Harding says Rell deserves thanks for Citizens’ Election Program

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD - - State Rep. Stephen Harding says one of his predecessors in the 107th state House District deserves a Tiffany trophy for signing a campaign finance package that meets the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Harding – a Republican from Brookfield – said, “It is her greatest legacy,” when asked about the Citizens’ Election Program legislation that former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) signed in 2005.

“It has removed special interest money out of the election cycle,” said Harding – who was initially elected in 2015 in the district, which includes Brookfield, part of northern Danbury and the Stony Hill section of Bethel.

For example, a state House candidate can receive a $30,575 grant by raising $5,300 in contributions of $5 to $270 from at least 150 residents in the municipalities in their district.

“The more you can get special interest money out of politics, it’s a good thing,” said Harding, who is running unopposed in the November 3 election in the 107th District. The Republicans have held the seat every election since 1976. Rell served in from 1985 to 1995 before she became lieutenant governor and then ascended to the governorship in July 2004.

Former state Comptroller Bill Curry of Farmington, a Democrat who lost bids for the governorship in 1994 and 2002, told Patch.com in 2018 that Rell, who left the governorship in early 2011, “did a fabulous job of pushing for campaign finance reform and ethics reform. She made this a more honest state.”

When the Citizens’ Election Program was approved in 2005, only two states - Arizona and Maine – had similar programs, both of which had resulted from citizen initiatives. Connecticut was the first state in which a public funding mechanism was established solely through the efforts of elected officials.

Harding said in an interview, “I’ve participated in the Citizens’ Election Program. I’ve heard from legislators on both sides of the aisle on it. I really believe that it has removed the special interest money out of the election cycle in Connecticut. And I think that is so important that we have a Legislature with races like the ones we have in Connecticut, and that are in the best interests of our constituents. It makes it a more valuable program.”

State Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury, who was initially elected in 1988, has said that “80 percent” of the candidates will tell you that the “most distasteful” thing they have to do is raise money.”

CT News Junkie reported in 2017 that Rell, who became governor after former Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) resigned and was then sentenced to prison, told a forum at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain that she had initially been opposed to public financing of campaigns.

“Its taxpayer money, we’re not going to use taxpayer money to fund candidates’ brochures and their little twist off top things that you get from every candidate, or pencils or flyers of whatever,” she said. “No, we’re not going to do it.”

“And then we started to see more and more and more influence of money,” Rell continued. “And I remember as lieutenant governor thinking this bill comes up every year. We’re going to be dealing with this, why don’t we really put together a group and talk about it. Well it didn’t materialize.”

Rell continued, “When I became governor, there was more and more push to say let’s do something. Let’s literally do something about the influence of money in campaigns.”

In 1998, Rell, who was then lieutenant governor, told The Brookfield Journal that if someone at a campaign fund-raising reception asked her if they could do something else to help, she would ask them to provide her with names and contact information for potential contributors.

At the time, she and Rowland were opposed by former U.S. Rep. Barbara Kennelly (D-1) of Hartford and her running mate, Joe Courtney of Vernon, who is now the Democratic congressman from the Second District.

While making a Sunday afternoon phone call from the kitchen of her Brookfield home, Rell spoke for about three minutes with a potential contributor from a list that had been provided her and then asked him for a certain amount of money. She recalled that there was prolonged silence before he said, “I think you should know that I am Barbara Kennelly’s personal attorney.”

Rell said that she apologized and politely ended the conversation.

She added, “Three days later I got a check in the mail from him for $500,”

Harding said, “I think [the Citizens’ Election Program] has been successful. We can have a discussion over the grant amounts and whether they should be as high as they are.”

He said the program, which began in 2008, also has diminished the influence of political action committee contributions by legislative leaders.

“They have limited influence through any political action committees that they may sponsor and legislators are voting their conscience,” Harding said.

Republican state Party Chairman J.R. Romano told Patch.com in 2019 that since the Citizens’ Election Program took effect it has been more difficult for both Republicans and Democrats to recruit state legislators to run for Congress.

He said that since they are seeking to get a corps of small donations to qualify for a grant to run for the state House or Senate they aren't amassing a large network of contributors that could be more helpful later on in a congressional campaign.

In some instances the Citizens’ Election Program has had limited impact on gubernatorial contests.

All three of the major 2018 gubernatorial candidates – Republican Bob Stefanowski of Madison, Democrat Ned Lamont of Greenwich and independent Oz Griebel of Hartford – did not utilized the Citizens Election Program.

Rell served during a time when the economy was weaker than, for example, in the mid-1980s when former Gov. William O’Neill (D-East Hampton) signed signature measures to rebuild the state’s transportation infrastructure following the collapse of the Mianus River Bridge in Greenwich and to fund the Education Enhancement Act for the kindergarten through 12th grade schools.

“However, her legacy should not be overlooked,” said Harding. “She got a lot accomplished in a bipartisan fashion.”

Harding noted that she signed the distracted driving legislation.

The New York Times reported in 2005 as the bill became law that it was the strictest bill of its type in the nation. Rell later signed additional bills to address the impact of text messaging.

Harding remarked, “Texting has become the bigger issue since it is even more dangerous than just talking on a cell phone and that legislation has become even more important.”

Rell also signed the graduated licensing for 16- and 17-year-old drivers that was developed by another former state representative from the 107th District – Republican David Scribner of Brookfield.

Said Harding, “I got my drivers’ license shortly before those standards came into effect. But I strongly believe that the increased standards for the 16- and 17-year-old drivers has gone a long ways toward making their lives safer.”

In a recent phone interview with Patch.com, Fred Carstensen, the director of the Connecticut Center For Economic Analysis , called the state’s $100 million stem cell program, signed by Rell in 2005, “hands down” the best in the country, since it included research from Yale, Wesleyan and the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

In a 2010 interview the late Russell Fryer, a long-time Political Science professor at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, said that he had Rell in class in the early 1980s when she was a part-time student and called her “a good governor.”

He said that Rell was one of those “two or three students” per class that were active throughout the semester in class discussions.

Said Fryer, “Based on what she said that semester, I never would have thought that as governor she would have signed that civil unions bill.”

Rell has been credited with leading the effort to prevent the proposed 2005 closure of the New London/Groton submarine base, which has long been an economic engine that feeds into many subcontractors across Connecticut.

Godfrey told Patch.com in 2019 that of the six governors that he has served under, only O’Neill had a better legislative liaison operation.

The M. Jodi Rell Center For Public Service at the University of Hartford was established in 2011 to promote a discussion: ethics in government, the importance of civil discourse in politics and citizen involvement in public service and government.

The center sponsored televised job interviews in 2018 in which a small number of the gubernatorial candidates answered questions from a political consultant to promote understanding on their qualifications for the $150,000-a-year position.

However, critics have exclaimed that Rell – who had an unprecedented 83 percent job approval rating in a May 2006 Quinnipiac University poll – did little to expend her political capital to address an anemic economy that worsened 26 months before her departure with the national financial services crisis and ensuing Great Recession.

In 2016, CT News Junkie columnist Terry Cowgill wrote, “Instead of using her popularity to build coalitions and push through reforms to make ends meet, Rell chose to use budget gimmicks such as one-time revenues, borrowing, selling state assets, and draining the rainy day fund.”

Unlike her immediate successor, Dannel Malloy (D-Essex), she didn’t reduce the full-time state employee work force by 13.1 percent or become the first governor since 1939 to fully fund the pensions for the state employees and the public school teachers. Unlike Lamont, the current governor, she did not put Connecticut on a “debt diet.”

Andy Bromage wrote in the Fairfield County Weekly in 2009 that Rell had a limited public schedule in comparison to her immediate predecessors. The headline read: “Missing In Action.” A review of the story by the New Haven Independent stated that Rell’s routine was too often “show up a little bit each day and duck reporters.”

The Hartford Courant in 2007 had published a similar story.

CT Mirror reported in 2010, that former Gov. Lowell Weicker (ACP), who had served from 1991 to 1995, told a forum that Rell seemed “disinterested” in the position.

Weicker added, “A governor should be an activist. I just don’t see that from the Rell administration. Do I think she’s a nice lady? Yes, I certainly do.”