by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 17, 2026) — On February 3, Connecticut Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas (D) held an online event for supporters of her 2026 re-election campaign to serve as the state’s chief election administrator.
Thomas has served since January 2023, having won the November 8, 2022 general election 55.2% to 42.7% against the Republican candidate, Dominic Rapini.
Thomas was a businessowner and served as a state representative, while Rapini came from a tech background, and though a political novice, a longtime observer active in the area of election integrity in the Constitution State.
Four debates took place between the two, the last of which can be viewed here.
After a 27-year career at Apple, Rapini came out of retirement to found Queralt Solutions in late 2024.
“With a mission to replace passwords with secure, phishing-resistant passkeys, we are productizing the patented QX.509 Connector middleware solution, which integrates PKI and FIDO-compliant technologies for mobile devices,” Rapini, who serves as the firm’s CEO, stated on his LinkedIn account. “Leveraging my extensive experience in business analysis and delegation, I am committed to delivering privacy-first, scalable solutions that empower users and organizations in enterprise, government, and healthcare environments. At Queralt, we aim to redefine digital identity with secure, innovative tools that prioritize trust and control.”
In addition to his new business venture, Rapini distributes a column via email to subscribers at no charge and some months ago gave his permission to The Post & Email to reproduce his work. His editorials, which often are satirical, are found here.
In an April 25, 2025 column, Rapini expressed strong criticism of Thomas’s remarks made at a Registrar of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC) conference earlier that month.
The organization’s website states its “commitment” is to:
- Providing and managing free, impartial and democratic elections
- Establishing and administering voter registration enrollment procedures
- Maintaining and managing accurate voter registration records.
ROVAC offers training to election workers and officials with the imperative that “ALL POLL WORKERS MUST BE NON-PARTISAN.”
In his article last year, Rapini wrote that Thomas “used her platform not to educate or inform but to deliver a campaign-style screed dripping with partisan venom. According to multiple attendees, Thomas veered into outright insult, reportedly referring to President Trump as the “General of the SS”—a not-so-subtle Nazi reference aimed at half the room, which consisted of Republican Registrars of Voters.”
The Post & Email searched for a video of the conference but was unable to locate one; we have therefore requested access to it from ROVAC official Barbara Crouch.
Reacting to Thomas’s campaign webinar, Rapini wrote in an opinion piece also marked “SATIRE” at The Connecticut Centinal:
Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas held a reassuring Zoom call this week with a carefully curated group of supporters, allies, and people who have already donated, explaining that election confidence is strongest when discussed exclusively inside a digital bubble with the chat function disabled.
“This is not a public meeting,” Thomas clarified at the outset. “This is a safe space for certainty.”
The Zoom, titled ‘Election Integrity: Just Ask Wanda!’, featured nodding participants, muted dissent, and a recurring slide that simply read: Secure. Fair. Move On.
Whenever uncomfortable topics surfaced—citizenship verification, voter roll maintenance, or the small matter of indicted Democrats in Bridgeport over mail-in ballot shenanigans—Thomas waved them away with the meeting’s official rebuttal:
“Just ask Wanda.”
The double-paned photo Rapini included of Thomas appearing to cover her eyes, then her ears, depicts her in a sweater not unlike the one worn in her appearance in November on WTIC Channel 3 on the subject of “Election Day Issues.”
Rapini’s reference to “Wanda” is to Wanda Geter-Pataky, who along with three others was charged with “unlawfully possessing another person’s absentee ballot, along with a variety of other election-related charges stemming from the 2019 primary between [incumbent Bridgeport Mayor] Ganim and his Democratic challenger, Marilyn Moore.”
One of the three was a Bridgeport city councilman, while the remaining two were Ganim campaign workers.
Geter-Pataky was ultimately charged with more than 90 counts of wrongdoing and arrested a second time last summer for allegedly “violating the conditions of her release by contacting some of the witnesses expected to testify against her.”
In an editorial published February 5 at Connecticut Mirror responding to President Trump’s recent suggestion that “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Thomas wrote, in part:
As Connecticut’s Secretary of the State, I see our election system up close. Not in headlines or sound bites, but in town halls, polling places, and conversations with the local bipartisan officials who run elections in all 169 of our municipalities. I see the work, the safeguards, and the accountability that make our representative democracy function.
That is why President Donald Trump’s recent remarks suggesting the federal government “should take over the voting,” and alleging that some states are “so crooked” they cannot be trusted, are not just troubling. They are dangerous — not because they identify a real failure in our system, but because they propose a potentially unconstitutional solution to a problem that does not exist.
What “should” happen instead is far simpler and far more responsible: The White House should stop making off-hand, inciting comments about elections, and stop suggesting federal takeovers that may violate the Constitution.
On February 7, Thomas sent a campaign solicitation to supporters invoking Rapini’s column at The Centinal in which she wrote:
Dear Friends,
I agree. We are lucky to be in Connecticut at a time when five-year-old ballots are being seized, and the federal government is attempting to swap the brutality of ICE agents for voter rolls.
The extent of our “luck” remains to be seen. Just last week, I had another occasion to witness what could have been if my opponent in 2022 had won the election instead of me.
On Monday, I hosted a campaign webinar titled Election Threats 101. It was an hour-long primer on everything you’ve read about in the news and what it means for the country and what it means for Connecticut, and most importantly, what you can do about it. I covered bills in Congress, cybersecurity changes, executive orders, and the like. My former opponent was on the webinar, which was fine with me. It’s what he chose to do afterward that reminded me that the voters of Connecticut make their own luck.
The morning after the webinar, he posted an article to a media outlet that was filled with lies under the heading of satire (if you could even see the small print labeling it as such), with an AI-generated image of me that invoked an old racist trope.
On the other hand, I put out an OpEd addressing the real issues of the day, such as the President’s troubling comments about nationalizing elections. You can read it here.
Not to toot my own horn, but my team and our election workforce have done a fabulous job the past three years under tremendous odds. But we still have more to do. PLEASE help ensure that Connecticut continues to make its own luck by electing good candidates who care more about the people and policy than petty politics. You can help by donating right here today. Don’t delay; the 2026 elections are upon us.
Onwards together!
It is unclear to this writer where Thomas’s reference to “luck” originated.
On Thursday, Rapini responded to Thomas’s fundraising email with a response published in the Centinal:
An Open Letter to Secretary Thomas (Since I Apparently Still Have Office Space in Her Head)
Dear Secretary Thomas,
Thank you for the thoughtful mention in your recent memo to supporters. It’s reassuring to know that even three years later, I remain a featured character in your Election Threats 101 programming.
I had no idea I was part of the curriculum.
I attended your webinar because I believe citizens should listen to elected officials, even when we disagree. Apparently that makes me adjacent to ballot seizures, federal overreach, and whatever the latest apocalyptic metaphor may be.
You described my recent article as “lies under the heading of satire.” I’ve always understood satire to be a tool used to question those in power. I didn’t realize it required prior approval from the office being questioned.
You also claimed an AI-generated image “invoked an old racist trope.” That’s a serious accusation. If there is something specific to address, I welcome that conversation. But it’s worth noting something broader: when someone sees racism in every image, every disagreement, every critique, it often says more about the lens than the picture.
Not everyone views the world primarily through race. Not every criticism is coded hostility. And not every challenge to authority is an act of bigotry.
Sometimes projection fills the space where confidence should be. Sometimes victimhood is more politically convenient than victory. And sometimes it’s easier to label opponents as dangerous than to engage them directly on substance.
What strikes me most is this: I am not on the ballot. I am not running against you. Yet here I am in your fundraising email.
If Connecticut is as fortunate as you say, then our democracy should be strong enough to handle satire, oversight, and disagreement without spiraling into alarmism.
To my friends and supporters:
Pay attention to how quickly debate becomes “threat.”
How questions become “misinformation.”
How criticism becomes “extremism.”
We can disagree without hysteria.
We can debate without demonizing.
And yes, we can even laugh when a former opponent is treated like a recurring villain in a campaign sequel no one asked for.
Onwards, indeed.