Move the city ahead with Mayor Foster

In the confounding swirl of history, candidates, improbable developments and issues that have emerged in Bridgeport’s 2015 mayoral election, one choice for voters is clear: they can choose to keep moving their city into the future, or return to some gauzy notion of grand times in the 1990s.

Our suggestion is that the city continue to move forward and elect Mary-Jane Foster, the candidate best equipped to do that, in Tuesday’s mayoral election.

She is an honest, straightforward, industrious person with a record of accomplishment. Whatever the condition today of the Bridgeport Bluefish independent baseball team, its arrival here in 1998 was a turning point in Bridgeport’s history. Foster was one of the Bluefish co-founders.

There is no point in belaboring the criminal history of former Mayor Joseph P. Ganim. There’s no one who’s not aware of it. The fact is, Ganim had his time in the mayor’s office — fully 12 years’ worth of time. He had the opportunity to make his mark, and he did.

In the 12 years since Ganim’s departure, the city has moved on in many ways. Progress with development, most notably the visible work at the SteelPointe Harbor site and a percolating downtown, has gone a long way toward removing some of the tarnish from the city’s reputation.

On the one hand, Mary-Jane Foster is a new face. But do not confuse that “new face” with inexperience, naivete or an unfamiliarity with the way things work in Bridgeport and Hartford. If hardball is what is required from a Mayor Foster, there’s no reason to believe it won’t be forthcoming. And while she may present a figure of privilege to those who don’t know her, she has lived through difficult times, starting with her father’s abandonment of the family when she was a child.

It would be nice, of course, if every candidate for mayor came to the contest with experience in running large organizations and handling multimillion-dollar budgets. The fact is, though, no mayor of Bridgeport in recent history has come into office with such qualifications. Foster may, in fact, come the closest, given her experience with the Bluefish and her current status as a vice president of the University of Bridgeport.

Republican Enrique Torres is, of course, a factor in the election. He is a popular figure in the Black Rock section of the city, which is also Foster’s home base. Torres, though, seems realistic enough about his chances that he is also on the ballot to retain his seat on the City Council. As the only Republican on the 20-member council, he has been an effective minority voice. That’s where he should continue.

Foster faces an uphill fight. And just one of the obstacles is her position on the ballot.

See below.

She is on Line G, the seventh of nine lines on the ballot. Take the time to find her name. All voters interested in moving the city into the future — Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated — should put the power of their votes behind Mary-Jane Foster on Tuesday.