The Hartford Courant’s Dave Drury tells us:
James Michel, a member and past chairman of the Bloomfield board of education, has announced that he will seek the Democratic nomination for the 15th House District – a seat currently held by former Mayor David A. Baram.
Michel, 45, becomes the third announced candidate for the party nomination. Baram, 57, was elected in a special election in March 2009 to fill a vacancy created by the death of incumbent Faith McMahon.
Baram filed for re-election in January, and last month Windsor Democratic Town Chairman Leo Canty – a longtime union activist – registered his campaign committee. The 15th district covers portions of both Bloomfield and Windsor.
The district nominating convention will be held at 7 p.m., May 25 at the Bloomfield Senior Center. To force an August primary, a candidate needs support from 15 percent of the delegate count, or four of the 21 delegates (12 from Bloomfield, 9 from Windsor).
Michel said he plans to focus his campaign on the need for state budgetary controls, a more equitable distribution of state aid to local education and a reduction in state education mandates.
Michel holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Brooklyn College and an MBA from the Barney School of Business at University of Hartford. He is employed as an audit director in the finance department of Aetna. He is the current chairman of the Board of Hospice Saint Joseph, a nonprofit organization that provides medical services, education sponsorship and a nutrition program to more than 10,000 people in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
Canty, 57, a union officer with American Federation of Teachers Connecticut, has been Windsor’s Democratic chairman since 2006. He represented the Windsor Democratic Town Committee as its candidate in the convention held prior to the 2009 special election at which Baram secured the party nomination.