WALLINGFORD - The Republican Town Committee Wednesday night chose seven nominees each for the Town Council and Board of Education and renominated Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., who will be running for his 14th term.

Republican council nominees included incumbents Robert Parisi, Jerry Farrell Jr., Rosemary Rascati and John LeTourneau. They will be joined on the Nov. 3 ballot by Thomas Laffin, a two-term member of the Board of Education; Craig Fishbein, an attorney and president of the Wallingford Rotary Club; and Vincent Cervoni, an alternate on the Zoning Board of Appeals and a member of the Charter Revision Commission who ran unsuccessfully for a council seat in 2007.

Incumbents Thomas Hennessey and Roxane McKay, newcomers Michael Brooder, Rod Varney, Joe Marrone and Don Cornwall; and Chet Miller make up the GOP's Board of Education ticket. Miller is the town's Republican registrar of voters and served on the school board in the 1970s.

The nominating caucus, held in the auditorium of Moran Middle School, was open to all registered town Republicans. Chairman Robert Prentice said 95 attended, many sporting stick-on plastic flowers on their shirts, in reference to a remark Dickinson made on July 8 when he announced his re-election intentions to the committee.

Also prominently on display, on the stage behind the podium, was a Spartan-style war helmet that also factored prominently in Dickinson's speech.

Since the Town Charter stipulates that no party can hold more than six seats on either the council or the board, the GOP has run only six candidates for each in recent years. Several events contributed to the party's fuller-than-normal ticket this year.

In May, when the committee met to informally endorse candidates for the caucus, LeTourneau found himself the odd man out when the party voted to endorse six candidates, but not him. But the committee reversed course at its next meeting, in June, after LeTourneau told the executive board that he intended to petition his way onto the ballot.

And the GOP's school board ticket filled up in recent weeks as word spread through the community that the party was looking for fresh candidates. In 2007, the party ran only four candidates and won only three seats on the nine-member board. With Laffin shifting his focus to a council seat, the Republicans ramped up efforts to attract new candidates this year.

When it came time to officially nominate Dickinson, party stalwarts lined up in droves to deliver words of praise, admiration and respect for Connecticut's second-longest-serving mayor.

"They used to talk about the difference between politicians and statesmen," said David Gessert, a Republican member of the town's Public Utilities Commission who was chairman of the council the year Dickinson took office, 1984. "Politicians look to the next election, while statesmen look to the next decade, and I think Wallingford is very, very fortunate to have a statesman for its mayor. ... There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that we have not only one of the longest running mayors in the state of Connecticut, but that we have the best mayor in the state of Connecticut."

Dickinson received a standing ovation after the committee officially approved his nomination.

dmoran@record-journal.com

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