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Former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy capped a huge comeback by winning the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday. Malloy had trailed Ned Lamont by double-digit margins in polls during the campaign.
Preliminary figures show Malloy with 58 percent of the vote to Lamont's 42 percent.
Malloy will face Republican Tom Foley in the fall election. Foley, former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, had 43 percent of the vote compared with 38 percent for Michael Fedele and 19 percent for Oz Griebel.
Until recently, Malloy was trailing Lamont, who arguably had the greater name recognition of the two. Lamont attracted national attention in 2006 when he came from seemingly nowhere to successfully challenge U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. Lamont lost the race in November to Lieberman, who ran as an independent.
With that advantage, Lamont took a lead in the polls. However, the most recent Quinnipiac poll showed the two running virtually neck and neck.
Malloy, Stamford's longest-serving mayor with four terms in office, was the party-endorsed candidate. He attended Boston College and its law school. He was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the early 1980s and had a private law practice in Stamford from 1984 to 1995, when he became mayor.
Foley, a former ambassador to Ireland, had enjoyed front-runner status throughout the race. He was the party-endorsed candidate, and touted his business experience as an asset that would help him lead the state as governor. Lately, however, Foley faced criticism about his business practices. In a Fedele ad, Georgia workers claimed Foley's company mismanagement caused them to lose their jobs. Foley denied the claim and dismissed it as distorted.
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