GOP wins key senate seat in CT special election

On Tuesday, the special election results were announced for the state legislature in Connecticut.

Rep. Jason Perillo, R-Shelton, won his election for the Senate.

Perillo will take over for former Senate Republican Leader Kevin C. Kelly of Stratford in the 21st Senate District of Monroe.

Keeping it Red

Kelly had been nominated as a Superior Court judge, so Democrats were frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to replace a red seat with a blue one, but they fell short.

Perillo ran against Tony Afriyie, who is a Democratic councilor in Stratford.

With about 83% of the vote counted, Democrats started to celebrate, as Afriyie was ahead 54.9-45.1%. When the remaining precincts came in, that quickly changed.

Most of the final precincts reporting were red, which lifted Perillo over Afriyie 53.5-46.5%.

The comments online were comical, with Democrats saying if they were Republicans, they would be crying election fraud because of the late boost for Perillo.

Some people are trying to pump this up as a referendum against Democrats, but that is a bit absurd.

Perillo was in a solidly red area, and he is replacing a Republican who had the seat before him, so this was really just status quo in terms of any movement based on what Trump is doing in office.

The good news we can take from this is that a Republican was able to hold the seat, especially when you see that Trump only won this district by 0.5% in the 2024 election.

I would love to see Republicans start to steal more seats in blue state legislatures, as that would really be a sign that American liberals are starting to come around and ditch the Democrat Party for what Trump is doing.

So far, while Trump did have one set of negative polls, he is back up around 52% in approval rating, with more than 70% saying they support a more efficient government.

Democrats are challenging everything that Trump is doing, but they better be careful here.

If they block policies that have become popular on both sides of the aisle, they are dooming their party in the 2026 and 2028 cycles.

We are still a bit away for anything truly impacting those races, but I will surely be watching how things are shaping up during the mid-terms.

Remember, the party in power tends to lose the House during the first set of mid-term elections if they had the majority, which Republicans did.

The true measuring stick here will be if the GOP can hold or expand its lead in the House during the 2026 cycle.