Connecticut businessman Andy Ross’s short-lived campaign for New Haven mayor lasted for less than 72 hours.

In a comment on the New Haven Independent Web site on Friday, March 9, Ross said he was persuaded that it had been the wrong choice to enter the mayoral race in the first place, though he said he might run in the future after schooling himself on the workings of New Haven. Ross — who had announced his intention to run several days earlier — called the week a “great lesson in civics and humility for me.”

“It has become clear to me that passion and a desire to want to see change in a city is not enough to make a person qualified for holding public office, especially the top spot a city has to offer,” he wrote. “I was blinded by the thought that a willingness to want to bring about change and apply grander visions would be enough to convince people that an unknown and admitted inexperienced person of government might be able to do the job.”

Earlier in the week, Ross had garnered criticism on the Independent’s forums for having never heard of the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods, according to an interview with Paul Bass ’82. He also said he thought the dispute between Yale-New Haven Hospital and the union trying to organize there was “resolved,” although it is arguably less resolved now than ever before.

Ross is owner of the Andy Ross Group, the second-largest mortgage firm in Connecticut, and at age 15 was one of the youngest people in Connecticut ever to receive his real estate license.