Drew Wants Democrats To Return To Roosevelt Roots

By Scott Benjamin

Middletown Mayor Dan Drew says Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not taking the Democratic Party down the path to Karl Marxism.

Free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage and protecting American workers from low-wage foreign competition is not a replica of Abbie Hoffman’s 1968 Yippie Party platform.

“A lot of these ideas have been mainstream Democratic ideas for a long time,” said Drew, who was initially elected mayor in 2011 and has been campaigning for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination since January.

The mayor said they have been part of the platform from Franklin Roosevelt through Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and beyond. Drew has a framed photograph of Roosevelt in his office.

“The last 30 years the far right has been shaming people away from it,” Drew complained in an interview.

Unemployment is lower than it’s been in 16 years, Wall Street is surging – yet there is middle class wage stagnation and noted Cornell University economist Robert Frank has stated that the gap in pay between CEOs and the middle class workers has been growing since 1980.

Former two-time gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry (D-Farmington) has said that former President John Kennedy insisted that a strong economy lifts all boats. Curry, who was a domestic affairs advisor to former President Bill Clinton, said Clinton engineered the longest economic expansion in America’s 241-year history, but it didn’t do much to lift the middle class boats.

Curry has said the Internet, as was the case with other technological advances, has concentrated wealth. During the industrial revolution of the late 1800s it was the Rockefellers, Mellons and Carnegies. During the digitization era it has been Jobs, Gates, Brin and Page, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Dell.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2013 that University of California at Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez’s research indicated that wealth was more concentrated in the United States than at any time since 1928 – the year before the stock market crash that caused the Great Recession.

“Connecticut’s problem is that it caters to the wealthy,” said Drew.

He said that there are more billionaires in the state than in 2011 when Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) took office. He added that for eons, the Nutmeg state has had “a tremendous” number of corporate tax exemptions, which has allowed major companies to pay less in corporate levies than some elderly pay in taxes.

However, Malloy, who is not seeking a third term next year, has indicated that raising taxes on the upscale, such as the elite residents living in a Greenwich Belle Haven neighborhood 12-bedroom mansion with the upstairs maid and the downstairs maid is a prescription for defeat.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that there was a 45 percent decline in income tax revenue from the 100 wealthiest residents in the Nutmeg State between 2015 and 2016 – a reduction of $200 million in revenue.

They “are dramatically less wealthy than they were before,” Kevin Sullivan of West Hartford, the state commissioner of Revenue Services told the wire service.

Drew disagrees. He said his plan to increase taxes on the wealthy would net an additional $2 billion toward the remaining $3.6 billion budget gap for the current two-year cycle. He “adamantly opposes” increasing the sales tax, which he calls “regressive.”

And as for the $1.57 billion in savings that has been realized, he said it was wrong to again have the state’s 45,000 employees bear the burden, as they had in 2009 under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) and in 2011 under Malloy’s shared sacrifice plan and through layoffs during Malloy’s second term in office.

“That is not fair,” Drew declared.

He said he would not have negotiated the terms that were narrowly approved last month by both chambers of the General Assembly.

However, Drew said once it was negotiated that way, it “was good that it passed because the alternative would have been chaos.”

However, some economists say the state collective bargaining units have gotten off almost scot-free, since there will be no layoffs for four years and their benefits packages have been extended from 2022 to 2027.

Middletown boasts one of the few AAA bond ratings in Connecticut outside of Fairfield County and Drew helped attract a 264-acre Federal Express ground center that will generate 1,000 additional jobs.

Drew said the state may continue to attract distribution centers.

Amazon already has two facilities in Connecticut with a third – a fulfillment center – under construction in North Haven, which will employ 1,800 people.

However, there could be negative consequences since Amazon and other online retailers have about five percent of the retail market nationally, according to economist Donald Klepper Smith of DataCore Partners in New Haven, and Time recently reported that analysts believe that the result could be that nationally one in four shopping malls will be closed by 2022.

“Economic competition usually sorts that out,” said Drew.

“My bigger concern is that Amazon is getting so powerful that it will be able to crush any another competition,” the mayor added. “I think there could be some serious anti-trust considerations.”

He believes that the malls and other retail centers will not be impacted by installing tolls, which is another of his proposals to relieve Connecticut of future budget deficits. Metro Danbury officials, in particular, have been concerned about the impact on the Danbury Fair Mall, which reportedly attracts 40 percent of its customers from out of state.

“People will continue to use our roads,” said Drew. “Trucks keep coming through here from all over the country.”

Regarding economic development, the mayor said Connecticut’s real estate market would improve considerably if the state established a program similar to the Excelsior Scholarships now available in New York state, where there is a path to free tuition for students from families earning less than $125,000 a year.

College graduates could focus on paying off a mortgage instead of balancing that with student debt.

“We have to do it or we’re going to be at a massive competitive disadvantage,” said Drew.

Retired Webster Bank economist Nick Perna told CTMirror earlier this year that Connecticut has a “boat load” of public colleges, some of which might have to close, particularly with declining enrollments over the recent years.

Drew said he would not close any campuses.

“I think the more availability for people, the better,” the mayor said.

Regarding expanded online offerings, Drew said, “I prefer in-person education, but there’s a place for online.”

He added that Connecticut’s public colleges should revise their curriculums to better address where the future positions will be, as well as the growing impact of automation, which according to ABC News could eliminate as many as 38 percent of the current jobs over the next 15 years.

Drew stopped short of endorsing mandatory cooperative-education work study for students at the four-year public schools, since he needs to consider all of the ramifications of that step. However, he said, at the very least, the schools should encourage work-study and acquiring at least a minor in some field related to the Nutmeg State’s job market.

He said he is encouraged by the recent community college program that is connected with the increase in aero-space projects at Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney in East Hartford, which is expected to hire about 8,000 additional employees over the next decade. But, the mayor said that project should be expanded.

Drew said after graduating from New Milford High School in 1998, his liberal arts education at the University of Connecticut at Storrs – where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science – was an asset that has assisted him in his government career. He was editor of The Daily Campus, a position once held by former U.S. Rep. William Ratchford (D-5) of Danbury and long-time Boston Globe columnist and one-time Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville, a New Haven native.

In the classroom, he said he benefitted from a course on budget-making, where he learned not just the value of dollars, but the human dimension that is impacted when you craft a fiscal blueprint.

More recently, the mayor earned a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University in New York City.

Drew said “maybe’ when asked if he would make his income tax returns public before the state nominating convention next May.

The eventual candidate will probably be determined in a primary next August.

The field of probable Democratic contenders also includes former state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jonathan Harris of West Hartford, Branford business executive Jacey Wyatt, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Mattei of Hartford, state Comptroller Kevin Lembo of Guilford and possibly Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman of Tolland, who has indicated that she will announce her decision after the budget is approved for the fiscal year that started July 1.

Drew said although he objects to Malloy’s economic development strategies, he praises his housing program.

“There are fewer homeless people,” said the mayor. “There is now more affordable housing.”

Drew also credited Malloy with being “the first governor in a generation to tackle the pension debt.”

Even with that effort, CTNewsJunkie reported earlier this year that the pensions are only 35.5 percent funded. Brookfield Democratic First Selectman Steve Dunn has said that 80 percent and above is considered "stellar."