Republican voters tell Santos that President Trump is terrific

By Scott Benjamin

LITCHFIELD – Manny Santos, the Republican convention nominee in the Fifth Congressional District, says as he campaigns through the 41 municipalities in preparation for the August 14 three-way primary, he gets feedback from GOP voters that reflects the results of the national polls: President Donald Trump is on the right track.

“The large majority of Republicans I speak with are supportive of the president’s policies,” he said in an interview.

Last month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicated that 88 percent of Republicans surveyed approve of Trump’s performance.

Santos was the only GOP candidate in the race before Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Esty of Cheshire announced in April that she would not seek a fourth term following news reports that she had mishandled a sexual harassment case in 2014 involving her former chief of staff.

He faces former college professor Ruby Corby O’Neill of Southbury, who has raised the most campaign money, and manufacturing executive Richard DuPont of Watertown – who has the endorsement of the last Republican congressman from the district, Nancy Johnson of New Britain - in the primary for the seat, which been held by eight congressmen since 1972.

The district stretches from Newtown to Salisbury, taking in part of the metro Danbury area, most of Litchfield County and the Farmington Valley. Democrats have won the last six elections.

Former Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman, the Democratic convention nominee, and former national teacher of the year Jahana Hayes of Wolcott will compete in that party’s primary the same day as the GOP balloting.

In particular, Santos said Republican voters in the district support Trump’s $1.5 trillion, 10-year tax cut, which he signed seven months ago.

“The economy is turning around,” said Santos, the former mayor of Meriden. “The recruiting services are busier. There is less apprehension.”

The Washington Post has reported that former Federal Reserve Board official David Stockton believes unemployment could decline to 3.5 or 3.25 percent, which would be the lowest rates since the 1960s.

However, what about the growing deficits? The Congressional Budget Office has stated that the projected annual deficits for the next decade are estimated at $12.4 trillion. It’s been 17 years since there has been a balanced federal budget. The country went 29 years – from 1969 to 1998 – without a balanced budget and it appears the current consecutive streak may surpass that. No Republican president has submitted a balanced budget since Dwight Eisenhower.

“I am concerned about that,” Santos said when asked about the budget gaps.

He said the Trump tax reform “did have some excessive spending” and the president said that he would not accept that from Congress again in the final version of any tax reform that is submitted to him.

Santos said since the package was signed late last year the federal government has identified $15 billion that was not spent in previous budgets, which has helped mitigated some of the deficit. He said further progress could result from spending cuts after analyzing the budget annually.

The candidate said he opposes the Pay As You Go budget controls that were installed by Congress in 1990 at the request of former Republican President George H.W. Bush after he increased taxes.

Santos said that legislation could lapse after time, as it did in the early 2000s. Instead, he supports a Constitutional balanced budget amendment, a position that some Republican congressional candidates in the district have taken dating at least to former state Rep. Neal Hanlon of Naugatuck in 1982.

Santos said the proposed amendment should include “certain exceptions, such as national emergencies.”

The president has high approval ratings among Republicans and the national economy grew at 4.1 percent during the last quarter, but he apparently faces distractions.

The Mueller investigation. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of New Britain on trial. Stormy Daniels featured on “60 Minutes.” Criticism over his apparent appeasement of Vladimir Putin.

“There are many distractions,” said Santos. “These are distractions that are put on the president from far left organizations. There is a significant faction in the Democratic Party that generally hates this president.”

Since the Fifth Congressional District was largely reconfigured before the 2002 election – after Connecticut’s allotment was slashed from six to five districts – the outcome in the five cities – Waterbury, Danbury, New Britain, Meriden and Torrington – have largely determined the outcome in the general election. If a Democratic candidate can amass a collective plurality of at least 15,000 votes in those five cities, then he wins.

Are the cities as important in a Republican primary in a district that is 30 percent Democrats, 25 percent Republicans and 45 percent unaffiliated?

“It’s a good initial indicator,” Santos said. “It’s not as critical. The higher percentage of registered Republicans, per capita, are in the smaller towns.”

The last time there was no incumbent running in the Fifth District was 2012 when former state Sen. Andrew Roraback of Goshen, now a state judge, won the Republican primary largely on the strength of his performance in the medium and small-sized towns in the 30^th state Senate District, which he had represented for 12 years.

Throughout the campaign, Santos has said the next congressman needs to address the empty retail, industrial and commercial buildings across the district.

He said manufacturing could fill some of the gaps in the cities.

Santos said the prime obstacle is that unlike a generation ago, when he was working in that field, few manufacturers still have apprenticeship programs.

“That’s where they would get the pool or new labor,” he explained.

DuPont has said the community colleges are expanding their faculty base to allow more people experienced in manufacturing to teach the classes even if they don’t have advanced college degrees, and he advocates having the state technical high schools holding more adult education classes.

Santos said that isn’t the most effective solution since “often they [the students] are not trained on the very equipment that the manufacturer has in their facility. It’s better than nothing. But those programs are partially funded by taxpayer dollars.”

He said that it would be better to have economic policies that encourage manufacturers to re-establish their apprenticeship programs.

On foreign policy, Santos said he supports Trump’s proposal for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies to increase their defense spending to four percent of gross domestic product. The current goal has been two percent.

“That is a criticism that was expressed by other administrations in the past,” he said.

On congressional reform, Santos renewed his call for term limits – probably “three or four terms” - saying that it would reduce the cost of elections and keep congressmen from becoming “detached” from their constituents.

He said he opposes a proposal by U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) to have Congress spend more days in Washington and fewer in the district. Delaney, who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, wrote in his recent book, “The Right Answer,” that too often congressmen go from one meeting to another spending 15 minutes at each session. He said instead of functioning like mayors and attending countless ribbon cuttings, congressmen would be more effective by devoting more time to committee meetings that could yield additional money from highways and community colleges. Constituent outreach could still be accomplished through less-frequent district work weeks.

Santos said that proposal would allow congressmen to be more detached from their constituents and wouldn’t address the longevity issue.

“There is a bureaucracy in place,” said Santos regarding the need for expertise on issues before Congress.

He also said he opposes U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan’s (D-Minn.) Stop Act, which would prohibit federal lawmakers from making phone calls to solicit campaign contributions.

Nolan, who was elected in 2012, had formerly served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1981, and has said he is alarmed about the use of the call centers near Capitol Hill where lawmakers spend up to 30 hours week making phone calls for contributions for their campaigns and for the national committee organizations. He said those call centers didn’t exist a generation ago.

Santos said, “Term limits will address that.”