Crisci Is Trying To Save A Generation.

I'm not going to use that writer’s name because, honestly, after they read this article, they may rethink their efforts.

They made the case for re-electing my opponent, and that’s fair game. That’s what “letters to the editor” are for, and I’d never begrudge anyone for writing one.

But it didn’t stop there. It went on to make the case against me, and here was the argument: that something I proposed, called Project 1829 and Beyond, sounds too much like Project 2025 and that you should therefore think a little less of the man who wrote it. Not the idea. The man.

I want to call that out right out of the gate, because this is a prime example of exactly how we keep failing ourselves on Election Day.

Somewhere along the way, an organization used the word “project” for something they were doing. That does not remove the word from the English language. I can’t help what somebody else named their work. If the new standard is that a title disqualifies an idea and the character of the person who proposed it before anyone reads a single line, then we’ve stopped thinking and started reacting.

And here’s what bothers me more than the comparison. If the person who wrote that letter had taken ten minutes to read what Project 1829 and Beyond actually says, I don’t believe they would have sent it in.

So let me tell you what it is. Project 1829 and Beyond isn’t new, and it isn’t borrowed. I created it back in 2024, when I was running for State Senate. The whole idea came from one problem I couldn’t stop thinking about: our young people finish school here, and they leave.

They leave because they can’t afford to stay in Connecticut, let alone Branford. That’s it. That’s the entire crisis, and everybody in this town knows a family it’s already happened to.

The name says exactly what it is. Project 1829, and I then added the “And Beyond” is the part I stretched into the early thirties because the problem doesn’t magically end on somebody’s thirtieth birthday.

Here’s what’s in it. Tax savings for first-time homebuyers in that age bracket, and something real to help with a down payment. Let a young person write off the interest on a first car purchase. Give a business a tax discount when it hires a young Connecticut worker in that age range. Give that business another tax discount when it puts that employee through approved training that makes them better at the job.

Now tell me which of those is radical. Tell me which one belongs to a party.

That’s not left, and it’s not right. That’s a state deciding it would like to keep its own children. It’s good business for the employer, and it’s a ladder for the person climbing it. Both sides win, which is supposed to be the point.

The part I’m adding this year is education.

The other half of Project 1829 and Beyond has always been education, and that’s what I’m bringing into this election.

Artificial intelligence, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. It’s a tremendous moneymaker for the companies that build it, and it is not going anywhere. We have exactly two choices. We can learn everything about it and use it in the smartest, safest, most honest way we can, or we can ignore it and let it quietly eliminate jobs our young people were counting on.

If I’m elected, one of the first things I will put on the table is AI literacy in our schools, starting at the early grades and building all the way up. Not a seminar. Not an elective somebody’s cousin teaches once a semester. A real, sequenced part of how we prepare a child for the world they are actually walking into.

If we’ve found room in a curriculum to teach children about social questions that half this town argues about, then surely we can find room for something every single one of us agrees on. Nobody’s fighting about whether their kid should understand the technology that’s going to be sitting on their desk at work.

Additionally, I want us teaching trades again. I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it. College is not for everybody, especially at today’s prices. I can’t control what a university charges; no state representative can. What I can push for is schools that give someone a way to make a living in a world that no longer hands the best opportunity to a graduate carrying a six-figure bill.

Give credit where it’s due.

My opponent has done some genuinely good things, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Birth to Three was a fantastic thing to work on. Protecting children with food allergies was a fantastic thing to work on. Whatever role she played in helping fund the new schools is admirable, and I’ll say so publicly.

But the truth of the matter is this: a new building without a great curriculum is nothing more than a building.

We are about to spend an enormous amount of money on brick and steel. What happens inside it is the part that decides whether a Branford kid can get a job and afford to live in the town they grew up in. That’s not a criticism of concrete. That’s a question about what we teach. It goes to the heart of how I see this job. Being a state representative is more than a handful of special interests and some token support on a few bills. The job is multitasking. The job is making sure every corner of Branford and every corner of this state gets the things we can all agree on. Affordable housing. Affordable taxes. Young people who can afford to live where they were raised. An education that means something on the other side of graduation.

I’m not angry writing this, and I’m not yelling at anybody. I’m simply saying it’s time we woke up.

Respectfully, to whoever wrote that letter.

And I mean that word. Respectfully.

But if we’re going to write tribal letters to the editor because we like one person better, or because a name sounded like another name we’ve been told to be afraid of, then we’re not doing a thing for our neighbors, for the young people in this town, or for the legacy handed to us by everybody who built this place before we got here.

Read what a candidate actually proposes. Then decide. That’s all anyone should ask.

So, look at this one example and ask yourself the only question that matters this November.

Are you voting facts, or are you voting feelings?