Milford businessman Rocco ‘Robert’ Frank Jr. will officially announce his candidacy to run as an independent against Speaker of the House James Amann at a Milford Chamber of Commerce meeting Sept. 7.
Frank, who owns a computer repair chain called ComputerFox Stores, said he’s running against Amann to give voters a choice. “I think Jim is a guy whose been in politics a long time, and he can’t see the forest through the trees,” Frank said.
In addition Amann holds a “high-profile position,” and people will be “paying attention to the issues,” in this race, Frank said in a phone interview.
When asked about why he wanted to challenge Amann, Frank started with the fact that he didn’t appreciate Amann’s support of U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 campaign.
During that campaign, Amann was caught by a video blogger, saying, “You have any idiot run against me in this town, I will crush them. Let them run in the town that I grew up in. You think you’re going to put someone up to me? Good luck.”
The video, which was documented by Milford’s own Bob Adams aka CTBob, has since been taken down from Frank’s campaign web site.
“Unfortunately this video has been removed by its producer CTBOB. The Frank Campaign will repost these Amann Videos after responding to a concern e-mailed to us by CTBOB. We are in contact and plan to settle this matter over the use of his full length video. In either case the Frank ‘Tyranny Response Team’ does have some extra copies, but our staff agreed not to post them again until we hear from Bob. Check back in a week for an update on this link.”
Amann said last week that Frank has “every right to run” against him. In fact, Amann welcomes Frank’s challenge. However, he isn’t going to help the guy beat him.
Amann said more than a month ago Frank called him and invited him to sit down and talk about the issues. Amann called the meeting request odd because normally opponents don’t meet to discuss the issues in their respective campaigns.
Frank said it’s his goal to get Amann “to agree with me on a few things.”
Frank, who has many strong ties to the Republican party, said he wants people to back him because he has “good ideas” not because of party politics, which is one reason why he’s running without the help of a party.
In his biography on his campaign web site Frank explains, “I have served on, and in, many local political youth organizations and have taken part in Republican Presidential and Gubernatorial campaigns. Today I view politics with far greater skepticism and suspicion than many years ago. My party affiliation is Independent as my ambitions for CT are aimed at prosperity and a future where economic opportunity and affordability exists for all who are willing to embrace it.”
So what does Frank care about?
One of the first issues on Frank’s agenda is taxes. He said he wants the state to hold the federal government responsible for returning the state’s tax dollars. He said instead of paying off the national debt with Connecticut’s taxes the federal government should return it to the state, so that local officials could use it on things like infrastructure improvements.
In addition he wants to eliminate the state income tax and tax citizens on their ability to pay.
On the social front, Frank wants to get the state to pass a law that would allow police to charge women who drink, do drugs or smoke while they’re pregnant, with child endangerment. He also wants to outlaw smoking in passenger cars and make it illegal for people to get tattoos on their heads, necks and faces.
Find out more about Mr. Frank’s agenda by checking out his web site: http://www.rfrank118.com/
