The 2010 election cycle in Connecticut is dominated by candidates from a small geographic radius in Fairfield County, including three practically next-door neighbor millionaires from the Greenwich area, Senate candidates Linda McMahon and Dick Blumenthal and gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley.

Dan Malloy and George Jepsen, candidates for governor and attorney general, are also from Fairfield County, and have known each other for decades, literally sharing a law office together back in the day.

During her visit with The Register Citizen earlier this week, it was interesting to converse with Denise Merrill, Democratic candidate for secretary of the state.

She is from the sparsely-populated northeast corner of the state - she's represented Storrs in the legislature.

Merrill and her Republican opponent, state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr., are fighting an uphill battle to get voters to pay any attention at all to them or the secretary of the state race in a year when the U.S. Senate contest is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and you also have vacancies in both the governor's office and attorney general's office for the first time in more than a decade.

But coming from "the other Connecticut," as we in the Northwest Corner know well, Merrill is used to being in a position of being overlooked.

At the Democratic convention, facing two opponents for the secretary of the state nomination, she said that the fight became a coalition of small towns vs. delegates from the cities.

In the Legislature, the same kind of "city mouse vs. country mouse" fights have also played out many times.