By Steve Collins
Staff Writer

BRISTOL — When the Republicans found themselves without a mayoral candidate in August, they turned to a 62-year-old bookkeeper who had never sought public office before.

Mary Alford said that when GOP leaders asked her to run, she was initially stunned.

“It would never have occurred to me,” Alford said, “but I just felt honored to be asked.”

She took up the challenge — the first woman to seek the city’s top job in two decades — and hasn’t regretted jumping into the three-way race for mayor.

“I realized I do have skills” to ask the right questions, understand the finances and handle the job of creating “a lean, mean City Hall machine,” Alford said.

Alford is vying Nov. 3 with first-term Democratic Mayor Art Ward and independent Gary Lawton for the right to claim the $98,000-a-year post at the helm of city government.

“Mary has run a good race from the beginning and she’s got a good shot” at winning, said city Republican chief T.J. Barnes.

Both Barnes and Alford readily admit she’s a long-shot, but both insist “anything can happen” when voters head to the polls.

Alford said people are “tired of the status quo” and eager for someone in charge who will “communicate, communicate, communicate” and offer “straight talk” about what’s necessary.

She said she’s up to it.

Born in Plymouth and a graduate of Terryville High School, Alford said she stumbled into her career after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper.

“I call myself the accidental bookkeeper,” Alford said.

She applied for the position even though she knew nothing about bookkeeping beyond her ability to balance a checkbook. But she knew she was good with math.

At the interview, the general manager opened up a ledger book filled with figures and asked her what was wrong with it, Alford said. Right away spotted a number in the wrong place.

It led her to working as a bookkeeper for a number of businesses over the years, including her current job with Pelletier Mechanical Services in Thomaston.

Alford said she’s been lucky in getting a string of excellent bosses, too, who valued her input, respected her and asked her advice. “They enabled me to think in a broader way,” Alford said.

She loves working with numbers because it allows her to help with “getting the finances in order” for any business while offering her a chance through “the blood and guts of bookkeeping” to see how a company really runs.

Alford married “very young” before getting divorced. A brief second marriage also failed.

She had two sons, Gary and Joseph, and a daughter, Amy.

Joseph died after 17 days, a hardship that Alford said also proved one of the best times of her life because his brief life did so much to show her how wonderful and compassionate people can be. She recalled how a dress shop in Thomaston closed its doors on a busy Saturday so she could try on a black dress in privacy after the baby died.

Alford moved to Bristol when her son, Gary, wanted to wrestle for Coach Dennis Seigman at Bristol Central High School. It was there that she met Lawton, an older wrestler.

Lawton still can’t help calling her Mrs. Alford.

She said that despite her happiness keeping the books for many businesses, her favorite job was spending seven years taking care of her two granddaughters, Alyssa and Emma.

During the televised mayoral debate, she said, she couldn’t help saying hello to them, knowing they’d be watching.

Like her opponents, Alford never got a college degree, but she did take some classes at the Connecticut State Teachers’ College, now Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

Alford got involved in politics only a year ago, when she helped out with Republican Jill Fitzgerald’s unsuccessful state House race.

She said she learned from that campaign that she could be a good cheerleader and that her organizational skills could come in handy on the campaign trail.

Even so, she didn’t think about running herself until the GOP’s leadership approached her after nominee John Gill unexpectedly dropped out for medical reasons.

For most of the past two years, Republicans had assumed that businessman Ken Johnson, who lost a tight race to Ward in 2007, would run again. But Johnson said this spring he couldn’t run so the party scrambled to find potential candidates, turning up Gill only at the last minute.

Bristol has never had a woman mayor, but the Republicans have had women run for mayor at least twice in the past. Former city Registrar Ellie Klapatch was the first woman to seek the city’s top job back in 1987.

The Democrats have yet to run a woman for mayor, though the party nominated Ellen Zoppo for the post two years ago. Ward beat her in a primary, however, so she didn’t reach the ballot.