Chris Donovan may not have received the Democratic nomination Tuesday, but his name will still appear on the ballot in November under the Working Families Party line.
Donovan has not said whether he would support the Democratic nominee Elizabeth Esty and it’s unclear if he will take his campaign any further.
“Chris is going to go on vacation and the campaign will not have any comment until he returns,” Gabe Rosenberg, Donovan’s campaign spokesman, said Wednesday evening. He’s expected to be gone for a week or less.
Currently, Donovan is the only one who can remove his name from the Nov. 6 Working Families Party ballot line.
“While it doesn’t look like Chris Donovan will win the Democratic nomination, we are proud of the work we’ve done for working families champions in a hectic and crowded primary season,“ Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party said Wednesday. “Going forward, we’ll look at all the candidates and stand by the one who can best fight for working families, as we always do.”
Earlier Wednesday afternoon Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo called for party unity.
“I’m proud of the hard work and well run campaigns that all Democrats waged this primary season. Now it’s time to come together,” DiNardo said.
Democratic party leaders have privately expressed concern about the potential for another three-way race. It’s thought that Donovan could siphon off enough votes from Esty to cost the party a seat they’ve held for the past six years under U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy.
Esty’s campaign has not asked Donovan to step aside, but Esty herself was quick to focus on party unity in her conversations with both Donovan and Dan Roberti Tuesday before they conceded the race.
“We’re all committed to moving forward with a unified Democratic party to defend this seat in November,” she said Tuesday night.
Esty will face Sen. Andrew Roraback of Goshen in November. Forty-four percent of the voters in the 5th Congressional District are not registered with either of the major parties, which means she will need every Democratic vote she can get in order to win.