We got a glimpse this week of what may turn out to be a defining race of the 2022 eastern Connecticut election season, and it could be a doozy.

Former New London Mayor Daryl Finizio, who has been in political limbo, out of the candidate spotlight anyway, since he lost a primary challenge for a mayoral reelection bid in 2015, announced this week he is going to seek the 20th District state Senate seat.

The three-term incumbent, Republican Paul Formica, hasn't yet declared a reelection bid, but his remarks in response to Finizio's announcement about seeking the Democratic nomination suggests we could indeed be in for a Finizio vs. Formica race.

"I look forward to a campaign with anyone that wants to have a discussion" of issues pertaining to the betterment of the 20th District, Formica told The Day.

Both Formica and Finizio said this week they like each other and a race between them would be focused on issues.

I usually take that kind of campaign talk as political posturing, with lip service paid to polite niceties at the same time the knives come out.

I can say from firsthand experience, though, having sharply criticized both Formica's and Finizio's policies and decision-making over the years, that neither takes political criticism personally.

They are consummate professional politicians in that regard, thick-skinned public officials who accept the realities of political combat and don't take disagreements to heart.

I've found them both always ready to move on from sparring and prepared to settle new scores on another day.

I'm glad to report that both are formidable candidates in their own ways.

Finizio proved himself the consummate campaigner when, in his first bid for a major Connecticut office, he shook up the New London Democratic establishment and made himself the first elected city mayor in a generation.

He has remained, curiously, both a party insider and rabble rouser, sometimes backing both Democrats and Green Party candidates.

The likable Formica, whose family has taken over the daily management of his restaurant business, Flanders Fish Market in East Lyme, as the senator has grown more entrenched in the Republican establishment in Hartford, is also an astute and canny campaigner.

The political differences between the two candidates could not be more stark, however.

Finizio, a progressive who supported Bernie Sanders in both of the last Democratic presidential primaries, told me this week he believes Formica has been able to cast himself as a moderate despite a voting record that is "100 percent arch conservative."

I think there is a lot of truth to that, and Formica has been successful winning a district that was once reliably Democratic.

The key to winning in the 20th, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, are the independents, the wide middle ground. This is largely true throughout Connecticut, but is especially relevant in a district that includes sprawling suburban towns and the dense urban voting precincts of New London.

In 2022, a progressive Finizio, who questions the need for the country to build so many submarines at Electric Boat, will have to win over the moderates who make up a substantial part of the 20th.

Formica will have to try to keep ducking national GOP Trumpism and the fallacies about voter fraud that pervade the party.

I think he is going to find it hard to do that with an opponent like Finizio, who is going to help voters in the 20th, especially those moderates in the middle, remember why they don't want more ambassadors from the party of insurrection making decisions in Hartford about Connecticut's future.

We will be fortunate here in eastern Connecticut to have front-row seats to a local contest that will showcase some of the major issues that need to be addressed by American voters in 2022.

Bring it on.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com