Politics & Government
Levy points to contrast on Supreme Court abortion decison
Republican candidate in August 9 U.S. Senate primary wants to reduce capital gains levies, make Trump tax cut permanent
By Scott Benjamin
GREENWICH – U.S. Senate candidate Leora Levy is applauding the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting abortion access and says it underscores the differences between her and the convention-endorsed candidate in a primary that could indicate the direction of the Republican Party in Connecticut.
In an interview with Patch.com, Levy, a Greenwich philanthropist and a member of the Republican National Committee, said “I’ve always thought that Roe v. Wade [the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion] was bad law."
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“The legislature [not the U.S. Supreme Court] makes laws,” she added. “That’s the way our system was designed. I do think that it is a state issue."
The recent U.S. Supreme Court 6-3 decision that virtually erases the 1973 ruling on abortion rights has led to rallies and adversarial rhetoric from proponents on both sides.
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Could it be a determining factor in the August 9 Republican U.S. Senate Republican primary in Connecticut?
The convention-endorsed candidate in the three-way race, former state House GOP Leader Themis Klarides of Madison is pro-choice and recently stated in a news release that" in the legislature [she] worked to protect women's right to access safe early-term abortion services."
Levy stated in a news release, "The contrast could not be more clear. My opponent is not only proudly pro-abortion rights, but even on such a historic day bragged about how she helped enshrine abortion under Connecticut law."
“The Supreme Court decision has returned America to valuing, respecting and protecting Life. Following decades of babies’ lives being wrongfully extinguished," Levy added.
The other candidate in the three-way GOP primary, attorney Peter Lumaj of Fairfield, also is pro-life on abortion.
In a recent podcast, CT Mirror Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Pazniokas said, "This really could be one of those primaries that sort of says something about the soul of the Republican Party."
Matt Corey of Manchester, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 2018, said in a phone interview with Patch.com, "We have a liberal state in Connecticut," regarding the position of voters on the abortion ruling.
"But it depends on where you live," he said, noting that there are areas that support the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Klarides captured the convention nomination in May with 56.84 percent of the delegates. Levy tallied 22.7 percent and Lumaj - who has previously sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, governor and Secretary of the State - garnered 19.95 percent.
Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Greenwich, the former long-time state attorney general, is seeking a third term. The Cook Political Report rates the race as Solid Democratic.
There also is a contrast between Levy and Lumaj with Klarides in their support for Republican former President Donald Trump.
Levy and Lumaj hold Trump in high regard. The former president easily captured the five-way Republican presidential primary in 2016. Klarides has said she wrote in the name of her friend - former state House Republican Leader Larry Cafero of Norwalk - on her 2020 presidential ballot.
In a December 2020 phone interview with Patch.com, Klarides, an attorney, said, “If you stepped back and put on your objectivity hat, you can say that some of his [Trump's] domestic policies – but not all of them – moved the country’s economy forward.”
“But you can be the smartest person in the world and you will lose support and offend people if you make caustic and divisive comments,” she remarked.
Gary Rose - the chairman of the Government Department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and the author of a number of books on politics - has said that despite Trump's policy successes, he lacked appeal in Connecticut and that during the 2018 midterm elections, suburban women, who typically split evenly in voting for the major party candidates, trended Democrat.
Levy commented, "There are women who did not like his personality. I’m not one of them. I don’t vote based on personality. I vote based on performance and results.”
She said she agrees with Rose that Trump was one of the few presidents who actually did what he said he was going to do when he campaigned for the office.
In a December 2020 phone interview with Patch.com, Rose praised Trump for reducing taxes, improving the economy, taking a harder line on trade policy and calling on NATO allies to pay a large share of the costs.
Levy added that under Trump "we were an exporter of energy."
She said, “Not only did he do what he said he was going to do. But he did it in at atmosphere of great adversity.”
“They [the Democrats] wouldn’t allow his ambassadors to be confirmed,” said Levy, whose nomination to become Ambassador to Chile was never voted on in the U.S. Senate.
“They wouldn’t allow other nominees to be confirmed," she declared. "He was operating a government with maybe one hand and one leg tied behind his back."
Lumaj also has been a supporter of the former president.
How might the Trump factor impact the primary results?
Corey remarked, "I think Republican voters see how well the country was doing" under Trump and they now see that Biden has "reversed that. You can tell that when you drive up to the gas station or the grocery store."
However, if Klarides has the endorsement and her two challengers are both supporters of the former president, then doesn't that work to her advantage since those challengers are after the same pool of voters?
In a phone interview with Patch.com, long-time Republican State Central member John Morris of Litchfield said, “From a purely political view, you would say that’s the case. Also, the party-endorsed candidate usually has an advantage."
However, Morris, who voted for Levy at the convention, added, “It will depend on turnout and who can appeal to the Republican primary voter. That’s what happened in ‘16” with Trump. “There was tremendous movement [of voters] into the Republican Party.”
The last time the Republicans captured a U.S. Senate race in Connecticut was when Lowell Weicker of Old Lyme was elected to a third term in 1982 - which was before Blumenthal ever captured elective office, but after he worked in the Domestic Affairs Office at the Nixon White House, served as a law clerk in the U.S. Supreme Court and spent four years as Connecticut's U.S. Attorney.
When he was initially running for the U.S. Senate in 20120 Blumenthal said that his daughter called him "the eternal general" since he had been attorney general for nearly 20 years. Manchester Journal-Inquirer columnist Chris Powell recently wrote that with election to a third term, Blumenthal, at age 76, could become the "eternal senator."
CT News Junkie columnist Susan Bigelow recently stated, "It’s galling that he’s running again, because his generation of now-septuagenarians like President Biden, and octogenarians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, continue to grimly hold on to power in a time when people are desperate for change."
A recent Quinnipiac University poll indicated that Blumenthal had a 45 percent approval rating with a 43 percent disapproval figure, the worst numbers that he has had since taking office.
However, in a phone interview with Patch.com, Democratic former gubernatorial candidate and Clinton White House aide Bill Curry of Farmington remarked, “I think you find that about incumbents in many places.”
“Sen. Murphy’s numbers are down,” he added, making reference to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford), who will not be up for re-election until 2024. Murphy had approval/disapproval ratings of 45 and 37 percent.
Curry commented, “Most politicians I’ve met seem to be really good at the outside or on the inside. Dick is one of the few people with a good inside game and a good outside game.”
He added, "When he was [state] attorney general, especially, people would call him a grandstander. But he was never somebody who was throwing red meat to the crowd.”
On another topic, Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston wrote shortly after the 2020 presidential election that Trump had "remade" the Republican Party.
“I think he certainly influenced it,” said Levy. "He brought 14 million new voters to our party."
Regarding the economy: How do you solve the Rubik's Cube called inflation?
Levy criticized Democratic President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package that was approved last year through reconciliation, saying it is largely responsible for the highest rate of inflation in 41 years.
"Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods,” she said, noting that Harvard economist Larry Summers, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, wrote last year in the Washington Post that the spending would result in a surge in inflation.
“They are [now] talking now about the potential for a recession,” exclaimed Levy, who criticized the Federal Reserve Board for being too "late in raising [interest] rates” to combat inflation.
Economists Thomas Sargent and William Silber recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that, "The Fed lost control of inflation by abandoning its decades long strategy of pre-emptive restraint." They noted that in 1984 former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker increased interest rates after unemployment has fallen to 7.8 percent after reaching 10.8 percent less than two years earlier - the highest jobless rate since World War II.
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Richard Vigilante who writes The Next American Century stated that a reduction in capital gains taxes would help tame inflation.
"The great lesson of the Reagan era is that money supply is determined by investment opportunity," he wrote. "Absent such opportunities, no matter how much money the government gives people, they will reject it and turn it into stuff."
Levy remarked, “I would like to reduce that [capital gains] tax for many reasons. It would encourage people to invest."
She said she supports making the 2017 Trump tax cut permanent and reducing business taxes.
"We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem,” commented Levy.
She endorsed reinstalling the Pay As You Go budget controls that dictate that whenever Congress increases spending it reduces other budget line items or increases revenues to offset those new appropriations.
Pay As You Go was last established by Congress in 1990 at the request of then-President George H.W. Bush, a Republican who grew up in Greenwich. It lapsed in 2002.
Levy noted that, in contrast, during Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration the Simpson-Bowles Commission and Super Committee never produced results on deficit reduction.
Levy said she supports reforming Social Security, which according to a 2021 Washington Post story is projected to be insolvent by 2033.
“I would be in favor as long as the person is healthy and able to work, raising the age for Social Security," she said.
Obama proposed during his 2008 campaign increasing the threshold on income exposed to Social Security taxes to $250,000. The current threshold is $147,000.
Levy opposes that step, saying, "with inflation as high as it is and since people are really hurting, increasing the threshold exposed to the Social Security tax would not be right."
On another topic, she said that she opposes lowering defense spending, but indicated some of the current Pentagon appropriations could be rearranged.
Regarding trade policy, Levy said that she is "a proponent of free markets."
She has helped raise money for many Republican candidates across the country and led several philanthropic projects in Greenwich, including an animal shelter and museums.
Levy, 65, who was born in Cuba, fled that country with her family at age three - not long after Fidel Castro's Communist forces took control.
Upon arrival she said that she immersed herself in becoming fluent in English.
“I wanted to be an American just like all the other kids,” Levy recalled. “I was America First before anyone could coin that phrase."
She said that Obama's efforts to thaw relations with Cuba "did noting for the Cuban people" and "the harsh restrictions in which they live."
Obama was the first American president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
"It is a military dictatorship," she declared. "Since January 1, 1959, the people of Cuba have lived in this prison camp called Cuba."
Levy said when some Cubans held protests in July 2021 - the first demonstrations in years - to promote freedom, Biden did not offer supportive statements.
She said that Obama and Biden didn't understand that the Cuban leaders are "relentless and determined" and "don't waver."
Levy exclaimed, "Human rights mean nothing to the military regime in Cuba."
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