In addition to its impressive showing in Bridgeport yesterday, the Working Families Party — launched in Connecticut in 2002 — also claimed two of four seats on the Hartford school board and came extremely close to winning a third seat when incumbent school board member Sharon Patterson-Stallings finished a close fifth in the thirteen-candidate field. Since Patterson-Stallings finished within 25 votes of the Democratic incumbent who placed fourth in that race, it appears that there will be an automatic recount to determine who gets the fourth seat.

Moreover, the Working Families Party currently boasts two members on Hartford’s nine-member city council — one more than the hapless GOP.

The WFP’s Larry Deutsch, a pediatrician at a community health center, is currently serving as the council’s minority leader. Party activist Luis E. Cotto, a 42-year-old arts administrator whose father once worked in the tobacco fields of Connecticut’s River Valley, is the other Working Families councilman. Both men were elected in 2007, defeating their Republican rivals to capture the two minority-party seats.

It’s very similar to county commissioner races in Pennsylvania. While five candidates were elected, including two minority-party seats guaranteed by state law, Bridgeport voters were allowed to vote for as many as three candidates in yesterday’s school board election.

While the Democrats control all twenty seats on the Bridgeport city council, it should be noted that the Working Families Party also put up a spirited fight for a council seat in the city’s 137th district where Maria Valle, an incumbent Democrat who had been denied renomination by her own party, came within 47 votes of winning another term on the council. Valle received 381 votes exclusively on the WFP line while losing to Democrat Manuel Ayala.

Incidentally, that race also featured write-in candidate Angel M. DePara, the father of a city councilmember in an adjoining district. DePara’s write-in votes have not yet been counted.