In 2022, I ran as the Democratic candidate for the Connecticut State House of Representatives in District 125 and lost by 785 votes having had 46.4% of the electorate vote for me.

I decided to run because no one else was willing to run and I wanted to make it a contested election. Also, an incumbent representative, Lucy Dathan, became my mentor and made herself available to me for lunch meetings, phone calls and texts. Lucy also invited me to the State Capitol in Hartford. The lobby of the Capitol is like a museum. A few notable items on exhibit are an engraving of the Gettysburg Address, and a tree trunk that has several cannonballs embedded in it because it was on one of the Civil War battlefields. I went to the floor where the House of Representatives meet and I met the speaker of the house and other Democratic Representatives.

I was expected to attend town events and parades on a regular basis. On Memorial Day I had to march in the New Canaan Memorial Day Parade and the Stamford Memorial Day Parade. One of the events I had to attend was the renaming of the town pool. A town volunteer, Steve Benko, died and they were naming the pool after him. At the event my opponent spoke to the crowd and when he talked about Steve Benko, he broke down and cried and could not recover his composure. It was really awkward. At the end of the event I changed into my bathing suit in the locker room and did some diving off the diving boards. Also, there was the half hour interview that I did for a Spanish radio station out of New Haven. The moderator was making fun of me because I was struggling with my Spanish. I attended an Advertiser Coffee. The Advertiser is a local newspaper and once a month they gather the town elders on a zoom call and talk about the issues affecting the town. It's an echo chamber dominated by Republicans. While on the call the editor for the Advertiser said, "We have Victor Alvarez on the call, Victor, please tell us why you're running." I said, a number of things and I closed by saying, "My opponent was given a score of 52% by the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters for his voting record on environmental legislation in the 2022 legislative session and he sits on the Environment Committee of the State House of Representatives. Just to put things in perspective, if you got a 52 in high school, that's a failing grade." My opponent was on the call and he responded by saying, "That's the only failing grade I've received!" I didn't respond to his comment but on the zoom call if you had been watching me on the camera, you would have seen my facial expression which clearly showed me thinking the word "BULLSHIT."

The reason I believed that I had a chance of winning the election is because I focused my attention on the activity that was most effective in persuading undecided voters to vote for me. That activity is door knocking. Throughout the course of my campaign, I personally knocked on over 5,000 doors and total doors knocked for my campaign was about 5,500. I started door knocking in early June (knocking on 30 doors every weekday and 60 doors every weekend until election day). On average, I was able to knock on 15 to 20 doors per hour depending on the density of the neighborhood. I used my bicycle (a pink Specialized mountain bike with an American flag bell) to bring me to almost every door. My universe of 5,300 doors was created using the following filters: the voter had to have a 20% probability or greater of voting for me based on their past voting history and buying habits; the voter had to have voted in a midterm election or a special election; and/or if the voter was new to the district they were added to the universe. I tracked all responses in the Van software on my cell phone. At every door I talked about my finance background, and my willingness to keep taxes flat, and told people that my priorities would be: safeguarding a woman s right to make her own choices about her reproductive healthcare; implementing term limits; tightening CT gun laws; amending the affordable housing law so that developers would stop abusing it; and accelerating our transition to renewable energy (not necessarily in this order). I would frequently be asked to give more details on any one of these points which I was readily able to do.

I often engaged people in constructive political conversations at the doors. I usually tried to determine what issues they considered most important and talked about what I would try to do to better represent them if elected in November. A lot of people from both sides of the aisle offered me bottled water on hot days (it was an unusually hot summer). I encountered about five kids playing basketball on the street with a parent. I interrupted the game and gave the parent my pitch. I wound up giving a civics lesson to the kids. I answered about 20 questions from the kids before I moved on to the next door. I saw one of the kids on election day who showed up twice, once with each parent. I greeted the kid both times. I didn t get bit by any dogs although I did deal with many angry barking dogs. The worst dog experience was when I rode my bike down a long driveway, and arriving at the walkway to the front door, I spotted two oversized German shepards charging around the corner from the backyard. They raced up to me barking at me and one jumped up on me, with his front legs on my arm and started licking my shoulder. I had several people curse me out and tell me to get off their property. I knocked on a door in North Stamford (1459 High Ridge Road), and after waiting for a few moments, I put a palm card in the door handle and started to walk away when I noticed that the homeowner had left the house through another door and approached me with a revolver in his right hand. He said, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" to which I responded, "I'm running for CT state house of representatives and I'm canvassing the neighborhood to get to know the voters." He then said, "This is private property, get off my property," which I did without saying anything else. Then he said, you ve got some balls as I walked away, got on my bicycle and rode off. I went to the Stamford police department and reported the incident to a police officer who told me that I didn't break any laws by walking on his private property and ringing his doorbell. The officer said that the homeowner committed a misdemeanor crime called "Breach of Peace" and that I could press charges against him if I wanted to. I decided not to press charges. I had two people mistake me for a Jehovah s Witness. I encountered people who were both avid Fox News watchers and mentally ill and they would accuse me of ruining the country by being a Democrat. I door knocked a convent of nuns that specialized in talking women out of getting abortions. A nun answered the door in full habit and we had an impromptu debate on the abortion issue. She said she wouldn t vote for me but she d pray for me. I said, I ll take it!. The best door I knocked on was Cathie Pike's door. She wasn't home so I left a flyer and went to the next door. Cathie's neighbor had a gate at the road. I pressed the doorbell at the gate but there was no answer. I was about to leave when the woman (the homeowner) pulled into the driveway with her kids in the SUV. I told her I was running for state House of Representatives and as I was talking to her Cathie Pike drove by. She recognized me and immediately stopped the car in the middle of the road opened the driver's side door, got out, left the door open, and walked toward us saying, "This is Victor Alvarez and he is the most honest man I know. He would do a great job as a State Representative and I stongly recommend that you vote for him!" The woman in the car uttered the four words I most enjoyed hearing which were, "You got my vote."

My opponent was an incumbent Republican who had been in the seat for 10 years. He began as a moderate Republican, but recently, he tweeted that Ivermectin cures Covid, that masks don t work for protecting against Covid, that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion should not be part of the New Canaan school district s goals because those three words together are a pathway to a problem. He has joined right wing extremist social media groups. He sits on the Environment Committee of the State House of Representatives and has a dismal record on voting on environmental legislation (the CT League of Conservation Voters gave him a score of 53% for his voting record on environmental legislation in the 2022 legislative session), and he personally is against abortion and voted against the one bill that came before him in the 2022 legislative session to protect CT abortion providers from bogus out-of-state lawsuits. He basically has accomplished very little in his ten years in the seat and has gotten a lot wrong.

Also, his campaign cheated (as Republicans are notorious for doing). Three days before the election the Republican Town Committee (RTC) put up signs saying Save Weed Street, Vote Republican. Weed Street is an affordable housing project loathed by most New Canaan residents. My opponent was unable to do anything to stop the affordable housing project from going forward. I had researched the issue and came up with a good plan to amend the law 8-30G which guides affordable housing in CT. Many of the signs went up on public land which is not allowed. My opponent, as a prominent member of the RTC, did nothing to stop this unethical behavior and probably authorized the move, however, I don t believe that the cheating was why I lost the election unless those signs convinced more than 392 voters to change their mind and vote for my opponent.

I participated in a debate at the New Canaan Town Hall organized by the New Canaan League of Women Voters. I rehearsed extensively for this debate. I performed well, but I did stumble on a question about raising revenues for the state without raising taxes. Ultimately, the content of my answer was good, but my delivery was poor because I said uh eleven times as I answered that question. The consensus was that there was no clear winner of the debate, which meant that I performed better than expected given that my opponent had been debating for 17 years since joining the New Canaan Town Council in 2005, and this was my first debate. Here is the link to a youtube video of the Candidates Debate - October 20, 2022. Two days before the debate my opponent s father had died of "Long Covid." After the debate my opponent accused me of accusing him of being a Covid Denier to which I stated that I had not accused him of being a Covid Denier, instead I had accused him of saying that Ivermectin was a good cure for Covid (because he tweeted that) to which he just said, Oh.

I also participated in the New Canaan Realtors Candidates Forum at Waveny House. At one point in this forum the moderator asked, Anyone who is not in favor of repealing the mansion tax, raise your hand, and predictably, no one raised their hand. Half an hour later the moderator asked, Anyone who is not in favor of repealing the estate tax, raise your hand, and unpredictably, I was the only person in a room of about 100 people who raised my hand. The moderator didn t see my hand raised and assumed no one raised their hand, and he was going to continue with the program, but then it was pointed out that I had my hand raised. He was surprised and he said, it looks like one of the candidates is in favor of the estate tax, be sure to ask him about it after the forum is over. I was hoping that someone would ask me about it because I firmly believe in the estate tax, but no one did.

I got three endorsements during my campaign, I was designated the "Gun Sense Candidate" in my race by Moms Demand Action, and the other two were from environmental organizations, the Sierra Club and the CT League of Conservation Voters. I had to interview with both and during the Sierra Club interview I spoke about how I considered the people in district 125 to be my constituents, but I also considered the flora and the fauna living in the district to be my constituents and that I would work hard to protect their health.

I enjoyed meeting with people who were leaders in their field to learn about certain topics like Krista Neilson and Evonne Klein who helped me with affordable housing, Jim O'Donnell, the executive director of the CT Institute for Resilience & Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) and Professor at UConn who helped refine my thoughts on climate change and the environment, Senator Chris Murphy and the CT State Trooper Sgt. Breanne Maurice who helped me with proposed new gun legislation, Lou Kozar, owner of New Canaan Bicycles, who kept my mountain bike working well while I did the door knocking, and I enjoyed meeting Governor Ned Lamont, Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz, and Senator Richard Blumenthal on multiple occasions. Ned Lamont often wore a belt with Grateful Dead dancing bears on it. Jim Himes my Congressman in Washington, DC went door knocking with me. I also met Stephanie Thomas our new CT Secretary of State, William Tong the CT Attorney General, Matt Blumenthal, son of Richard Blumenthal who helped me because with the redistricting, District 125 took over part of his district. I got to know the new candidates from my area that I ran with, some of whom won like Senator Ceci Maher, and Representatives Keith Denning and Rachel Khanna, and some of whom lost with me like Trevor Crow. I enjoyed getting to know my campaign team, including my campaign manager Eilish Main, my treasurer, Janet Fonss, my assistant treasurer Beth Jones, my campaign consultant Mike Farina, and my website designer Alex Harris.

I often had to make speeches alongside some of these Democratic dignitaries and some memorable speeches were: The one at Lucy Dathan s fundraiser when I shared with the crowd that when I told my 16 year old son that I was running for CT State House of Representatives, he suggested that I might be going through a mid-life crisis, and I responded that it had nothing to do with a mid-life crises and everything to do with a Democracy crisis; the speech at a meet and greet in North Stamford when I told the crowd how I got into politics, it started with phone calls in English and Spanish to get Arizona voters to register and vote Democratic in the 2020 presidential election, then I joined the New Canaan Board of Finance, and so on and so on; and the speech at Women on Watch in North Stamford when I told the audience about how I orient my life around five main lists, I told them what each list was, and I told them about the Best Books of the 20th Century and the Women Rise subcategory.

It was disappointing to lose because of all the hard work I put into the campaign, but then I realized with a gigantic sigh of relief that I wasn't going to be expected to follow through with all the things I told people that I would try to implement including:

Changing the driver education written test so that there are a few questions about how to drive safely in the presence of cyclists and pedestrians

Opening up the Long Island Sound to wind turbines (creating new local renewable energy jobs)

Attracting energy storage tech startups to CT (creating new local renewable energy jobs)

Improving the curriculum in Stamford public schools after a curriculum audit brought to light certain problems

Fixing Connecticut teacher s pay, because CT teachers don t participate in the Federal Social Security program so when a teacher's spouse dies that teacher is not eligible to receive their spouse s social security

Changing the CT divorce law so that non-working spouses do not get unfairly treated in a divorce settlement

Making amendments to the affordable housing law 8-30G

Implementing term limits in the CT General Assembly

Tightening gun legislation

Repealing the Mansion Tax

Implement a death with dignity law

Introduce competition with Eversource, the state s only electricity utility that is heavily lobbied

Outlaw internal combustion engine lawn mowers and leaf blowers

Change the law regarding benefits to firemen who have gotten sick on the job to include benefit payments for certain types of cancer

Fight misinformation

Require the Mark Twain museum in Hartford to allow cigar smoking on the wrap around porch of his home museum and have the state of Connecticut pay for improvements to make the porch fire proof

I made campaign promises on all of these things and I would have felt overwhelmed trying to follow through with all of these campaign promises while working a full time job at Elsevier.