Bridgeport Mayoral Race Pits Ex-Con Against Baseball Team Founder, GOP Councilman

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (CBSNewYork) -- There will be seven candidates for mayor on the Bridgeport ballot Tuesday, and at least a few have been crunching the numbers and predicting they'll come out on top.

Five years out of prison, Joe Ganim won the Democratic primary in September. He seeks a connection with the voters on his other record -- on claims he held the line on tax and crime rates in more than 10 years in office, WCBS 880's Paul Murnane reported.

Ganim served seven years behind bars for bribery.

"The people of Bridgeport, I think, are excited, excited about the opportunity for change, for postive change," he said.

Ganim defeated incumbent Mayor Bill Finch and Mary-Jane Foster in the primary. Foster is now running as an independent, and Finch has endorsed her. She notes that she and Finch together received 54 percent of the vote in the primary.

"I will go toe to toe against the Republican candidate, and I think I can take most of his votes," said Foster, an administrator at the University of Bridgeport, a former actress and a co-founder of the Bridgeport Bluefish minor league baseball team.

Meanwhile, Republican Enrique Torres, a Bridgeport councilman, believes the small GOP base will vote with gusto and enough Democrats will come his way.

"They have close to 40,000 Democrats registered, but only 13,000 voted in the most contentious primary in Bridgeport history, which is the one that just passed," he said.