New Chair Sees Opening For GOP Jolt

Newly named Hamden Republican Town Chairman Andrew Tammaro ordered a Starbucks salted caramel cream cold foam cold brew — and stated that the same drink would be twice as tall and cost half as much over at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Therein brewed the 24-year-old’s strategy for reversing the blue tide that has swept his hometown.

Tammaro, a press secretary for the House Republican Office and a 2021 contender for Hamden Legislative Council At-Large, was elected chairman of the RTC this past Tuesday.

As the new and youngest-ever town Republican Party leader, Tammaro is taking on the task of redefining how Hamden Republicans present to the public and appeal to voters.

Like other Republican officials statewide and nationwide, he sees an opening, amid inflation and rising crime and Covid-weariness, to make gains this election year with a middle-class pocketbook pitch that favors $4.36 cups of Dunkin’ joe over $5.15 Starbucks brew.*

He agreed to be interviewed at the Hamden Plaza upscale Starbucks outlet, though he usually would be as likely to show up there as Ted Cruz appearing at a Democratic Socialists of America rally.

Tammaro’s coffee, the plaza, and the plaza’s neighbor, Hamden High, represent three points of controversy in town that the new local party leader is hoping to capitalize on in future elections: Fiscal responsibility, public safety, and public education.

“This is the longest I’ve been at the Hamden Plaza in months,” Tammaro noted, sipping his salted foam. ​“I don’t frequent it very often.

“I don’t need to and I don’t want to,” he stated, adding that he prefers to support independent, small businesses over chains, with the exception of Dunkin’. 

“It’s not that I’m even concerned with my own safety,” Tammaro reasoned, though, he clarified, he is worried about his ​“5‑foot nothing” mother making it out of the grocery store un-mugged in the midst of heated public conversation concerning carjackings and violence taking place in Hamden shopping centers.

Rather, Tamarro began shopping in North Haven last year to avoid Hamden’s no-longer in-place mask mandate, he said. 

Tamarro represents a faction of Hamden residents who miss what they portray as the Hamden of old, a safe town that could afford to pay its employees’ pensions. Over the last few decades, Hamden’s demographics have changed and the Democratic Party has ascended. 

Tammaro chalks up his present image of the municipality — a town that is overly Covid cautious while high on crime and fiscally careless — to more than a decade of failed Democratic leadership. Hamden elections for municipal and state office used to be competitive; now Democrats win here as often as pretty much anywhere.

“Hamden is increasingly looped in with New Haven and Hartford,” Tammaro said, pointing out how New Haven is led entirely by elected Democrats. ​“We’ve never had this reputation of being a city, of being New Haven 2.0, until recently.”

“It’s the town of Hamden,” Tamarro insisted. “‘City of Hamden’ sounds stupid.”

Tammaro said he is tired of leaders’ liberal language and failed results. The recent college grad is calling for a return to tradition — and to the more unified community he remembers from his childhood.

Tammaro said his passion for politics was born out of a family dedication to local public service. He grew up with a grandfather who served as a Republican alderman in New Haven and saw his siblings and other relatives become firefighters, cops and teachers. He first thought of getting involved in politics while attending Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School, when he was charmed walking into his American History classroom every morning by a life-sized cardboard cut-out of John F. Kennedy.

After Wintergreen, Tammaro attended Notre Dame High School in West Haven before graduating from Stonehill College in Massachusetts in 2020. Upon returning home during the pandemic, he became more deeply embedded in local affairs. Tammaro said that through all of those years he watched Hamden become more partisan and less supportive and admiring of public servants — especially those working in public safety. 

He remains devoted to his early memories of Hamden as a less politically divided, more family-oriented town that used to ​“sell itself.”

He said that he believes Republicans, independents, the unaffiliated, and even Democrats all across town want a return to that same ideal. 

The problem, as Tammaro put it: ​“Conservatives live in the shadows of Democratic leadership. We have to establish our own identity rather than the identity that Democrats in Hamden have created for us.”

“We haven’t been active enough in creating our own identity. I think we should have a lot more autonomy in how we present ourselves instead of this little opposition party that yells and gets trounced every year in the elections.”

“We’re here, we’re serious, and we’re not some sort of radical minority. We’re pretty just … straightforward.”

The GOP has grown severely outnumbered by Democrats in Hamden: The latest count shows 3,720 registered Republican voters, 18,066 Democrats, and 11,621 unaffiliated voters as of March 1.

The numbers don’t daunt Tammaro. 

“The numbers game isn’t one that we’re gonna win,” he said. ​“It’s gonna be a battle of ideas. And we clearly prevail in that regard.”

The ideas: Enforcement of greater discipline on juvenile populations in schools and outside of them, no government mandates, less ​“liberal leaning” curricula in public schools, funding more cops to combat crime, and greater fiscal austerity.

In the 2021 election, Republicans did come close to taking several competitive Legislative Council seats against the odds while campaigning on those specific selling points. Districts Eight, Two, and One, the latter of which being Tammaro’s home, saw races that were too close to call on the night of the general election — though Democrats ultimately won all three spots.

“I think it’s absolutely rich that the mayor campaigned on saying we were using scare tactics,” Tammaro recalled, noting how Republican candidate Ron Gambardella led a pro-public safety campaign citing rising crime in town while Mayor Lauren Garrett maintained that Republicans were overblowing the crime rate in order to capitalize on fear. Since elected, Garrett has responded to continued public concerns about violence in places like the plaza or high school by consistently calling for increased police presence.

Tammaro said that he recognizes the difficulty of lowering taxes in a town with a history of deferred expenses stemming from fiscal mismanagement. He noted that Council Republicans were the only ones to vote ​“No” against a proposal to create government positions in the face of a proposed three-point mill rate hike. The cost of six new jobs may not compare with an unexpected multi-million dollar increase in contracted medical expenses, Tammaro acknowledged — but, he said, ​“I think the optics honestly matter more.” 

As the new chair of the RTC, Tammaro said he plans to be visible, present, and constantly challenging the ​“one-party control” in the mayor’s office and 12 – 3 Democrat to Republican Legislative Council. 

Frank LaDore, who stepped down as chairman this spring, said Tammaro brings a ​“whole new energy” to the RTC.

“It’s so important to get young folks involved in politics,” LaDore said, pointing out that two 19-year-old Democratic socialists were elected into office in 2021. ​“When you get the itch and you get excited about something,” he said, ​“it stays with you.”

“When I got elected, I was the youngest person,” LaDore remembered of rising to the top of the RTC five years ago. ​“And I was in my forties!”

Tammaro’s youth and love for caramel caffeine bring new energy and idealism to a party that might otherwise suffer from collective learned helplessness.

In his acceptance speech to the RTC on Tuesday, Tammaro emphasized his idealism around conservatism by quoting his early role model John F. Kennedy. 

“I like to turn to history to understand how we can tackle the problems we face today, and will in the future,” Tammaro said. ​“I particularly like this quote from President John F. Kennedy in an address to students at Rice University in 1961. So much so, that it was my yearbook quote when I graduated from Wintergreen 10 years ago. The President said: ​‘We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’

“And I know what you’re thinking, ​‘Andrew, it’s much easier to land a man on the moon than it is to elect Republicans in Hamden.’ The President continues, and I echo: ‘… that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too.’”

Tammaro said he is confident in his ability to run the party because he is surrounded by older members with ​“institutional knowledge,” like Republican Registrar of Voters Tony Esposito. He also knows that ​“we need to build a younger coalition of Republicans in this town.” 

“That’s the future of the party,” he said.

In addition to going to town meetings, ​“getting in the trenches,” and staying up late to hold Mayor Garrett accountable for each and every decision — including fiscal choices as small as coffee costs — Tammaro said he knows how to draw a younger audience into the conservative cause.

“I’ll say, hey, young people, do you wanna move out of your parents’ house? Cause you can’t in Hamden, because it’s too expensive!”

Tammaro said he currently lives with his parents, Hamden residents of over 25 years, to avoid Hamden’s high cost of living. 

As for his own future independent of the local RTC, Tammaro said, ​“I plan to stay in Hamden for as long as it’s financially and logistically viable. I have lived here my whole life and would do it over again if I could.”

“We just need to lower taxes!”

* About Those Coffee Prices ...

*The coffee comparison figure is based on one reporter’s online look into local coffee costs.

It’s this reporter’s understanding that salted caramel cream cold brews are a permanent menu item at Starbucks but only a seasonal specialty at Dunkin’ — and not offered in Hamden locations. On Uber Eats, a small Dunkin’ cold brew in town is $4.36 while a small Starbuck’s cold brew is, in fact, one penny less than Dunkin’ at $4.35. However, a Starbucks salted caramel cream cold brew is $5.15, while a Dunkin’ cold brew with a shot of caramel flavoring remains the same price at $4.35.

It should be noted that the matter of whether or not a Dunkin’ beverage is more generously proportioned than one at Starbucks is further complicated by the fact that Starbucks offers four beverage sizes (tall, grande, venti, and trenta) while Dunkin’ uses the standard small, medium, large categorization. A tall iced coffee at Starbucks is 12 ounces; a small iced coffee at Dunkin’ is 16 ounces. Starbuck’s largest salted caramel cold brew (30 ounces) is $6.25; Dunkin’s large (32 ounces) is just $5.11. That means that if you get a large caramel cold brew at Dunkin’, it’s 6.26 ounces per dollar — but a trenta salted caramel cold brew at Starbucks is 4.8 ounces per dollar.

Quality of either drink is not factored into this cost analysis.

Uber Eats’ website does not allow customers to add flavor shots to their Starbucks’ cold brew, but commenters should report back as to whether or not doing so in-stores costs them more. It should also be shared that, in certain locations, Dunkin’ was offering $3 medium salted caramel cream cold brews to ​“help every guest celebrate that spring has sprung” between Feb. 23 and March 22.