Maria Aposporos has been running a small diner in Stamford for more than 30 years, providing food for her regular customers and at times giving free meals to those unable to pay.
But little Curley's Diner ran into large legal problems when the city of Stamford tried to take the downtown diner by eminent domain and bulldoze it for an apartment tower.
Aposporos fought city hall for years, ran up more than $300,000 in legal bills, and used her life savings before winning a victory at the Connecticut Supreme Court.
For her ordeal, she mainly blames Dannel Malloy, former Stamford mayor and now Democratic candidate for governor.
In the final week before Tuesday's election, Aposporos, a Republican, is featured in a 30-second television commercial by Republican Tom Foley's campaign for governor that tells the story of her long-running saga. She looks into the camera and says, "Dan Malloy used his power to hurt me.''
A narrator provides details as pictures of the 24-hour diner appear on the screen before the commercial ends with the words: "Dan Malloy Arrogantly Abused His Power.''
In more than 30 years at the diner, Aposporos said she never fought with any other mayors, "only Malloy.''
But Malloy says the controversy was a long-brewing process that started many years before he arrived at city hall --in the 1960s, when he was only 7 years old, when Stamford started on a decades-long urban redevelopment that would transform the city.
Malloy, though, was mayor from 1995 to 2009, a time when Aposporos' clash with the city peaked. In 2002, Aposporos won the state Supreme Court case that allowed her to keep the diner. He was mayor, too, in 2004 when the city erected a fence on property it owned only feet from the restaurant -- a fence that she said limited access to her diner.
Aposporos' property was added the city's list for demolition for urban redevelopment in the 1970s.
"Agreement was reached with the developer before I became mayor, and somehow I'm the guy who did this to her," Malloy said in an interview. "On top of which, she won. ... They offered her millions of dollars for the property, and she didn't want to take it. And that's it.''
Malloy said he was not personally involved in any of the discussions regarding the potential sale of the 5,700-square-foot property. He said the matter was handled by the city's Urban Redevelopment Commission. The lawsuit was against the URC, rather than Malloy.
"Was I mayor at the time it was in court? Yeah, I was,'' Malloy said. "She has an ax to grind. She was also a Republican member of the Board of Representatives for several years.''
Aposporos, 63, says she was never offered millions of dollars, only $233,000, the total mentioned in the unanimous ruling by the state Supreme Court that rejected the city's eminent domain attempt.
"They never gave me nothing because they were so sure they could throw me out of here,'' Aposporos said in an interview. "I wanted them to give me $700,000, $800,000 so I could go open another place. With $233,000, we could not buy a doghouse in the city of Stamford. Thank God for the Supreme Court. ... Malloy -- he took it personal. I won.''