving, but
he uh, it was funny to hear the mayor say
right out. Uh he said, and any expansion, you know,
is basic. I'm paraphrasing right now. It's all up at
ninet sixty w ELI. If anyone wants to go and
watch the entire debate and get the exact words for this,

(08:38):
go ahead and do it. But the mayor said, and
everything we do from this point on, you know, the
East Haven side is going to have to deal with,
which I thought I was going to blow up the
next day, but that's what he said. So how do
you feel about the tweet expansion? I know, uh, Carfora
and Zulo they're on record staying that tweed expansion is

(09:01):
not a foregone conclusion, and yet the Aliker seems to
think it is.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
And that's always been New Haven's thing. It's let's get
rid of the problems. Let's throw it all the way
to East Saven's side. Let's then deal with the problems
while the city New Haven and Goldman Sacks get the
profit off of East Saven while basically Staven's environment and
our resources are destroyed. East Saving gets no tax revenue

(09:29):
from this. Airport expansion. The only thing you Stavele will
get is money from the building of permits, and we're
gonna have to hire more cops, more firefighters, probably gonna
cost about a million dollars a year extra to the
taxpayers of the saving, which is gonna affect all of
these saving all the way to Foxing. And I think
a couple of years ago, Eliker said, when a resident

(09:51):
was complaining about the traffic and the noise in the pollution,
he he texted them back and said, this is one
of the reasons why we want to move it to
the East Saven side. And then we have our current
administration that fails to put this out there, fails to
go in front of the press time after time exposing
what's going on, and go to the governor, go to

(10:14):
our representatives, and actually fight for East Haven's right to
control its land use. So the mayor of this past
at the beginning of the year, when he had a
State of the Town addressed, he tried to basically scapegoat
and put the FAA. It's up to the FAA, it's
in their hands. It's not in the mayor's hands. But

(10:35):
the FAA has explicitly said they have no control over
land use laws. It is up to the City of
New Haven and the Town of east Haven to decide
what they want for land use, and East Haven has
done nothing to fight to protect our residents.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
I thought I had read that the town retained aviation
legal Council. Is that not true? I thought I did
read that. I mean I would I would imagine.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
You have to have some Yeah, that's true. So for
a couple of years we were trying to get the
mayor to do some Well, first I spent probably a
here trying to get the mayor to see what this
administration's plan was in regards to tweet, how they how
he expected and strategized for what they were going to do.

(11:23):
And then finally I had got a meeting with the
mayor and at the time Michelle Benevega. And after that
meeting I came off as these people are just either
listening to somebody else or they don't know what's going on.
Michelle Benevega made a comment, well, airport's not any staban.

(11:44):
These are the people running our town. They didn't understand
that half of the airport is within the limits of
east Haven, that east Haven has control over land use
on that half of that side. If anything, the fact
that they didn't know these simple things.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
If anything, you know, I hate to say it, but
east Haven gets the worst parts of Tweed gets the
back end, you know, it doesn't really even get the
you know, the scenic view of Tweed Dwaven Airport. As
we're going to the governor, I don't know how how
much good that would do. He he loves it. He's detached.

(12:20):
He loves mass transport to the infrastructure, trains, planes and automobiles.
And he's never going to come down here unless you know,
you have some toll eyes in the house, unless there's pizza,
he's not going to come there.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And it's all these political insiders making our decisions without
any regard to the savings.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, you know what I think, and I mean this
at the end of the day. And this is so
tricky too, because I think a debate has to take place.
I think it's crazy that one won't take place, and
that should be the endgame here. And which with much
love to the guy responsible for them, I do you know,

(13:00):
somebody emailed me they're like, you know, all the people
who support them do is post you know, cartoons mocking
the merit, and it's like we all know you and
I both know who it is doing that, and I
love my man, But I do think it ticks them
off in the long run. I think it pushes their buttons,

(13:20):
those cartoons, those memes. Have you spoken to that gentleman
about his art work. I saw him the other night
at the New Haven mayoral debate.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
In fact, yeah, I see him every now and then,
do you do.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
You do you see them sometimes in it in all honesty,
see them sometimes, probably laugh to yourself they're funny, but
think you know, I wish I kind of wish you
wouldn't do. It's not gonna help. It's not gonna get
me anywhere.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
As long as they're funny, as long as they're not mean,
and you know, it's a purity or political satire, so
it's not like personally tacking there.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, he thinks it's New Yorker stuff. Lou thinks it's
New York quality cartoonerish because he does them to me too.
But I do I think that pushes buttons. I think, uh,
I think they're they're sensitive when it comes at the
very least the campaign is I don't know if Joe
himself is I don't. I don't think. I think if

(14:16):
you ran into Joe yourself today it just happened to be,
you know, a pet and eos where and said, Joe,
come on, what are we doing, Let's have it, I
think he'd say yes. I think it's the people around
him who don't want him to.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
I kind of think that too. That's why I still
have hope. I think I think he might come around
and want to do it to be and that's the
best way. He doesn't just owe it to me and
he was. It's a resident. It really has nothing to
do with me. You have to be accountable for your record,
what you've done, and what you want to do in
the future. Why do you want to continue to run
for mayor just to keep a job or do you
have a vision? Do you have something you want to accomplish?

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah? In the meantime, man, I don't know what you
do for a living. What is your line of work.
I've never done.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
I'm project manager for residential construction.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Oh okay, okay, that's right, that's right. Some of the
construction product. Jeez, it seems like there's so many big
construction jobs going on and I think that's what Joe's
line of work prior to all this too, right, wasn't
involved in a lot of construction.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
He was trucking. It did something with trucking, truck driver
or his dad's trucking company. I think.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Okay, So let people know the website that they can
go to and how where they can you know, perhaps
make their noise to demand this debate.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
So you can go to my website it's East HVN
dot com as all my position papers, everything that I
want to do, my plan to do it. You can
also visit my Facebook page. Campuzano twenty twenty five