Politics & Government
A lot of women vote; more need to run for elected office
Lt. Gov. Bysiewicz laments that females still haven't cracked the 'glass ceiling' to the White House
By Scott Benjamin
HARTFORD – There is a prized Kamala Harris campaign poster in room 304.
“I admired it when I saw it in [former state Senate President Pro Tempore] Don Williams’s home and several weeks later he sent me the poster,” says Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown) as she sits at a table in her State Capitol office.
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She remarked that it is drawn in the same style as the 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama presidential campaign posters.
“It is incredibly disappointing that she is not president,” says Bysiewicz, who is the highest-ranking female elected official in Connecticut’s state government.
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“We had Hillary Clinton and now another fantastic candidate,” she added. “We have not been able to crack that glass ceiling.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall recently wrote that if Harris had generated as much support among men as she had from women she would have at least captured the popular vote.
Bysiewicz commented, “Women have been making a difference every year since 1980 because they tend to show up more to vote than men. Last year, Donald Trump was more effective in courting younger male voters. We need to learn from this. We cannot take our core base voters for granted.”
Twenty-seven percent of the U.S. House members are female. Twenty-five percent of the U.S. senators are women. There are nine female governors.
Bysiewicz exclaimed, “If we had more women serving in these positions it would be more likely that we would have a female president.”
She won her first state House election around the time that Barry Manilow was in the early stages of his record-breaking run at the Westgate.
Democratic State Party Secretary Audrey Blondin of Goshen said, “For decades, Susan has been accessible to help new candidates – female and male. She also has been a role model who has inspired and encouraged younger women to seek office.”
“The younger women admire that Susan is persistent,” added Blondin. “There are so many candidates who start out on a project and the first time they face an obstacle they take their ball and go home. Susan doesn’t do that.”
When Bysiewicz initially ran for Secretary of the State in 1998 occasionally there were comments at Democratic Town Committee meetings or clambakes about why she wasn’t home with her three children – something that wouldn’t be said to a male candidate.
Have attitudes changed?
“I think they have,” Bysiewicz said. “However, I can still be in rooms where I am the only woman or there are only one or two other women in the room. There is still a lot of work to do.”
Linda Dirga, the Hall of Fame former field hockey coach at Pomperaug High School in Southbury, once said that when she played golf during the summer she mostly saw men on the course. The women were either working or home tending to their children during school vacation. Women face the additional burden of being the stay-at-home parent.
Perhaps that explains why you might see a conference with 11 high school girls’ volleyball teams and 10 of them are coached by men.
About 30 years ago, Bysiewicz was one of a tiny number of Connecticut female state legislators that had pre-school children.
She said, “Today it is more prevalent to see women legislators with children at home.”
“One thing I am proud of is that if you look at our state employee work force, we do very well in pay equity male to female,” commented Bysiewicz. “Dollar for dollar, women make as much as men in some categories.”
Connecticut’s minimum wage is $16.35 an hour – the fifth highest in the country. It has increased more than $6 an hour in the last eight years.
What has been the impact on the state’s economy?
Commented Bysiewicz, “There are over 170,000 families in Connecticut headed by women who are minimum-wage workers. Some people think that it is something that teen-agers make in summer jobs.”
“I think the impact on those families has been positive because it has been able to up-lift those female breadwinners,” she remarked.
Bysiewicz said that Connecticut’s unemployment rate of 3.8 percent is lower than the national average of 4.1 percent.
“We have 1.7 million jobs,” she remarked. “That is the highest level of jobs that we have had since March, 2008,” shortly before the start of the Great Recession.
“I don’t think that the minimum wage is stalling job creation,” asserted Bysiewicz.
Connecticut has long been known as an export-dependent state.
Regarding Trump’s call for tariffs of as much as 50 percent on Canada and Mexico - Connecticut’s biggest trading partners - Bysiewicz said, “We’re really concerned about the tariffs, particularly in our manufacturing sector, because a lot of manufacturers tend to get materials from other countries.”
“We get a high percentage of produce from Mexico and Canada,” she related.
“I think he is starting unnecessary trade wars with countries that heretofore have been our friends and our allies,” Bysiewicz exclaimed.
In 2023 Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed an income tax reduction that sent the middle class rate down from five percent to 4.5 percent and the rate for the lower income from three percent down to two percent.
“1.1 million taxpayers benefitted from that,” said Bysiewicz.”We have received very positive feedback from taxpayers.”
She asserted that the state also has expanded the earned income tax credit for families.
Beyond that, she said the Lamont Administration has been an austere fiscal steward, producing seven consecutive balanced budgets.
Hedge fund owner Ray Dalio of Greenwich, the second richest person in Connecticut, told CBS ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Bill Whitaker six years ago that the country’s income inequality was a national emergency and the wealthy should pay a larger share of the tax load.
Bysiewicz said that Lamont “wants more taxpayers and not an increase in taxes.”
Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley reported that noted supply-side economist Art Laffer said that when you increase taxes on the wealthy they spend less and invest less.
Said Bysiewicz, “The level of taxation is not among the top level of things that people look at in this state.”
She commented that Connecticut has a high quality of life – ranking third in the country among public schools and first in hiking trails.
However, state Rep. Josh Elliott (D-88) of Hamden has launched a bid for the 2026 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He has underscored, among other things, increasing taxes on the wealthy to help fund state programs.
Although no formal announcement has been made, Lamont has indicated that he will likely run again and along with Bysiewicz go for a third term.
It has not been confirmed that Lamont’s prime motivation for seeking re-election is that since he buys bags of candy from the PEZ Visitor Center in Orange he figures that if he annexes a third term PEZ will issue a “Ned Lamont” dispenser.
As the company slogan states, “You’re Not Famous Until They Put Your Head On A PEZ Dispenser.”
If Lamont wins and serves out a third term he would become the longest serving governor since Connecticut transitioned from being a colony to a state.
Jonathan Trumbull Jr. served from December 1797 to August 1809 – just under 12 years. Lamont also would be the first Democrat since 1950, when Connecticut adopted a four-year term for the office, to capture a third term.
Some Democrats agonize over the prospect of a sitting governor facing a potential primary challenge.
Democratic Gov. William O’Neill of East Hampton was challenged at the state party convention by state House Speaker Ernie Abate of Stamford in 1982 and by former U.S. Rep. Toby Moffett of Branford in 1986. However, neither of those challengers collected the 20 percent of the delegates required then to force a primary. O’Neill went on to serve for just over 10 years, which ranks second on the all-time list.
The last sitting Democratic governor that had to win the nomination in a primary was Ella Grasso of Windsor Locks, who was challenged in 1978 by Lt. Gov. Robert Killian of Hartford.
Apparently there are similarities between the Elliott and Killian campaigns.
Killian’s drive grew out of support from “disaffected Democratic liberals” who were frustrated with the incumbent, according to “Ella,” a 1984 biography on the first female to be elected governor in her own right.
That biography reports that Grasso captured 167 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities in the primary.
The book’s jacket states that the author, Susan Bysiewicz, “graduated with honors from Yale University and is currently studying law at Duke University. She has had many articles published in Connecticut newspapers and magazines.”
The author bio concludes: “This is her first book.”
To date, there has not been a second book. Apparently, she has had more important things to do.
On another topic, state Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford) told CT Mirror’s John Dankosky last December that the state should adopt zero-based budgeting to assemble its two-year spending package.
Remarked Bysiewicz, “That’s not how budgeting happens at the State Capitol. I’ve been around it now as a state representative, as secretary of the state and now as lieutenant governor.”
“The governor will present his budget and then the Legislature will tweak the governor’s budget,” she explained. “But I think it is rare that you start with an agency and say what do they do and what do we want to cut. So I don’t think that is the way we do budgeting in our state.”
As for federal spending, Bysiewicz said that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill “could be catastrophic” for Connecticut.
Bysiewicz said it reduces funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which services 200,000 families in the state.
“One in six kids are hungry and one in eight adults are hungry,” she exclaimed.
Bysiewicz said Lamont has already boosted funding to Connecticut Foodshare, which is part of national network of food banks.
The Trump bill, which was signed in early July, also reduces Medicaid funds.
Commented Bysiewicz, “Eighty percent of our Medicaid recipients are working. There is this myth that they’re not working. No, they are working one or more jobs. They just can’t afford health insurance.”
“The states, Connecticut included, can’t afford these burdens. We have a very robust rainy-day fund with $4 billion. It is estimated that over the next 10 years that Connecticut is going to lose more than $10 billion because of the Medicaid cuts.,” she declared.
“These are the things that keep me and the governor up at night,” said Bysiewicz.
In a speech during his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said that it is easy to father a child but hard to be a father.
Obama remarked, “We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one.”
In his 1992 ‘Murphy Brown’ speech, Republican Vice President Dan Quayle said, “Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong.”
In 2012, Brookings Institute senior fellow Isabel Sawhill wrote in The Washington Post that Quayle’s speech was “controversial” at the time but now seemed “prophetic.” In 1992, 30 percent of the babies were born outside of marriage and then, 20 years later, it had grown to 41 percent.
She wrote that it appeared to be an “irreversible trend.”
Bysiewicz said that “40 percent of the babies in Connecticut are born to pregnant moms who are on Medicaid.”
Sawhill stated that statistics show that the breakup rate for co-habituating parents is greater than for married couples with children
Sawhill called on elected officials, the news media and clergy to speak out about the issue.
Is this an area of concern?
Said Bysiewicz, “A concern of mine is making sure that every baby born in our state has health care, the nutrition and the education that they need to thrive.”
She criticized Trump for taking steps to close the federal Department of Education, which has been operating since 1979.
“It obliterates the future, in my mind, because if you care about the future you should care about education,” commented Bysiewicz.
What has been the impact in Connecticut from the pandemic?
“One area that we see change in is social isolation,” Bysiewicz commented. “ I think the pandemic was part of that. I think we were becoming more isolated. The surgeon general for the country for Joe Biden [Vivek Murthy] declared there is a crisis of loneliness in our country, I think it had been a general trend and I think the pandemic exacerbated it.”
“People spend a lot more time looking at their computer screens and phones than they do interacting with others,” she explained. “I think there has been a trend to less personal interaction.”
Bysiewicz said that she and Lamont started a Social Connection campaign after Murthy’s report.
“It had become a public health epidemic because it was exacerbating some diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases diabetes,” said Bysiewicz.
They encouraged more interaction at youth centers and Amy Porter, the state Commissioner on Aging, facilitated more interactive programs at the senior citizens centers across Connecticut.
On housing, Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston recently stated that, “Rising interest rates have made a bad situation worse. Average monthly mortgage payments on median-priced houses have surged from $1,445 in 2021 to $2,570 in 2024.”
Galston wrote that nationally the median age for a first-time home buyer is 38.
“That is shockingly high,” Bysiewicz commented.
She said the state has started to address the nearly 100,000 housing units it needs by making investments in brown fields that are “vacant and derelict” and other properties, such as the former Enfield Mall, that are no longer in operation.
Bysiewicz said that altogether there are 23 properties in 19 municipalities that are targeted for new housing under the program.
The state also offers the Time To Own Forgivable Down Payment Assistance program to help homeowners with closing costs.
In June, Lamont vetoed a comprehensive housing bill to the consternation of the Democratic legislators that had supported it.
Bysiewicz said the governor and legislative leaders are near an agreement on a revised bill that would be considered during a special session in September.
The legislation that Lamont vetoed was strongly opposed by some municipal elected leaders.
Brookfield First Selectman Steve Dunn told Patch.com in June, “I thought this bill was an admonition. It was proposals mish-mashed together into one big bill. It would have eliminated much of the local control for zoning. You cannot do a one size fits all. That is what this bill was.”
Regarding the revised legislation getting additional support from municipal officials, Bysiewicz said, “I think more people will be happy.”
When The New York Times recently asked what the Democratic Party should do to revitalize itself, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-4.) of Massachusetts recommended, among other things, “building 1,000 vocational-technical high schools.”
Bysiewicz said that during a visit to Henry Abbott Tech in Danbury, a precision manufacturing teacher told her that his son had an internship in that field while attending Henry Abbott, was hired for a “good-paying job” upon graduation and a short time later was able to along with his wife buy a house in Bethel.
She remarked, “I wish every fifth-grader and every parent had the opportunity to visit a technical high school and see the range of career and educational opportunities that those school bring. A lot of parents are not aware of the opportunities.”
Resources:
Interview with Susan Bysiewicz, Patch.com, on Monday, July 21, 2025.
Phone interview with Susan Bysiewicz, Patch.com, on Tuesday, July 22, 2025.
Susan Bysiewicz, “Ella,” 1984, Peregrine
Phone interview with Audrey Blondin, Patch.com, on Wednesday, July 23, 2025.
https://www.google.com/search?...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/tr...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/r...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Trumbull_Jr.
Interview with Linda Dirga, The Weekly Star, April, 1991.
