Candidates
Plainfield sits in three state legislative districts. These are the Democratic candidates on the ballot for those seats on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
Joseph de la Cruz
Connecticut State Senate
District 18
Role:
State senators write and vote on Connecticut’s laws and the state budget, and represent their district at the Capitol in Hartford. District 18 covers Plainfield along with Griswold, Groton, North Stonington, Preston, Sterling, Stonington and Voluntown.
BIO:
Joe de la Cruz spent 38 years in the sheet-metal trade. He earned his Connecticut journeyman’s license in 1989, joined Sheet Metal Workers Local 40 in 1997, and worked his way up into management at the Hillery Company in Groton, where he welded on Electric Boat projects. He served three terms as State Representative for the 41st District (2017-2023), including as Assistant Majority Whip and Vice Chair of the Insurance and Real Estate Committee, after nine years on Groton’s Representative Town Meeting and Town Council. He is a co-founder of Community Speaks Out, a Groton nonprofit that has helped more than 100 local families through addiction and recovery.
His platform is universal health coverage, mental health and addiction resources, lower daily costs through paid family leave, a higher minimum wage and bringing down energy costs, safer neighborhoods, and support for small business. He is endorsed by SMART Local 40 and is running a publicly financed Citizens’ Election Program campaign.
Samantha Derenthal
Connecticut House of Representatives
District 44
Role:
State representatives write and vote on Connecticut’s laws and the state budget, and carry their district’s concerns to Hartford. District 44 covers part of Plainfield, part of Killingly, and all of Sterling.
BIO:
Samantha Derenthal is Senior Manager of Talent Management at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and an at-large member of the Plainfield Board of Education, where she also serves as Plainfield’s representative to the regional EASTCONN Board of Directors. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Psychology from Bryant University and a master’s in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Roosevelt University, and is a single mother raising her son in Plainfield.
Her platform runs on five pillars: making life more affordable, including lower energy costs and more local control over utilities; protecting our communities while supporting manufacturing, the trades, union jobs and small business; fully funding public education and career and technical pathways; improving access to healthcare, including protecting reproductive healthcare and strengthening Day Kimball Hospital; and connecting the Quiet Corner through transportation and broadband. She is endorsed by the Connecticut State Building Trades Council, the Connecticut AFL-CIO and AFT Connecticut.
Marcus Palumbo
Connecticut House of Representatives
District 47
Role:
State representatives write and vote on Connecticut’s laws and the state budget, and carry their district’s concerns to Hartford. District 47 covers part of Plainfield, along with Canterbury, Chaplin, Lisbon, Scotland, Sprague, and parts of Brooklyn and Norwich.
BIO:
Marcus Palumbo is an advocate and community organizer running on a platform of lower costs and un-rigging an economy he calls the “Scam Economy” – a system he says has been built to let a small group at the very top enrich themselves off other people’s work. He chairs the Sprague Democratic Town Committee, and has been a college journalist, a Congressional intern, and a candidate for the Sprague Board of Selectmen.
If elected he will push to end the Eversource monopoly and lower electric bills, lower property taxes by taxing the rich, and support workers’ rights and better pay. He also calls for banning utility executive bonuses funded by ratepayers and pausing new AI data-center construction over its effect on household rates.