Oz Griebel - The Candidate
Oz Griebel will always be one of the most memorable people of my life.
He was a friend, a local business leader in Connecticut, a true believer in public service, and someone who fully embraced the belief that if you did the right thing for the right reasons, somehow, everything would work out.
When he decided to run for governor of Connecticut as an independent in 2018 he told editorial boards that his campaign “put the ‘Q’ in quixotic.” Despite the odds he thought he was the best candidate, with the most experience, and the best ideas. I have to admit, he was. The last weekend before the election the state’s largest newspaper at the time - The Hartford Courant - agreed, giving him its endorsement over the two major party candidates.
He never gave up. The lease on his downtown Hartford apartment was due to expire in December of that year, but he didn’t bother renewing because he was certain he would be moving into the Governor’s Residence in January. This despite the fact that he was polling in single digits. Two days before the election, when he won the Courant’s endorsement, he was certain it would put him over the top. He finished the race with four percent of the vote.
A few weeks after the election we laughed about his blind confidence and he told me, “When you run - you have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning and see the next governor, no matter what.”
I volunteered on Oz’s campaign in 2018, but also watched him as a political observer. When it was all over we sat down and talked about what he learned. Photos from that experience and an interview with Oz are included in the photo essay I produced in early 2019.
In 2020, Oz was hit by a car while jogging and he died in the hospital a few weeks later. He was 71. I have met many upstanding citizens and purely good people in my life. Few compare to Oz.