Game on: Sen. Heather Somers, with Trump around her neck, will have the race of her life in Connecticut's 18th District

By David Collins

When Heather Somers of Groton won her fifth term in the state Senate in 2024, on a ballot led by Donald Trump, it looked to be about as safe a seat as a Republican could hope for in blue Connecticut.

After years of essential gerrymandering by the state’s dominant party, Somers’ 18th District is made up of a lot of the ruby red Republicanism that Democrats have helped keep out of the districts they hope to continue to dominate.

The 18th, after meandering a little along the moderate, blue-tinted southeastern Connecticut shoreline, takes a hard turn north, up into rural towns like Windham County’s Sterling, where Trump beat Kamala Harris in 2024 by a 40 percent margin, his most impressive win in the state.

This week, Joseph de la Cruz, a popular former state representative, community activist and onetime sheetmetal foreman, announced he is running for Somers’ seat, the Holy Grail of politics for eastern Connecticut Democrats.

If I were a betting man I would put all my money on de la Cruz in the 18th in 2026, a breakthrough win.

After hearing de la Cruz’s announcement, which will be formally feted in an event Saturday featuring party headliners like U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Comptroller Sean Scanlon, I reached out to Somers to check on whether she is planning to run for reelection.

I had not heard any announcements from her.

She is newly divorced, and her former husband recently sold for $2.6 million the waterfront estate where the family lived in Noank.

“I will be remaining in the 18th District and currently my intent is to seek reelection,” Somers wrote back to me, when I asked about her plans.

I wished her luck. She’ll need it.

Somers, to the best of her abilities, has tried hard to run from Trump, mostly ignoring him, to appease her moderate constituents on the shoreline, without actually criticizing the leader of her party and alienating the formidable Trump base in the northern reaches of her district.

She’s pulled off this high wire act pretty successfully for the last few election cycles.

But the days of avoiding Trump’s Democracy-busting priorities, claiming Trump policy atrocities are national issues, not the gist of local political races, are over for Connecticut Republicans like Somers.

Connecticut voters well understand in 2025 that the state’s legislature and governor are crucial barricades against what Trump and his GOP acolytes are imposing on the country, as health care costs spike, public health mandates for vaccines erode, education subsidies and social safety nets disappear, all while Trump troops land on American streets, an onslaught on civil rights on a scale never seen before.

I’m sure a lot of my neighbors who voted for Somers are appalled at much of the GOP agenda unspooling right here in Connecticut, with masked ICE agents apprehending people without warrants and throwing them in unmarked cars.

If you think it is all bad now, imagine what’s in store if Republicans win the national midterms and there are not enough barricades in state legislatures to stop the felon on the White House, who has turned government into a grifting machine while releasing criminals from prisons, including a cocaine-trafficking kingpin.

I am sure de la Cruz is not going to let voters in the 18th forget the complicity of all Republican office holders in the Trump agenda. He’s going to hang Trump around Somers’ neck, as he should.

“This could be one of the most consequential elections we face in our lifetimes,” he said in a Facebook video announcing his candidacy.

De la Cruz is a compelling candidate who I think will do well even in the northern reaches of the district, where I suspect a lot of voters might welcome a candidate with blue collar experience and sensibilities, not someone who arrives at campaign events in a Cadillac.

We seem to be at a breaking point in the Trump madness, maybe even the time when people in his base understand the GOP is the party for and by billionaires, who don’t care about working Americans.

If you attended a No Kings demonstration in the last year, I’d suggest donating to the de la Cruz campaign. It’s an even better way to register a protest of what is happening in Trump’s America.

De la Cruz is certainly a candidate for 2025 with the right message: Save our freedoms.

This is the opinion of David Collins

davidcollinsct@gmail.com

The original article can be found at: https://substack.com/inbox/post/181362259?r=3k88nq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true&triedRedirect=true