Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton is scheduled to drop out of the governor's race Monday and join the ticket of Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, sources said Sunday night.
Boughton had been seen by insiders as running third for the Republican nomination for governor behind Fedele and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley of Greenwich, who have been widely viewed as the two GOP front runners.
As the longest-serving Republican mayor in Danbury's history, Boughton has been on the stump in the governor's race for months, serving up one-liners and touting Danbury as Connecticut's safest city.
The Fedele campaign declined to make the announcement Sunday night, but said that Fedele "will announce his selection of a running mate'' at 10:30 a.m. Monday at the state Capitol.
Boughton has been battling for the nomination with the two front runners, as well as longtime business executive Oz Griebel of Simsbury, financial analyst Christopher Duffy Acevedo of Branford, and former U.S. Rep. Larry DeNardis of Hamden.
While the delegate counts have been fluid, delegate-counters report that Fedele and Foley have roughly the same number of votes and Boughton has been in third place. Boughton's hometown of Danbury, which is the eighth-largest city in the state, has 28 delegates. In addition, he had strong support in the Greater Danbury area and from his days as a state legislator in Hartford. Some insiders say that Boughton had the requisite 15 percent of the delegates to qualify for a primary.
Boughton has followed in the footsteps of his father, who also previously served as Danbury's mayor and as a state legislator from the districts - posts that his son later won.
Besides relying on Boughton's delegates to help push him toward the nomination, Fedele will receive the benefit of an entirely new base of campaign contributors to help Fedele raise the necessary $250,000 that is required to qualify for public financing. Fedele is about 80 percent toward the goal, and public financing could bring him as much as $2.5 million for an expected primary in August.
The financing is crucial for Fedele because he is running against Foley, a multi-millionaire who has already poured $2 million of his own money into the campaign. Foley is also raising money under the old rules, meaning that he is turning down public financing and is instead collecting as much as $3,500 per person from contributors.
While the delegate count is said to be close, Foley has been far ahead in the public polls. The latest Quinnipiac University poll showed Foley with about 30 percent of those polled, while Fedele was far behind at about 4 percent.
Foley, a Harvard graduate who has never held public office and has more than two decades of business experience, has been broadcasting television commercials on a regular basis - dating back to his initial run in the U.S. Senate race and then continuing when he switched to the governor's race. Fedele, by contrast, has not been running a similar TV blitz but instead has focused on the Fox News Channel, News 12 in Fairfield County and the "Morning Joe'' program on MSNBC in an attempt to reach conservative Republicans and delegates in a targeted television campaign.
Besides Linda McMahon in the U.S. Senate race, Foley has been on television as much as any candidate in the race. Democrat Ned Lamonthas recently burst onto the scene with an advertising blitz, as well as extensive advertising on Internet sites.
The endorsement by Boughton would provide a boost for Fedele as he heads into Saturday's convention in Hartford and would come on the heels of recent endorsements by former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, House Republican leader Larry Cafero of Norwalk, Stratford Mayor John Harkins, and two former state GOP chairmen - Chris DePino and George Gallo.