• Home
  • Posts
  • Kim Fiorello Aims to Bring Ideas of Limited Government to The 149th Seat

Kim Fiorello Aims to Bring Ideas of Limited Government to The 149th Seat

By Foster Steinbeck

149th

In her campaign to represent Connecticut’s 149th House District, Republican candidate and long-time Greenwich community member Kim Fiorello has made it a point to not take funds from the state’s public campaign finance program. For Fiorello, financing political campaigns isn’t the government’s proper role.

“I don’t want to take taxpayer dollars. I want to earn the financial support of people who support me,” Fiorello said. “I don’t have any judgment on anyone that participates in the program. It’s just for me personally, I have that philosophical perspective.”

After an extensive professional career across many industries and seven years of being active in the Greenwich community, Fiorello wants to bring the ideas of limited government and individual liberty to Hartford if elected.
Whether on education, economic or zoning policies, Fiorello said her formula for prosperity is to promote individual freedom.

“Every policy I pursue,” Fiorello said, “I will look at through the lens of, ‘Does it protect individual liberty,’ and ‘Is it the proper role of government.’ Its role is to protect our persons and our private property.”

Policy Positions
Fiorello said she is running in order to stop families from feeling they should move away from Connecticut as a result of bad state government policies.

An example, Fiorello said, would be the reforms to the state’s land use laws as outlined by the organization Desegregate Connecticut, which are up for debate in the state’s next legislative cycle. The organization said the state’s former and current zoning laws perpetuate racial segregation.

Desegregate Connecticut has proposed these reforms ranging from eliminating the “character” consideration in housing applications, to standardizing the permitting and hearing procedures statewide, to further racial and economic equity.

Fiorello said she would fight against the reforms if elected. Although agreeing with its “well-intentioned” goals, she said the reforms would diminish county governments’ local control over its local parking requirements and other regulations and expand the purview of the state government.

Fiorello also said the “character” consideration in housing application refers to the area’s uniqueness and disagrees with the premise behind the proposed reform. Desegregate Connecticut states that arguing against a housing application because it’s inconsistent with a community’s “character” has sometimes become code for racism and classism.

“We all want housing for everyone,” Fiorello said. “The idea that the government can only provide low-income housing is ridiculous … The market would provide fantastic choices of housing for all types of demands.”

After moving to Greenwich in 2013, Fiorello and her family bought a house which was originally built in 1903. After three years of renovations, the Greenwich Historical Society later plaqued their house in recognition of its historical value and preservation of the community’s architectural legacy.

“I want people to know that I understand the preservation of character,” Fiorello said.

Before moving to Greenwich, Fiorello said Connecticut charmed her over as she drove her children to the Whitby School in Greenwich from their old house in Scarsdale, N.Y.

“Every time I was driving across the border to bring my children to the Whitby School. It almost felt like the air changed,” she said. “I just fell in love with Connecticut.”

After her first child was born in 2006, Fiorello became a full-time stay-at-home mom. After moving to Greenwich with no professional obligations, Fiorello started volunteering in the Greenwich community. She later served as the Whitby School’s Chair of Benefits for two terms, from 2012 to 2013.

Fiorello also has attended and volunteered at the Grace Church of Greenwich since late 2013. Gale Hartch, a friend of Fiorello’s, also volunteers at the Grace Church and said Fiorello volunteers and helps around the Church in a very cheerful manner.

From seeing Fiorello volunteer, Hartch said she believes Fiorello’s outgoing nature and ability to organize makes her well-equipped to represent the 149th.

“She’s intelligent, and she’s informed,” Hartch said. “She has, I think, very strong good ideas for what’s right for the government, for the town, for the state, for the country, and I think she would be a hard worker.”

As a representative, Fiorello said she will advocate for free-market economics, reduced taxation and limited government involvement in several areas, including the state’s energy sector and education policy.

In response to Greenwich’s energy problems with its monopolistic power provider, Eversource Energy, Fiorello called for more free-market based solutions to drive energy costs down. Fiorello would fight against poll taxes, increasing the property tax and any other taxes in the state legislature, saying the state needs to make spending cuts.

Fiorello said she supports these positions as they would curtail government involvement and result in more money and options to the taxpayers. “I do believe in limited government, not because I’m conservative per se. I believe it because I know that it honors each individual life’s potential, and that is what the American Dream is,” Fiorello said.

Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo first met Kim at one of his constituent forums at the St. Lawrence Club back in 2013, when he served as the 151st House District Representative. He remembers how Kim asked him good questions about public policy.

“What I’m really impressed by with her is her focus on solutions, which I think is a good thing,” Camillo said. “It’s one thing to have an opinion and not listen to anyone else, but Kim does listen, and she likes the discussion of and debate on public policy which is critical.”

“Harvard or Bust”
At 10-years-old, Fiorello moved from Seoul in 1985 to Reston, VA, on the outskirts of Arlington, as her dad’s work transferred him to the Pentagon, where he worked as a civilian accountant.

After graduating high school, Fiorello enrolled at the United States Military Academy. However, after completing basic training and one academic year, Fiorello said she started longing for a more normal college experience.

Fiorello resolved to apply and get accepted to no other school but Harvard College, or continue her studies at West Point. Thanks to her academic record, she received her acceptance letter in the spring of 1994. After a gap year of teaching English in South Korea, Fiorello graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1997.

“I’m greedy, I [wanted] to see if I [could] climb that hard mountain,” Fiorello said.

After Harvard, Kim recruited to complete a fixed income trading analyst training program with the now-defunct Wall Street investment bank Salomon Brothers.

Following her husband’s finance job, Fiorello enrolled in night classes at Hong Kong University where she studied journalism. She later interned at Far Eastern Economic Review, later becoming a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s Hong Kong Bureau.

Her husband’s job took the pair to Manhattan in 2004. In preparation for motherhood, Fiorello took a job over the course of 15 months and learned to cook at Wallsé, a high-end restaurant serving modern Austrian fare.

From her time across various industries, Fiorello said she has learned she loves throwing herself in “the middle of great situations” and feels blessed to have worked in those places.

Fiorello said she’s not afraid of hard work, and she loves that high throwing of herself at challenging tasks. Confident she can do it with a smile on her face, she is focused on the next challenge – winning an election.

“Why do people climb Mt. Everest?” Fiorello asked. “There’s satisfaction in doing hard things. Even if you fail, there’s gratification in trying to solve it and try it again.”

Related Posts
Loading...