AMBASSADOR'S BID:FORMER US ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley lost one of the closest races in Tuesday's elections when Connecticut voters elected Dan Malloy as governor, giving a Democrat the state's top office for the first time in 20 years.
Voters from Democratic-dominated areas of New Haven and Bridgeport gave Mr Malloy (55) a slight edge.
He will succeed Jodi Rell (63), a Republican who didn’t seek re-election.
“Democratic Party loyalty in Connecticut won out,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, before the election.
Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state by almost 2:1. “Connecticut is a very blue state in what is a very good night for Republicans elsewhere.”
Mr Malloy pledged during his campaign to overhaul the state’s tax code and to develop a strategy to create jobs. On taxes, he promised to change what, he said, was an unfair and ineffective system that relied too much on property levies. He ran on a ticket with Nancy Wyman, the state comptroller, who will serve as lieutenant governor.
The last Democrat to serve as Connecticut’s governor was William A O’Neill, from 1980 to 1991.
Mr Foley started and ran NTC Group, a private-equity firm, before serving as US ambassador to Ireland from 2006 to 2009.
In his campaign, he promised to reduce the state government’s size as Connecticut strives to recover from the recession.
The state’s unemployment rate was 9.1 per cent in September, near a 34-year high of 9.2 per cent in March.
Connecticut is the wealthiest US state, with a per-capita personal income of $55,063 (€39,000) in 2009, according to US commerce department data.