Martha Dean, an Avon lawyer and a darling of the Tea Party and the Second Amendment crowd, announced Tuesday on her Facebook page that she will run for governor.
The 2010 Republican nominee for Attorney General, Dean seems to be a perennial candidate for one of the constitutional offices, but this year is different. Dean wants to be at the top of the ticket.
Dean has attended the announcements of almost all of the other Republican candidates for governor. She will hold a formal press conference to announce her candidacy next Tuesday. Since she has not filed any paperwork and has not returned a call for comment, it’s uncertain if she will be seeking the Republican nomination for governor or run as an independent.
Earlier Tuesday, Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, announced she was dropping out of the race for governor, leaving former Ireland Ambassador Tom Foley, Sen. Minority Leader John McKinney, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, and Joe Visconti of West Hartford.
Despite Dean’s late entry in the race, the news was appreciated by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, which has been searching for a gubernatorial candidate that supports repealing the stricter gun laws passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.
“Dean has been one of the lawyers working tirelessly on our lawsuit against Governor Dan Malloy and the state of Connecticut for their unconstitutional gun laws. But that wasn’t enough,” CCDL wrote on its blog. “Now Martha is going after Malloy’s job too!”
Visconti supports gun rights, but has shown no ability to raise the money necessary to qualify for public campaign financing.
The Second Amendment crowd had been searching for a candidate to support. McKinney voted in favor of the stricter guns laws, and Boughton is a member of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
In 2010, Dean received 480,310 votes in the race for attorney general. That was about 44 percent of the vote. Attorney General George Jepsen received 591,725 votes and a third party candidate received 29,759 votes or about 3 percent of the vote.
