Trump, abortion, forced 8-30g housing: the perfect trifecta for all proper-thinking citizens, be they Democrats or Quigleys.
Construction workers in hard hats and safety vests, hustling to transform a vacant office park in Avon to 176 units of housing, took little notice of the small ceremony celebrating their labors last summer on a project made possible by Connecticut’s controversial affordable housing law, 8-30g.
“This is an incredible town. It’s been so supportive, and we’ve had such a great experience,” said Dara Kovel, the chief executive officer of Beacon Communities, the developer. “We also landed in the district of one of the state’s most passionate and vocal advocates for housing for people in need.”
That would be Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon.
Opposition to 8-30g, as well as an omnibus housing bill Kavros DeGraw helped draft and pass last year, has been foundational to a Republican Party desperate for wedge issues that might resonate in suburbs where the GOP has lost its way, places like the Farmington Valley suburbs of Avon, Canton and Simsbury.
Kavros DeGraw is both a symptom of and contributor to the GOP’s slide in the valley.
Grief and anger over a presidential election fueled action, first in the 2017 municipal races.
With other moms alarmed by Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Donald Trump in 2016, Kavros DeGraw began reorganizing an ineffectual local Democratic Party that did not run full slates for municipal office and had failed to nominate a candidate for the 17th House District of Avon and Canton in 2014 and 2016.
What happened over the next decade in Avon is emblematic of the political shift that has drawn many upscale suburbs in Connecticut away from Republicans, helping Democrats win supermajorities in what was a closely divided General Assembly when Trump opened his first term in January 2017.
It is a story of how politics still are local, even when shaped by national trends, issues and personalities. Trump was a catalyst, but it was on-the-ground organizing that transformed Avon, a comfortable community of 19,000 with a median household income of $154,058, into a small-town Democratic powerhouse.
Kavros DeGraw, now 51, a stay-at-home mother of three with a background in writing, started a grassroots organization after the 2016 election with a friend, Carrie Firestone, called Forward Connecticut. It was organized around four pillars: connect, inform, serve and lead.
“We had, almost overnight, 2,000 members on Facebook,” she said. “They wanted to know what could they do because everybody was like, ‘This is going to be bad.’”
“We had women all over the Farmington Valley who suddenly stepped up to run,” Kavros DeGraw said, adding they were not universally welcomed at Democratic town committees unaccustomed to new volunteers with new ideas and ambitions. “It was like, ‘Why are you here?’”
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Avon had 3,748 registered Democrats and 4,145 Republicans when they started in late 2016, and the GOP controlled the town council with a lopsided majority. Gains would come slowly. It was the start of a multiyear effort to recruit candidates, teach them how to run and expand the Democratic base.
“This is what these women did incredibly well,” said Eliza Massaro, a sales and management executive who joined the Democratic town committee in 2018, a move that would become life changing. Massaro now serves as its chair — and her volunteer political work became a career.
In 2021, Massaro abandoned her sales career to open 818 Political, a consulting firm whose name references the date when the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified, Aug. 18, 1920. The majority of its clients are women, Kavros DeGraw among them.As the Democrats have consolidated, the Republicans in the valley have struggled with internal differences over whether to stand with Trump or tack to the center. In 2024, Kavros DeGraw’s Republican opponent was Manju Gerber, a leader of the socially conservative Moms for Liberty. Gerber got less than 38% of the vote.
Two of the three Republicans who preceded her in the 17th House District seat, Kevin Witkos and Tim LeGeyt of Canton, have broken with their party to varying degrees. Both were elected to the Canton Board of Selectmen after leaving the General Assembly and still serve.
Witkos, the first selectman, resigned from the Republican town committee.
“It’s been taken over by the, I’ll say, the right wing of the party, and that just doesn’t go well in the valley anymore,” said Witkos, who also had been a state senator.
LeGeyt, who succeeded Witkos in the House after Witkos’ election to the Senate, went further. The day after Trump’s election in 2024, LeGeyt went to town hall and changed his voter registration from Republican to unaffiliated.
“I just could not continue with some of the crap that I was seeing Trump take part in, and it’s only gotten worse,” LeGeyt said. “And so Republicans, you know, they’ve got their heads down. They’re not proud of what’s going on, in my opinion.”
And from Greenwichwise, this:
