Erin Stewart is chronically unfiltered, casually profane and rarely off the record. Over coffee at Cafe Busy Bean, a brisk one-minute walk from her recently vacated office in New Britain’s City Hall, Stewart inquired about the recording app on a reporter’s iPhone. She wanted to make sure it was on. For the past dozen years, Stewart has been viewed in political circles as occupying a space between curiosity and bona fide phenomenon — a young, white Republican woman elected mayor at age 26 in a Democratic city of 74,000, where 63% of the population are people of color. Now 38, she is one of two declared candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, hell-bent on testing the notion that the Grand Old Party is ready to be led by a firefighter’s salty daughter, a blue-collar product of New Britain’s public schools and its Central Connecticut State University. She is a digital native who began posting an edgy series of YouTube videos 11 months ago titled, “Erin It Out.” In the debut, she described a drunken alderman questioning her legitimacy as mayor, bullying her with vulgarities that Stewart quoted in full. Another off-color episode was titled, “WTF?” Her campaign video announcement posted on Nov. 18, a week after exiting City Hall with an undefeated record in six mayoral elections. It was devoid of f-bombs but opened with a 10-second parody mocking typical campaign promises and pieties, followed by a pivot to a candidate promising something different.  A frame from Erin Stewart’s announcement video. Credit: courtesy / Erin For Governor “When we were talking about what we wanted to do, I said, ‘I don’t want to do some cookie-cutter bullshit.’ I just want to be me,” Stewart said. “If you think that anybody’s gonna not let me be me, I got a problem, and I’m out. I can’t. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to pretend to be somebody that I’m not.” In her first public campaign event, a rally two days later in the chilly concourse of the New Britain ballpark abandoned in 2015 by the Colorado Rockies Double-A affiliate for flashier new digs in Hartford, she told supporters that the rationale for her campaign was simple. “You are going to hear this a lot,” Stewart said. “Because it’s time for something different.” Something different.  Much is packed into those two words.  “Oh, God, so much,” Stewart said. “I mean, just first off, look at me, right? My age, my background as a 12-year mayor of a very Democrat city in Connecticut. I mean, I’m a mom of two, working mom of two young kids — or maybe not so working anymore.” New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart celebrates reelection on Nov. 2, 2021. Credit: Joe Amon / Connecticut Public Laughing, she corrected herself. Since noon on Nov. 12, she’s been jobless: “An unemployed mom of two young kids, and I gonna have to lean into that, right?” Stewart says she already has been asked in a radio interview how she will manage as a candidate and mother, a question she rarely hears posed to men. (John G. Rowland was 33 and the father of three young children when he won the GOP nomination in 1990.) She is married to Domenic Mutone, a city employee whom she met rom-com-cute on a ride-along with a snow-plow driver during her first big snowstorm as mayor. Their engagement picture was taken on the plow. Through what she called non-mayoral promotions, he became a general foreman and then a superintendent in the city’s public works department. They are parents of a boy and girl, ages 2 and 5. Something different also is a gibe at the two rich businessmen who led Republicans to defeat in Connecticut’s past four gubernatorial elections: Tom Foley losing to Dannel P. Malloy in 2010 and 2014, and Bob Stefanowski losing to Ned Lamont in 2018 and 2022. They also are a dig at Lamont, 71, a beneficiary of both generational and entrepreneurial wealth whose home is Greenwich. Neither Foley nor Stefanowski had previously sought elective office, but both brought a willingness to spend their own funds, as did Lamont. Stewart intends to the use the state’s public financing program. Her rival for the GOP nomination is a younger son of Greenwich, state Sen. Ryan Fazio. He is a 35-year-old investment advisor and graduate of Greenwich High School and Northwestern University. In his third term, he has been endorsed by the leaders of the legislature’s Republican minorities, Sen. Stephen Harding of Brookfield and Rep. Vincent J. Candelora of North Branford. And Stefanowski, who considered Stewart as a running mate in 2022, extended an informal endorsement of Fazio on Lee Elci’s radio show, a popular venue for Republicans. Stefanowski is a foil in one of the stories Stewart tells about her being different, someone who might expand the GOP base. Bob Stefanowski and New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart during a Facebook Live chat. Credit: ctmirror.org “My God, I have to tell this story,” Stewart said. “It’s, like, embarrassing, but I have to tell it.” And she does. Stewart described Stefanowski and his wife, Amy, accepting her invitation to her inaugural ball in 2021, a fundraiser for charity. “This was when I was being rumored as running as his lieutenant governor. I was going through a whole other thing with that,” Stewart said. “And he looks to me, and he comes up to me with someone else, and they go, ‘There’s so many people of color in the room, Erin.’ And I looked at them, and I just kind of I took a deep breath, and I go, ‘That’s what winning looks like.’” Stefanowski had no comment. Stewart’s appeal to a demographic atypical of Republican candidates was undeniable during her six runs for mayor, but is it scalable? Or reflective of an instinctive retail politician’s ability to engage in a smallish city where everyone seems to know everyone else? She said she believes both can be true, while readily acknowledging that social circles in New Britain can be surprisingly small. Her Democratic successor, Bobby Sanchez, is the uncle of Stewart’s old boyfriend, Manny Sanchez, now a Democratic state representative. Gov. Ned Lamont talking to New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart and Rep. Bobby Sanchez outside the Friendship Service Center in 2024. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Her father, Timothy Stewart, a retired firefighter, is a former mayor who left office in 2011. Only two years — and a one-term Democrat she unseated — separate her tenure from his. Her great uncle was Dominic J. Badolato, an AFSCME leader who represented New Britain in the General Assembly for two decades, winning collective bargaining for state and municipal employees. “One of the things about growing up in a community like New Britain, which I think that people who live in urban centers can relate to, is that you learn how to shift and adapt pretty quickly to your environment to make it by,” Stewart said. “You can put me in the middle of Greenwich or Darien, and I’ll be OK. Certainly not going to be using terminology that I would use here. There would be a refined version of what you see. But, not, you know, not too much.” Her opening message included an appeal to urban voters, at least on the issue of school choice, less so on the prospect of nudging suburbs to be more open to affordable housing. At the ballpark, she spoke of Connecticut as a rich state with a deficit of opportunities. “The opportunity to live here and retire here without getting shackled by taxes and the highest cost of living in the country. Or to pay electric bills without having to win the damn lottery. The opportunity for a mother in Bridgeport to send her kid to school knowing that they’re getting a great education, and if she can’t, then the opportunity for that mom to send her kids to a school who can,” Stewart said. “How about the opportunity to live in a town where zoning decisions aren’t being made by Ned Lamont and the Hartford clowns?” Stewart announced an exploratory campaign for governor in the crowded hallway outside her office at city hall in January. Credit: mark pazniokas / ctmirror.org What does she mean about giving that Bridgeport mom a choice? Does that mean the right to send her child to a school in neighboring Fairfield if there is room? Does it mean more charter schools? “It could mean any of that,” Stewart said.  Stewart pronounces herself a fan of “Waiting for Superman,” a 2010 documentary that follows five children vying for entrance into competitive urban charter schools seen as a ticket out of failing public schools. It was made by Davis Guggenheim, the documentarian who won the 2007 Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth.” As one of Connecticut’s 10 lowest-performing school districts, New Britain is deemed an Opportunity District by the state, eligible for extra funding intended to promote innovation. Stewart complained that success can mean a punishing loss of funds. In her view, Connecticut’s system for funding education, primarily through an Education Cost Sharing formula that largely dictates where state education aid goes, is “completely broken.” Two weeks into her campaign, Stewart is not ready to propose changes, nor disclose who is advising her.  “You won’t see it yet. OK, we have been meeting extensively about details of the platform, that’s for sure,” Stewart said, adding that her goal is “restructuring the formula of how school districts are given their state education money.” The run for governor is her second. She briefly was a candidate for the nomination in 2018, abandoned to compete in a three-way primary for lieutenant governor. She finished second. Her campaign announcement last month came at a dark time for Republicans, hard on the heels of a blue wave in municipal contests that were the first general elections since Donald Trump returned to the White House. A similar result in 2017, the president’s first year office, was followed by a Democratic sweep the next year in Connecticut. “All I can control is my message,” she said. New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart greets supporters outside a GOP forum in April 2018. Credit: Clarice Silber / CTMirror.org That message includes sharing that she voted for Trump in all three of his presidential elections while insisting she should not be defined by him. She said she views his efforts to control border security as a success but questions the depth and breadth of the crackdown on undocumented immigrants. “Pulling people out of Home Depot to … fill a quota? I could do without that,” she said. Stewart said she shares Trump’s skepticism about wind power, mainly because she sees it as too expensive. But she disagreed with his administration issuing a stop-work order on Revolution Wind, an off-shore project that was 80% complete. “To be that far along in the process and then just pull a plug on something just to prove a point was pretty, pretty foolish. And then what happens to the workers there?” Stewart said. “I’m OK with talking about those things, because I don’t believe that feeling like that makes me any less Republican than anyone else,” Stewart said. “However, there are others that are like, I’m supposed to be like Braveheart in the front lines,  carrying the banner.” In Trump’s first term, Stewart was invited to the White House as an urban mayor happy to applaud his “opportunity zone” policy providing tax incentives in distressed communities. She said they have been a factor in drawing new housing and other developments to New Britain, as have state grants obtained working with the administrations of Lamont and Malloy. In April, she attended the signing of an executive order “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.” It was an opportunity to meet the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, and talk about policies that might bring down the cost of electricity in Connecticut. Thanks to @POTUS for hosting us for the historic CLEAN BEAUTIFUL coal EO signing! And wonderful to meet @DougBurgum to start the conversation on the CT’s path to an AFFORDABLE ENERGY FUTURE. @realdonaldtrump @SenHarding30 pic.twitter.com/bqLeZOLq04— Erin Stewart (@erinstewartct) April 8, 2025 She used the visit to make a dig at Fazio, the ranking member of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee. Stewart said he declined her invitation to join her, fearful of being seen at a Trump administration event. “And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she said. Fazio, who did not become a candidate until four months later, recalls the conversation with Stewart differently: there was a discussion about energy issues, not an invitation. Like Stewart, he says he, too, voted three times for Trump. Lamont has no plan to question either candidate’s fealty to the president.   New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart speaks at the opening of an affordable housing complex in her city while Gov. Ned Lamont listens on July 8, 2025. Credit: Ginny Monk / CT Mirror ...read more read less