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Politics & Government

Hayes says growing up in Waterbury ‘effects the way I legislate’

Congresswoman has had 11 of her bills signed into law; facing Logan in high-profile campaign rematch

Scott Benjamin, Community Contributor

Posted Fri, Jun 28, 2024 at 12:53 pm ET|Updated Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 11:41 am ET

By Scott Benjamin

WATERBURY – At the moment the campaign headquarters consists of one table that can be easily seen through a large window.

Suddenly, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-5) of Wolcott sprints out the door as a constituent saw her sitting in the emerging headquarters and briefly parked her car and waved from the right side near 142 Bank Street in Waterbury, the largest city in the nip-and-tuck Fifth Congressional District.

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Hayes grew up in Waterbury, was an unwed teen-age mother, graduated from college, taught high school Social Studies, eventually earned a sixth-year diploma and in 2016 was the national teacher of the year for her work at Kennedy High School.

“Growing up here and living here effects the way I legislate,” commented Hayes, the first Democratic African American woman to be elected to the U.S. House from New England.

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“The kids in this city are disproportionately impacted by asthma and asthma-related hospitalizations,” she said, since there “are a lot of abandoned buildings and toxic fields.”

“I worked really hard to get one-to-one chrome book devices for the kids in Waterbury, because during the pandemic everyone was remote,” said Hayes. “I knew there were kids in this city that did not have a lap-top computer they could bring home.”

“People talk a lot about me as I’m the exception, coming out of the Waterbury public schools,” she said. “I know there are so many teachers like me, so many kids like me, and to be able to be in a position to bring their voices to the conversation makes this all worthwhile.”

“This is a resilient place with resilient people who care about each other,” added Hayes in an interview with Patch.com.

She is in her third term and if she prevails on November 5, she would be the first person to represent the Fifth District for a fourth term since Democratic former Waterbury Mayor John Monagan, who served for seven terms in the U.S. House before being defeated in 1972. Republican Nancy Johnson of New Britain served for 12 terms, but the first 10 of those were in the now-defunct Sixth District, part of which was merged into the Fifth District. Johnson only served two terms in the Fifth District.

In one of the country's high-profile races, Hayes faces former state Sen. George Logan of Meriden in a rematch of the 2022 campaign, which Hayes won by less than 2,000 votes.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sponsored a community outreach center in New Britain, the third largest city in the district, two years ago, and now has a Battle Station in Farmington to cover the Farmington Valley. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke at the opening in March.

For months the NRCC has been issuing news releases criticizing Hayes’ record on a raft of issues.

Hayes’ campaign has sent news releases attempting to underscore Logan’s commitment to Republican former President Donald Trump, who apparently has limited appeal in the Fifth District.

Former two-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry said the stakes are high.

“The majority in the House is going to be just five or six seats for one party or the other,” he said.

Southern Connecticut State University Political Science & Urban Affairs Associate Professor Jonathan Wharton remarked that the Fifth District, which stretches from Newtown to North Canaan, is diverse.

“You’ve got Litchfield County,” he said. “You have a mixture of agriculture, tourism and the wine country. It is a very unique district. You don’t see similar patterns in the other districts [in Connecticut]. You have the wealth that comes in with a lot of second homeowners. The stratification is there. Then you have Waterbury, Danbury and Meriden – all cities – which is another important dimension. It is a very unusual district demographically in terms of people’s occupations.”

The Democrats have held the seat since U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford) upset Johnson in 2006. Why would the Republicans target it?

Said Wharton, “A majority of the mayors and first selectmen are Republican. We tend to forget that.”

The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and the Sabato’s Crystal Ball all rate the race as Lean Democratic.

Hayes entered Congress in 2019 facing a learning curve.

Democratic State Central Committee member Audrey Blondin of Goshen told Patch.com in 2022, regarding Hayes' entry into Congress in early 2019: “Jahana had not been in the political spectrum. When that is the case, you don’t know who you can trust. You don’t know if you have a conversation that you are going to be hearing about that conversation the next day.”

Blondin said in a more recent phone interview that Hayes "quickly became an accomplished congresswoman. I have been impressed with her commitment to the rural towns in the Northwest Corner of Litchfield County. They love her for what she has done."

Republican State Central Committee member John Morris of Litchfield has said that Hayes’ voting record is too liberal for the district.

Government Professor Gary Rose of Sacred Heart University, who has written books on Connecticut government, has said that reporters that he has spoken with have said they had difficulty interacting with Hayes.

However, Sharon Democratic Town Committee Chairman Jill Drew said that when Hayes is interacting with a constituent for the first time, she asks, “ 'What is it that I need to know about you? What is it that I need to know about your problem?' ”

Michelle Botelho of Danbury, who made a bid for the Republican nomination in the Fifth District in 2022 and 2024 , told Patch.com earlier this year that voters, particularly older women, have asked her, “Why do you want to run against [Hayes]? She is such a nice lady. She is a teacher.”

In May 2018 as Hayes was entering politics, Mark Pazniokas of CT Mirror described her as “a charismatic talent.”

Drew said, “I’ve always been impressed about her first time on stage, and how someone who came from teaching a bunch of kids was able to address a group of people who had been in politics their whole lives.”

“She knew her stuff as she went to the stage,” Drew added. “Her life experiences – even though she hadn’t been in politics before – her experience as a teacher, she would be a voice of the people. She had been a voice for her students.”

“If you’re a high school teacher, you have to have presence,” she remarked. “Probably the only thing more difficult than being a high school teacher and keeping students engaged is to be a middle school teacher.”

Including Monagan’s defeat in 1972, five incumbent congressmen in the Fifth District have lost their bid for re-election over those 52 years. The others are Democrat Bill Ratchford of Danbury in 1984, Republican Gary Franks of Waterbury in 1996, Democrat Jim Maloney of Danbury in 2002 and Johnson in 2006.

Wharton, a former chairman of the New Haven Republican Town Committee, indicated that Hayes may have made errors, but they don’t rise, for example, anywhere near the level of those made by Franks, who lost his bid for a fourth term in 1996 to Maloney after his private polling indicated that he had a healthy lead just weeks before the election.

Franks, the first Republican African American to be elected to the U.S. House in nearly 50 years, got his memoir published in 1996 and went on a national book tour. During his tenure he appeared on ABC’s Nightline and NBC’s Meet The Press, but Maloney’s campaign distributed a news release with dozens of references to news stories from local outlets where Franks had been unavailable for comment. Franks acknowledged after the election that he was overconfident and should have campaigned more ambitiously and responded promptly to Maloney’s television attack ads.

Democrat Jeff Desmarais of Watertown is making his third bid for the seat in the 32nd state Senate District. He has been running for a legislative seat in each of the four elections since Hayes began running.

Said Desmarais, “My impression is that she learned from the last campaign and she is doing the things that you need to do. I think she came out of it stronger because she learned from it.”

Added Wharton, “She has the support of Chris Murphy. He is quite the rainmaker. Not just for the Connecticut delegation but for the Democratic Party.”

Hayes said she has sponsored 11 pieces of legislation that have been signed into law. They range from benefits for military veterans to funding for baby formula.

In 2020 during the pandemic she was the point person in the Democratic House caucus on child care accessibility.

“You can’t talk about jobs without providing child care,” she said.

In capsule form, Hayes’ characterization of the race is that during the first two years of the Biden Administration, when the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, they got the infrastructure package and the Inflation Reduction Act approved. Since the Republicans took control of the House in January of last year, they have ousted a Speaker, come close to engineering a government shutdown and have approved little legislation.

She said the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package has been “transformational."

Improvements are under way for a difficult stretch of road in Meriden, water and sewer systems are being updated.

It has provided broadband coverage in the Northwest Corner of Litchfield County.

“That is transformational, not only for schools, but health care, tele-medicine and our first responders,” Hayes commented. “It is attracting more business to our state.”

On a separate topic, she hosted a special-order hour on the U.S. House floor in May to address a proposed $30 billion reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Reportedly, the program has had an increase in recipients since the pandemic.

“SNAP is an anti-poverty program,” Hayes explained. “So as the needs of the program increase the participation increased. That means it is working.”

She said that during the pandemic “for the first time [people] had lost their jobs. People for the first time found themselves in need of support. SNAP is doing what it was designed to do, meet the needs of people when they lose their job, when their hours are cut.”

“Now is the time that we need to protect the program,” Hayes exclaimed. “Republicans want to cut it by $30 billion. They want to cut $30 billion to shift that money to help the wealthiest and most well-connected.”

Susan Patricelli Regan, the host of the CT Valley Views cable television show and a candidate for the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination, said, “The biggest issue is the prices in the grocery stores. People pick up a steak and then put in back on the shelf because it is so expensive.”

Said Hayes, “I do hear from a lot of people about the economy. We need to improve all the things that impact how much you earn and how much you pay.”

Political Science professors Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California at Berkeley recently stated in The New York Times that the 2017 Trump tax cut for the wealthy should be canceled in 2025 when it is set to expire and corporate taxes should be increased. They called for using that money to enact an expanded child tax credit and increased tax credits for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Hayes said she would support that proposal and noted that she voted for an expanded tax credit earlier this year since, among other things, it helps families “pay some of their bills.”

The federal debt exceeds $34 trillion and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich has called for a commission to study how to reduce it.

Hayes said she would support establishing a commission, adding, “The largest increase in the deficit was under President Trump, which no one batted an eye at.”

Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston recently stated that, “A study by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that during his term, Mr. Trump approved policies requiring $8.4 trillion of new 10-year borrowing, while Mr. Biden has so far approved a $4.3 trillion increase.”

Hayes commented, “I absolutely support a commission to study how we can reduce the deficit. But there are some things as a country that we have to pay for with services.”

Regarding Trump’s proposal to exempt tips for wait staff from the federal income tax, Hayes said she has submitted legislation “to help tip workers.”

She added that making tip workers be federal income-tax exempt “is not going to stabilize our budgets or make the wealthiest pay their fair share. That is what needs to be focused on.”

Trump also has also called for a weaker dollar. Would that benefit the American economy?

Said Hayes, “I don’t think so.”

“He says all these things and he never follows through on anything,” she exclaimed.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that Congress should repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which has been in place for more than 20 years, and establish Most Favored Nation rules with human rights conditions.

“I would support something like that,” Hayes said. “[It would be] bringing jobs back home.”

Regarding the legislation, Logan wrote in a statement to Patch.com, "China and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] are not our friends, they are the United States’ competitor and one of our biggest adversaries. The CCP violates human rights, they send deadly fentanyl across our borders, and they will not rest until they dismantle our economy.”.

Logan added that he supports the bipartisan SHIP Act legislation, which would “diversify our supply chain and lessen our reliance on China.”

On another topic, Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, recently wrote in The New York Times that there should be warning labels on social media. It requires congressional approval.

Remarked Hayes, “I think we should have hearings and talk it through. He’s not pulling it out of the sky. He is basing it on the data that we’ve seen. I think the data has shown us the negative effects of social media, especially on our young people.”

A truck is honking its horn outside of 142 Bank Street. The sign for the campaign headquarters has arrived.

Dick Clark wrote in his memoir that when he moved American Bandstand in 1964 from Philadelphia to Los Angeles an advertising pro told him to put a big sign on his office. It shows people that you mean business.

Hayes says 142 Bank Street has been her headquarters in each campaign since the 2018 primary. Voters know they can drop by and share their concerns and offer their help.

Which elected officials – past or present – does Hayes most admire?

She says, “Shirley Chisholm,” the Brooklyn congresswoman who in 1968 was the first African-American woman to be elected to the U.S. House.

Said Hayes, “She convened the first White House Conference on Hunger 50 years ago.”

She adds, “Nancy Pelosi,” the former U.S. House Speaker who still serves in Congress.

“She gets things done,” Hayes remarked. “The people in my district don’t have time for inaction. What I saw her do during the pandemic was to rally people and get legislation passed. What she did during the pandemic was remarkable.”

Resources:

Interview with Jahana Hayes, Patch.com, on Monday, June 24, 2024.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Phone interview with Jill Drew, Patch.com, on Tuesday, May 28, 2024.

Phone interview with Susan Patricelli Regan, Patch.com, on Wednesday, May 29, 2024.

Phone interview with Jonathan Wharton, Patch.com, on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

Interview with Jeff Desmarais, Patch.com, on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

Phone interview with Bill Curry, Patch.com, on Thursday, June 13, 2024.

Interview with Gary Rose, Patch.com, on Tuesday, January 21, 2020.

Interview with John Morris, Patch.com, on Saturday, November 26, 2022.

Congresswoman Jahana Hayes, Weekly Wrap For May 6-10, 2024.

https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/blondin-praises-hayes-withstanding-withering-attacks