Bridgeport Housing Authority plans defamation lawsuit against mayoral candidate Gomes

The Bridgeport Housing Authority is seeking to file a defamation lawsuit John Gomes, a candidate for Bridgeport mayor, following his comments regarding the agency’s role in his contested primary race against incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim.

The CTMirror reported the housing authority asked a judge to grant it the ability to subpoena Gomes for documents and to depose him under oath regarding his statements about its alleged role in the primary campaign. Gomes stated in a television news interview that the Ganim campaign colluded with the housing authority’s managers to keep his campaign out of the city’s properties.

“In some instances, those who were elected and on the slate with the other team, worked out with the managers of those facilities and purposely did not allow us to have access whatsoever,” Gomes said.

David Hoopes, an outside attorney representing the housing authority, wrote in his legal filing that Gomes’ statements “are deeply harmful to the plaintiff as they insinuate that plaintiff, a public authority, corruptly and anti-democratically used its control of its housing developments to discriminate against the defendant’s campaign.”

Bill Bloss, an attorney for Gomes’ campaign, called the housing authority’s legal maneuvering “just profoundly silly – it’s a political stunt, which, when the election is over, will go away.”

Gomes is challenging the results of the Democratic primary – he recorded the most votes cast in-person at the city’s polling stations, but lost by 251 votes when absentee votes overwhelmingly favored Ganim – a similar result happened in the 2019 Democratic primary when State Sen. Marilyn Moore led the in-person vote but Ganim staged a come-from-behind win with the absentee ballot count.

Gomes is still in the running for mayor – he has secured a place on the November ballot as the candidate of the Bridgeport Independent Party.

Photo of John Gomes courtesy of his campaign.