Politics & Government
Favored Lamont doesn't solely control his political destiny
Former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Curry says national inflation will be a factor in governor's bid for a second term
Ned Lamont Barack Obama
Bob Stefanowski Themis Klarides
Joe Biden Dannel Malloy
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By Scott Benjamin
Former two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Curry says Ned Lamont “is the favorite” in the November 8 election – awarding the incumbent Democratic governor “high marks” for his response to the pandemic and “his integrity and heart.”
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“Lamont has not been among the more draconian among governors in dealing with COVID, and that has helped him, because he has continued to be publicly engaged,” Curry said of the governor from Greenwich.
“That likely will be an advantage for him,” he continued in a phone interview with Patch.com.
However, Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie stated recently that Lamont could learn from New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who was elected with a 14 percent plurality in 2017 and then prevailed by just three percent last November, a much closer result than had been anticipated.
Curry, who worked for two years as a White House side to Democratic former President Bill Clinton, agreed with Rennie’s analysis, adding, “Blue states are not as blue as red states are red.”
Curry of Farmington, who was the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 1994 and 2002, said the Democratic candidates for governor in such Republican states as Wyoming and Idaho have scant chance of winning. However, Democratic strongholds as Massachusetts and Maryland currently have Republican governors.
News reports indicate that financial executive Bob Stefanowski of Madison, who lost to Lamont by 45,000 votes in 2018, is the favorite to again capture the Republican nomination. He has had a high profile since the last gubernatorial race, including providing masks to needy residents.
It appears his chief rival will be former state House GOP Leader Themis Klarides of Madison, who has been praised for her work on the 2017 bipartisan budget agreement, which apparently has been partly responsible for the recent state budget surpluses.
No Democratic nominee has scored a landslide victory since former Gov. William O’Neill of East Hampton in 1986.
Curry exclaimed, “Lamont will be responsible for his own actions in office, but he also will be held responsible for things that he cannot control. That’s just the way.”
“I’ve always said that governors have enormous power,” he continued. “They do something and people benefit 15 or 20 years later, long after they have left office, and no one will remember that it was because of something that they had done all those years earlier. The national economy will be a factor. When the economy was strong in 1998 under Clinton, almost every governor running for re-election, Democrat or Republican, won.”
“Nobody has that much power to effect what is going on right now,” Curry added. “For example, nothing that anyone in Connecticut state government does will have much impact on inflation. But everyone running for office in Connecticut [this year] will be politically impacted by inflation.”
Inflation for 2021 was at seven percent, the highest that it has been since 1982 after then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker boosted interest rates to the point that they subdued inflation but resulted in a 10.8 percent unemployment rate in October 1982, the highest since the end of World War II.
Republicans in the General Assembly recently proposed temporarily slashing the state sales tax from 6.35 to 5.99 percent to help offset the rising costs.
In a news release, state Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly (R-Stratford) stated, “We want to help working- and middle-class families when it comes to kitchen table economics and reduce every day financial strains that make it harder and harder to budget for a family.”
Curry disagrees with the plan.
“To think that lowering the sales tax will somehow curb inflation has no serious economic reasoning to support it,” he declared. “It shows that whoever is proposing it is not reading the newspapers.”
“There are reasons to lower the sales tax, because it is regressive,” he added. “It is not as bad as the property tax. But it is not good.”
Curry said some Republicans have said the inflationary spiral is partly due to wage inflation. However, he countered that he sees “no evidence of that:”
He said currently part of the problem is low wages in some sectors, which is why “the supply chain can’t find enough workers.”
Curry said that overall Lamont has been more effective than his immediate predecessor, Dannel Malloy (D-Essex), who scored narrow victories in 2010 and 2014.
“Lamont exhibits some greater empathy for the disadvantaged,” Curry insisted.
However, in some categories he rates former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield), who served from 2004 to 2011, even higher.
“She tried to do something about political corruption and she tried to do something about the impoverished fiscal condition of the cities – more so than any Democratic governor in my lifetime,” Curry remarked.
Additionally, he lamented that neither Malloy or Lamont enacted a public option for health care coverage.
Curry said he believes “many, many thousands” of small businesses and self-employed residents would apply for the coverage, which would curb health care costs.
“Like Obama and Biden – Malloy and Lamont promised a public option,” he declared. “And all of them walked away from the promise because of their relations with the insurance industry and because of the concerns of the private insurers, who are the principal cause of the costs of the health care system in America.”
Regarding the public option, Obama wrote in his 2020 memoir, “A Promised Land,” that “trying to dismantle the existing system and replace it with an entirely new one would be not only a political nonstarter but hugely disruptive economically.”
Curry commented that a public health care option “was the dominant issue” during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates.
“With Biden, I don’t know if he has ever mentioned it from the night of the election to today,” Curry said.
On another topic, a Fall 2020 report from Fitch Ratings stated that the debt for Connecticut’s state employee pensions is the second worst in the country, after Illinois.
Curry remarked, “I don’t want to pretend that this is a problem that should have been solved by now. “It’s hard to make up a half century of inattention in a year or 10 years or even the next half century.”
Patch.com has reported that CT Mirror budget reporter Keith Phaneuf said in April 2019 that the pensions were structurally under-funded each year from 1939 through 2010. He indicated that about 85 percent of the current debt was due to errors made in the past.
Curry said he conducted a study on the issue 30 years ago when he was state comptroller and called for another study 20 years ago when he was making his second bid for governor.
He said that, “Too many people don’t want to face this kind of music.”
Curry applauded former state Comptroller Kevin Lembo of Guilford, who was elected in 2010 and stepped down in December due to heart illness.
Lembo is partly credited with the portion of the 2017 bipartisan budget agreement that established having surplus money be utilized to reduce the state’s pension obligations.
“Our finest constitutional officer,” Curry said of Lembo. “Professional. Diligent. Honest as the day is long.”
Lamont has pointed to the $1.7 billion that was used during the budget cycle that ended last June that was used to pay down some of the obligations.
However, state Sen. Ryan Fazio (R-36) of Greenwich recently told Patch.com that between unfunded pension and health obligations, the state is facing a $100 billion bill over the next generation.
On a separate subject, since last summer Republicans in the General Assembly have called for action to address the recent rise in crime.
CT Mirror reported last October that the GOP state senators support “making it easier to move some young people accused of breaking the law from juvenile court to adult court,” where they face more serious penalties.
Curry, who served as a state senator from 1979 to 1983, said, “There has never been a session of the Legislature where they don’t attack the issue of crime.”
“One of the problems is how we police high crime districts,” he exclaimed.
“Just about everything that we’ve done about the war on crime and the war on drugs has been wrong,” Curry added. “They enact meaningless increases in penalties that decades later they take back.”
He insisted that the increase in crime is partly the “symptoms of our larger culture.”
“You have to improve the quality of life and of economic opportunity,” said Curry.
He said the crime problem is identical to the reasons some schools perform poorly.
“They are on the same list as the poor neighborhoods,” Curry commented. “We talk about more teachers and not about poverty itself.”
References:
Barack Obama, “A Promised Land,” Random House, 2020, Page 583.
Ryan Fazio, interview with Patch.com, Monday, January 17, 2022.
CT Senate Republicans release anti-crime proposals (ctmirror.org)
Kevin Lembo to resign as CT comptroller due to heart illness (ctmirror.org)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u...
Budget reporter declares Lamont's proposed plan breaks the mold | Brookfield, CT Patch
