A history-making close election in Woodbridge — in May 1973

As Woodbridge awaits official election results from a recanvass of its November 4, 2025, municipal election — after it was announced in the Center Gym that the tallies for the two candidates for First Selectman were just eight votes apart — it's worth looking back to see if this is the closest election in the town's history.

Many current residents recall the very close race in 1991, when Nan Birdwhistell was elected as the first woman to hold the top post in Woodbridge. When the vote totals were announced after the polls closed that night, she was ahead by just six votes. After the mandatory recount — state law C.G.S. § 9-311a then as now requires a recount whenever the margin is less than one-half percent of the total votes cast — Birdwhistell gained one vote to officially make her First Selectman, elected by a margin of seven votes.

But is that the closest municipal election Woodbridge has ever seen?

The morning after our election last week, a neighbor reached out to ask me if I knew the vote results. When I described to her how close the announced totals were, she immediately told me about her grandfather Ted Clark's close call the night he was last elected as First Selectman of Woodbridge, after comfortable margins in all of his previous thirteen elections. What were the exact totals in that race more than fifty-two years ago? I drove over to Town Hall to take a look in the Town Clerk's vault to see if I could find out more.

Paging through the records, here's what I found:

Republican Theodore Clark, known as Ted, had first been elected Woodbridge First Selectman in 1947, and would go on to serve a span of 28 years leading the town. But his challenger in the May 7, 1973 election — back when the town held its biennial elections on the first Monday in May — Democrat Joseph Anastasio, came very close to unseating him. The official record in the Town Clerk’s book shows that when the votes were first tallied, Clark led 1,776 to 1,771 — a margin of just five votes. A recount was held two days later, on Wednesday, May 9, which saw the results change by only one vote to 1,776 for Clark and 1,770 for Anastasio. Clark retained his seat by six votes, the narrowest margin recorded in the town’s modern history.

Ted Clark, First Selectman of Woodbridge from 1947 to 1975

Born on his family’s farm along Racebrook Road in Woodbridge, Theodore Robert Clark (1888-1978), was part of a line of Woodbridge farmers stretching back generations. Ted  attended the University of Connecticut, and beginning in 1924 he followed in the footsteps of his father Samuel Orman Clark (1861 - 1937) farming the land that had been in the family since the mid-1800s. In addition to farming, his father had also served the town of Woodbridge in several municipal offices and was elected to the Connecticut legislature as a Republican in 1899. Ted also drove a school bus in the early days when the local one-room schools closed and Woodbridge's elementary-aged students began to attend the Center School.

Clark’s first involvement in public life came when he served as the town prosecutor before the Police commission was established, and toward the end of World War II he was also appointed to the County Rationing Board. Then, following the retirement of Chester C. Hitchcock, the Republican Town Committee persuaded him to run for First Selectman in 1947 — the office he would go on to hold for 28 consecutive years. He was the longest-serving First Selectman in Woodbridge and held one of the longest such tenures in Connecticut.

Throughout his decades of service he guided Woodbridge through its postwar transformation from a small farming community into a modern suburban town. Under his leadership, the town paved miles of roads, expanded its local school system with the construction of Beecher Road School in the early 1960s, and helped found the Amity Regional School District in partnership with Bethany and Orange in the mid-1950s. He was known for keeping taxes stable, insisting on practical budgeting, and personally inspecting roadwork and snow-removal operations — often stopping to chat with residents along the way.

Three New Haven Register profiles — one in 1965, “Ted Clark Leads Woodbridge Through Transition,” a “Salute” feature in 1972, and another article in 1973, “Still Running Strong After 26 Years” — described him as a plain-spoken, good-humored leader with a deep sense of responsibility to his neighbors. The papers noted that he was “as comfortable behind a tractor as behind a desk,” a trait that endeared him to voters across party lines.

After Clark retired as First Selectman in 1975, a tree was planted on the Woodbridge Green with a plaque honoring his years of service. The tree still stands today, across the lane from the entrance to Town Hall — visible from the gazebo where decades later community members would gather to honor his 1973 opponent, Joseph Anastasio.

Joseph Anastasio (1919 - 2013)

Joseph M. Anastasio was born in New Haven on February 28, 1919, the son of Andrew and Nancy (Ruggerio) Anastasio, and grew up in their home on Fountain Street. A graduate of Hillhouse High School and Boston University, during World War II, Anastasio enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, in 1941. By age 25 he had been promoted to Major, and later earned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was decorated with the Purple Heart for wounds received during the campaign at Guadalcanal.

His military career was chronicled in several issues of Corriere del Connecticut, New Haven’s Italian-language newspaper.

In 1942, the paper praised him in “Soldati Italo-Americani che si fanno onore” (Italian-American Soldiers Who Bring Honor), citing his leadership during training maneuvers in North Carolina.

In 1944, “Maggiore a 25 anni” (Major at 25 Years Old) announced his promotion and described him as “one of the youngest officers of such rank in our Armed Forces.”

 A 1946 Armistice Day article referred to “Lieutenant Colonel Anastasio, already wounded in the war,” confirming his continued public recognition as a community hero.

After his wartime service, Anastasio joined Uniroyal Inc., formerly the U.S. Rubber Company, where he advanced to become Vice President of International Consumer Products. He and his wife, Mary Gene (Priess) Anastasio, settled in Woodbridge, raising three children and becoming active participants in town affairs.

After Anastasio narrowly lost to longtime incumbent Ted Clark in what became the closest election in town history, he was a candidate again two years later. In the May 1975 election, Anastasio successfully ran for a seat on the Board of Selectmen. This time he earned 1,322 votes on the Democratic Party line — in a rare three-party contest that also featured a local “Woodbridge Party” slate. Official records in the Town Clerk’s bound volumes show his continued service with his re-election in 1977, confirming his role in town government during the late 1970s.

Anastasio passed away in 2013 at age 94. The New Haven Register obituary published in March that year described him as “deeply loved by his family and a cherished friend and mentor to many.”

Legacy and Continuity

Today, traces of both men’s contributions can still be found in the center of town. Just outside Town Hall, near the site of the old meetings Ted Clark once presided over, stands a tree planted in his memory — its bronze plaque weathered but still legible after half a century.

And in 2018, a memorial garden was planted near that tree in honor of Arden Clark Gordon (1930–2017). She was the daughter of Ted and Evelyn (Schepmoes) Clark and the fifth generation of her family to live on the Clark homestead on Racebrook Road. A 1952 graduate of Skidmore College, she and her husband, Dr. Robert Stanton Gordon, raised six children in Woodbridge. Arden’s daughter, Robin Gordon Schaffer, still lives on the family property — the very same farmstead where her grandfather Ted was born — now home to the seventh generation of the Clark family. Robin has carried forward her family’s tradition of local service as a former longtime member of the Woodbridge Recreation Commission, while her husband Tony Schaffer, served several years on the Board of Finance.

Across the Green, at the gazebo, town and state officials gathered in 2015 to dedicate Route 243 as the Joseph Anastasio Memorial Highway in recognition of his “lifetime of public service to America and to the people of Woodbridge.” The effort to honor Anastasio in this manner had been led by State Senator Joseph Crisco, Jr. and the event was attended by his sister Joan Kinney, Deputy First Selectman Beth Heller, and his three children — Carol (Susie) Anastasio, Roye Anastasio-Bourke, and Robert Anastasio (pictured below).

Anastasio's wider family has also continued his legacy of public service: his sister Marie A. Dey (1924–2009) was a longtime substitute teacher in the Woodbridge school system, and her son Joseph S. Dey III also served as an elected member of the Board of Selectmen from 2015 through 2019 — carrying on the family’s tradition of civic involvement across generations.

Tomorrow morning, November 10, 2025, the Woodbridge Registrars of Voters will convene once again in the Center Building Gym to conduct the official recanvass of the November 4 municipal election. As they unseal the ballot boxes and tally each vote, they’ll be reenacting a familiar local ritual that has decided the town’s closest races for generations.

Whether this year’s contest proves even tighter than the six-vote margin that separated Ted Clark and Joseph Anastasio in 1973 remains to be seen. Going back another 26 years in the record books, to when Chester C. Hitchcock retired as First Selectman in 1947, there's no indication of a closer election. So for at least today, the record stands at the half-dozen votes that separated the candidates in 1973.

Whatever the outcome in 2025, the spirit of careful count-keeping — and of civic participation passed down through generations of local families — reminds us that every vote in Woodbridge has always mattered, and still does.