ESSEX — Norman Needleman looked more confident, even comfortable, in Essex’s first selectman’s office than in the State Capitol hallways. At his desk, he spread out reports on projects for the revision of the town’s 10-year capital improvement plan.
“All of these are different issues that I have to deal with,” he told CT Examiner one Friday afternoon in early October.
The discussion was interrupted a few times by his assistants bringing him documents to sign, a phone call from someone asking for advice, and another from Walgreens letting him know that his medications were ready for pickup.
This November, he’s running unopposed for an eighth term as first selectman.
“I love running the town. I’m going to do it for as long as I can and the town wants me to continue to accomplish things,” Needleman said. “A bigger question is, how much longer do I want to do the Senate? Because that place sucks.”
Although he prides himself on spending considerable time building personal relationships across the political spectrum and plays a prominent role as co-chair of the energy committee, he speaks openly about how little he enjoys being a state senator.
“It’s very much a team sport there,” he said. “You’re a Democrat or you’re a Republican, and you twist yourself into not trying to support your side even when they are insane.”
Needleman said he would have preferred a higher executive position had he started his political career sooner.
“I would have been a better governor or whatever other executive position than I am a legislator,” Needleman said. “I’m not great. I can get things done. I know how to maneuver in that world, but I’m too trusting.”
Harsh on Republicans, whom he labels cowards for not questioning the federal government’s political line, Needleman is equally critical of his own party, which he considers disconnected from voters and complacent.
“I think that there’s too much of a belief that we’re winning because of our great ideas,” Needleman said. “Make no mistake about it, there are seats that we have that we would never have had it not been for Trump on the ballot.”
Needleman says part of his role in the Connecticut General Assembly is working behind the scenes with committee co-chairs to “temper their bills.”
“If bad bills pass and they become law, it affects the next election,” he said. “And I think Democrats have lost sight of the fact that a lot of our success in the last six or eight years has been because of Donald Trump.”
Among the reasons for the Democrats’ disconnect with the electorate, Needleman pointed to a condescending attitude of “upper-middle-class, suburban lawmakers.”
“What they don’t want is progressive, educated people looking down their nose telling them that they know what’s best for them. And that’s what a lot of progressives tend to do,” he said. “We have to win back people and we have to make them not hate us.”
Political cooperation
In contrast, Needleman portrays an oasis of political harmony in Essex.
“It’s a no-drama town,” he said. “We get along. The same three people on the board of selectmen are running again for their seventh term in a row.”
Needleman refers to Stacia Libby, the Democratic selectwoman, and Bruce Glowac, the Republican selectman. Since Needleman took office as first selectman in 2011, Libby has always been on the board, while Glowac took office in 2013 and has remained there ever since.
Needleman has had a few rivals run for first selectman in his career — in 2011, 2015, 2017 and 2019. In 2015, he ran against Glowac, who ultimately lost but took office as selectman. Glowac served as the town’s first selectman between 1991 and 1995, and he and Needleman’s children attended school together.
“I wasn’t fearful that if I didn’t win, the town wouldn’t be in good hands,” Needleman said about Glowac. “So we campaigned together, we went to the dump together, we met people, we joked around about it. We like to work with each other.”
Unopposed races are not an Essex anomaly. Next November, 128 first selectmen and mayors will be elected in Connecticut. Of those races, 45 are uncontested — more than one-third — according to an analysis of data from the Secretary of the State’s Office.
Needleman doesn’t see this lack of competition at the local level as a problem, but rather as a mechanism that allows them to get things done.
“It’s actually wonderful. We’d all known each other for a long time before this, and we’re careful about not violating any rules,” he said. “At this level of democracy, it’s about paving roads, doing sidewalks, managing basic projects. That’s my job. So there’s not a lot of disagreement.”
An unaffiliated selectman candidate, Gary Comstock, could upset the balance that Needleman celebrates.
“Gary Comstock is running against Stacia [Libby], who has lived in this area her entire life for five generations. She is well-known and well-liked,” he said. “There is no standard bearer at the top of the list.”
Comstock, a Democrat, decided to run as a petitioning candidate, something Needleman called “strange.” He also criticized the proposal that the town buy the former piano factory — which once belonged to the Comstock family — tear it down and turn it into a park.
“It’s not an economic driver and it hasn’t been for 50 years and won’t be ever again,” Needleman said. “Now the building is too far gone and it’s highly contaminated property, so the town would never want to own it.”
Local improvements and challenges
When highlighting his achievements during his years in office, Needleman focuses on internal management, both in human resources and in processes and systems.
“When I got here, there was a lot of interpersonal conflict,” Needleman said. “We’ve upgraded everything in a lot of areas.”
He made changes so staff would stop working in silos, created a finance director position and digitized the files of the health, zoning and building departments. The town is also adopting project management software for public works so everyone has access to shared information, as well as digitizing permitting and bill payment processes.
Regarding the town’s future challenges, Needleman mentions the regional school system at the top of his list.
Essex is part of a district that also includes Deep River and Chester, but it’s not fully regionalized, which means they have five boards of education. This year, the three towns voted to start a study to evaluate whether to consolidate the education boards into one, but Needleman remained skeptical.
“That will never happen,” he said. “Every 10 years it comes up, and one of the towns finds a reason not to do it.”
Needleman said they could try to find an alternative in the middle ground.
He said Essex now has less interest in regionalization than in the past, compared to Chester and Deep River, which have greater concerns due to rising education costs.
Needleman says he wears three hats on this issue: as first selectman of Essex, as a grandfather of seven grandchildren who attend the public schools and as a senator representing all three towns.
“It’s complicated because sometimes the interests of the town I represent conflict with the interests of the other two towns,” he said. “Essex is, I think, at this moment, being viewed as a little less interested, but I still care about getting us to a point where our governance structure is better and the economics make a little more sense.”
Housing bill
Development and housing are among Connecticut’s most contentious issues. Needleman said Gov. Ned Lamont took the correct decision in vetoing the housing bill passed this legislative session, although he understands changes to housing are needed.
“The housing bill had some flaws in it,” he said. “But it is true that zoning has been used to restrict housing access for people, to keep communities the way they were.”
Needleman distinguished between two different objectives in housing policy.
“If you’re looking to build workforce housing to keep your kids here, give them an opportunity to stay where they grew up and other people move in, teachers, workers, that’s one issue,” he said. “If you’re looking to solve the problem of concentration of poverty in urban areas through changing housing laws, I think that’s an oversimplification of a problem.”
Needleman was more critical of the idea of fair share, which establishes a certain number of affordable homes in each town.
“Our problem is that when we touch it at the state level, it’s a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “And it doesn’t work, you’re just not going to solve those problems. The problems of New Haven are not the same as the problems of Essex.”
Needleman liked to spend some time retelling his personal story, leaning back in his desk chair and extending the discussion at the risk of being late for a family commitment. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951, he worked in the 1970s as a cab driver in New York when taxis had bulletproof partitions. In a casual conversation with a taxi passenger, he said, he got his first job in a factory at the age of 22.
In 1979, he started his own chemical company, Tower Laboratories, which became a national leader in effervescent product manufacturing. Now the company has three factories in Connecticut and one in Michigan, employing more than 300 people and run primarily by his children.
At 74, Needleman says he’s “tired all the time” but remains motivated to run his town.
“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he said. “And that luck has made me feel an obligation to give back to my community.”