Janet Peckinpaugh

Peckinpaugh owes her name recognition to decades of work as a television newscaster, starting in 1984 with WTNH-TV, Ch. 8, and from publicity generated by a successful sex discrimination lawsuit against one of her later employers, Post-Newsweek Stations, which then owned WFSB, Ch. 3, In 1999, Peckinpaugh, who also worked for WVIT, Ch. 30, won the suit and was initially awarded $8.3 million, an amount drastically reduced by the trial judge before a settlement with the Post-Newsweek stations. In 2009, she appeared in an infomercial for Lend America, a mortgage company, in which she was the anchor on a fictional newscast, and she has been criticized for exploiting her role as a journalist to generate business for what turned out to be an unreliable company. Lend America was later snared in federal fraud allegations. Another issue during the primary campaign was her credibility as a Republican. Not only was she unaffiliated for years — common among journalists striving to avoid the appearance of bias — but she worked for the Democratic National Committee in Washington in the early 1970s.