Panel insists Stefanowski lost election because of two enemies

By Scott Benjamin

FARIFEILD – A panel of a professor, a pollster and two reporters concluded that Bob Stefanowski’s worst enemies were Donald Trump and himself.

They contend those factors helped turn a “change election” that could have been a grand step forward for Republicans into a Democratic Blue Wave.

Gary Rose, the chairman of the Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies at Sacred Heart University (SHU) in Fairfield, said Trump, the Republican president in his second year in office, and Gov. Dannel Malloy, the departing two-term Democratic governor, were “figuratively on the ballot.”

Rose spoke on Wednesday, November 14, at a post-gubernatorial election forum at SHU along with Ebong Udoma, the senior reporter for WSHU Public Radio, Michael Vigeant, the CEO of Great Blue Research, which conducted polls on the recent election in conjunction with SHU and the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, and Ken Dixon the politics editor for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Lesley DeNardis - the director of the Institute for Public Policy at SHU, which sponsored the event - was the moderator

Gov.-elect Ned Lamont, a Greenwich Democrat who formerly operated a digital television service for colleges, was elected by about 44,500 voters over Stefanowski (R-Madison), a former executive with General Electric and UBS. Unaffiliated candidate Oz Griebel of Hartford, the former head of the MetroHartford Alliance, was a distant third.

Both Trump and Malloy have had meager approval ratings in Connecticut.

Vigeant said Trump has had approval ratings of 35 to 39 percent and Malloy’s rating has declined to 20 percent as Connecticut’s economy has slowly recovered from the 2008 recession.

Rose said that Trump and Malloy were factors since women’s groups and other factions have held protests against Trump and Malloy has the lowest rating of any governor in the country.

Lamont attempted to link Stefanowski to Trump. The GOP candidate had a low rating from gun control groups and presented a proposal last December to eliminate Connecticut’s 27-year-old income tax through a plan written by economist Art Laffer, who authored the 1981 tax cut by former President Ronald Reagan and the 2017 tax reform signed by Trump.

Famed journalist Bob Woodward’s book “Fear,” on the Trump White House – which reports that aides have made disparaging remarks about the president and have taken legislation off his desk so he wouldn’t proceed to sign it – had sold 1.1 million copies by early this month.

“The Trump factor was more pronounced,” said Rose.

“There are strong passions from the people on both sides about the president,” Rose explained. “But the difference is that there are more Democrats than Republicans in Connecticut.”

The professor said, “Malloy is now history. He’s almost an afterthought.”

Rose said the Trump factor extended beyond the governor’s race, noting that three veteran Republican state senators – Toni Boucher of Wilton in the 26th District, Scott Frantz of Greenwich in the 36th District and Mike McLachlan of Danbury in the 24th District – lost their re-election bids.

“Toni Boucher is not a Trump Republican, she is a moderate,” he said. However, he added that Will Haskell, her 22-year-old Democratic opponent, “reminded voters that she is a Republican and so is Donald Trump.”

Vigeant noted that the poll done by Great Blue Research, which was sponsored by SHU and the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, had Stefanowski slightly ahead in late October.

“It was a close race in which turnout was the deciding factor,” he said.

The 66 percent turnout was higher than in the gubernatorial election years of 2010 and 2014.

Rose said, “Bob Stefanowski ran a good campaign generally. He was good on television and at the debates.”

However, he said by focusing almost exclusively on eliminating the income tax, which generates about 55 percent of the state’s revenue, Stefanowski “scared a lot of voters.”

“Ned Lamont kept reminding us about where the money was going to come from, [if the income tax was eliminated]” Rose explained. “It was very much on the minds of voters, particularly in the urban areas.”

Dixon said that Stefanowski “never described how he was going to” abolish the income tax.

Additionally, he added that he held few media events and even walked past reporters who wanted to ask questions at some public appearances.

Dixon said on election night one of Stefanowski’s staff members unsuccessfully tried to prohibit a reporter and photographer from the Hearst Connecticut Media Group from covering his election night headquarters in Rocky Hill, apparently because of objections to coverage during the campaign.

In contrast, he said Lamont had many media availabilities and welcomed questions from reporters.

Udoma said Stefanowski spent little time meeting voters.

Rose said the Republicans mishandled a golden opportunity.

“We’re the most highly taxed state in the country,” the professor said. “We have needs for repairing roads and repairing infrastructure. The job growth since the recession has lagged behind that of the other New England states.”

“You would have thought that this would have been a change election,” said Rose.

Instead, Lamont won with a larger plurality than Malloy had in 2010 or 2014 and the Republicans lost seats in the General Assembly after being in an 18-18 tie with the Democrats in the state Senate. They trailed the Democrats 79 to 72 seats in the House.

Dixon said, “It was a good time for the Republicans to make some inroads.”