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08/22/2017 12:00 AMAfter narrowly losing the nomination at the party caucus, MacKenzie quickly rallied support and successfully petitioned to hold a primary. A longtime Guilford resident, MacKenzie said he’s the only candidate with a proven track record in town and that his business and financial experience make him the best candidate to take on the difficult years ahead—and the only Republican who could possibly beat the Democrats in November.
MacKenzie moved to Guilford at age five after his father took a coaching job at Yale University. After attending college and working as a chartered financial analyst in New York City with companies like J.P. Morgan and Citigroup, MacKenzie came back to town and bought a home in Guilford.
“I had a great childhood here and that’s why I wanted to raise my kids here, so that’s why I bought my first place here in 1996,” he said. “It is a great town to raise a family. There is not a better place.”
Introduced to service in town at a young age (he said his mother was heavily involved with the ABC program and his father was involved with the land trust), MacKenzie started to get involved with issues like the propane debate, the Shoreline Greenway Trail, the Stone House, and the Tuttles Point water main extension. In some of those situations, particularly propane, MacKenzie said he was disappointed in the way the town handled the opinions of residents.
“I was disappointed in the way the town represented or didn’t represent the people, and so to me, transparency in local government is critical...I have appeared before the BOS at a meeting and I remember getting up and saying, ‘We need a process that is significantly more transparent than the one we have now,’” he said. “The reality is most people I think would agree with me that the process is not as open and friendly and transparent as what I think it should be [or] what they think it should be or would like it to be.”
Reflecting on those specific cases is what brought MacKenzie to public office. Now currently serving on the Board of Finance (BOF), MacKenzie said he wants to promote transparency and accountability as first selectman.
“I started to get involved in politics because I was active in all of these things and I thought I could do things differently, perhaps better, than they were and better in the sense that more people would come away with a positive feeling,” he said.
MacKenzie said that’s why he ran for first selectman four years ago as an independent. Mackenzie said he’s now running as a Republican due to his financial outlook.
“The reason I switched to the Republican Party is because I’m fiscally conservative,” he said. “I believe in prudent fiscal management and you can call it what you will—some people call it conservative, some people call it smart, some people call it common sense—but that’s something you’re going to see across party lines. People are concerned about the state, they’re concerned about their taxes, and they’re concerned about their economic status…It’s the number-one issue right now in our state and in our town.”
MacKenzie said he voted against this year’s budget because he believed the state revenue assumption to be too high. He said he always has a reason if voting “No” and comes to the table with alternative solutions.
Looking ahead at the race to the primary and to the election in November, MacKenzie said that Democratic first selectman candidate Matt Hoey, who currently serves on the BOF, took in just 262 more votes than he did in the last municipal election.
“They [voters] want somebody who will look at things from a different perspective and who is going to push really hard to control spending,” he said. “I think I can beat Matt [Hoey]; my opponent doesn’t have any such anecdotal evidence indicating how or why he can beat Matt and to win in the fall. The [Republican] candidate will need support from across party lines and I’ve proven I can get that.”