Rodriguez declares that city, Latino vote vital in Fifth District

By Scott Benjamin

WATERBURY – Congressional contender Ruben Rodriguez (R-5) of Waterbury says, “There’s more people from Puerto Rico, per capita coming to Connecticut than anywhere else.”

“The biggest areas are Waterbury, New Britain and Merden,” the first, third and fourth largest cities in the Fifth District, said Rodriguez - a native of Puerto Rico, who was one of the founders of the Latino National Coalition of Connecticut and was appointed by state Sen. Minority Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) to a commission on Latino and Puerto Rican affairs.

He said the growth has been spurred by older family members who left Puerto Rico and came to Connecticut in the 1980s and 1990s, when its economy was stronger, and the Nutmeg State’s close proximity to New York City.

He noted that 15 percent of the population in the Fifth Congressional District is Latino, five percent is African-American and about two percent is Asian-American.

“One of the biggest things we [as Republicans] need to do is reach out to the minority communities,” said Rodriguez. He said that he recently met a business owner in the district who had moved from California and registered as a Democrat. He said she told him that, “I’m a registered Democrat partly because no Republican has reached out to me.”

Danbury Patch has reported that Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton has said that polling indicates that most Latino voters are interested in the same issues as other segments of the population – good-paying jobs, qualify schools, places to have recreation and to worship.

Rodriguez said he has been involved in politics “all my life.”

He said his father was the president of a neighborhood association in Puerto Rico. Rodriguez ran unsuccessfully for the 72^nd District state House seat in Waterbury in 2014.

The only other announced candidate for the Republican congressional nomination is recently-retired U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan of New Fairfield. The convention is scheduled for next May and if needed, a primary would be held in August.

Rodriguez estimated that he would need to raise at least $250,000 to make it through the primary.

Incumbent first-term Democrat Jahana Hayes of Wolcott had raised $872,000 through June - the most money of any of Connecticut’s five U.S. representatives - for the 2020 election. The district travels from Newtown to Salisbury and has been labeled by former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-5) of Cheshire as being “one of the most diverse” in the country.

The Democrats have held the Fifth District seat since U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Cheshire) was initially elected in the district in 2006. In that election and every one since then they have won the five cities in the 41-municipality district – Waterbury, Danbury, New Britain, Meriden and Torrington – by a combined plurality of at least 15,000 votes.

“The cities will likely decide who wins the election,” said Rodriguez, who indicated that he is well known in Waterbury, the largest city in the district, where he has lived for 20 years - and in New Britain, the third largest, where he works as a meter technician for the Water Department.

The Democrats also have been scoring victories in parts of the Northwest Corner of Litchfield County and portions of the Farmington Valley in recent elections.

On the issues, he resolutely supports Republican President Donald Trump – primarily because of economic policies that have produced “the lowest unemployment” since 1970.

“If the president loses in 2020, the stock market will go crazy downhill,” he said in an interview.

Are you happy with the policies of the Federal Reserve Board, which just cut interest rates but isn’t committed to continuing that practice later this year?

“We’ve got to be careful. We need to be competitive with the rest of the world,” Rodriguez said about the need for lower interest rates.

Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that although the country is enjoying the longest economic expansion in its 243-year history, the last two long economic expansions were followed by disastrous results.

He wrote that following the expansion in the 1960s, there was a surge in inflation that lasted until the early 1980s when former Federal Reserve Board Paul Volcker got political help from former President Ronald Reagan to considerably boost interest rates to break that cycle. The boom of the 1990s and early 2000s was followed by the subprime mortgage crisis and the Great Recession.

Samuelson indicated that if the Federal Reserve Board doesn’t make the right choices, the economy could ricochet in the opposite direction.

By historical standards, the interest rates already are low. Ray Dalio - the owner of Bridgewater Associates in Westport, the world’s largest hedge fund – has told CNBC that he fears with low interest rates the Federal Reserve Board will have few controls to address the next recession

Speaking of which, Donald Klepper-Smith, the economist for Liberty Bank who a decade ago led former Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s (R-Brookfield) economic team, recently said there’s a 70 percent chance of a recession before the end of 2020 because of the high amount of household debt, particularly college student loan payments.

“I don’t think a recession will happen,” Rodriguez said. “I think the president is doing a great job with the economy.”

He added that part of the reason that Connecticut is the only New England state that hasn’t recaptured all of the jobs it lost in the 2008 Great Recession is because there are jobs that go unfilled because employers can’t find applicants with the appropriate training.

Rodriguez said he would seek to acquire funding for more classes at technical high schools and community colleges.

“We’re losing jobs every month to other states,” he said.

Additionally Rodriguez said he opposes increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, which is being phased-in following the approval by the Connecticut General Assembly and Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich).

“When you talk to small businesses, that’s going to cause them to slow down,” he explained.

The Congressional Budget Office projects $11 trillion in debt over the next decade without any spending increases or tax reductions beyond the president’s 2017 reform package.

Shouldn’t Congress invoke the Pay As You Go controls that were established under former President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and if there are further tax cuts or spending increases offset them through new taxes or by slashing other line items in the budget?

“I will not support any more taxes,” said Rodriguez, who has signed a no-tax pledge.

“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t spend more money,” he added.

Rodriguez said he endorses the Stop Act, which was initiated by former U.S. Reps. David Jolley (R-FL.) and Rick Nolan (D-MN.) in which congressmen could not make phone calls to solicit campaign contributions, but would be able to continue to host fund-raisers at catering halls and restaurants.

“That [phone-calling] should be delegated to other people,” he said.

During a spring 2016 segment on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” correspondent Norah O’Donnell reported that many congressmen spend countless hours each week at the major party call centers, located near Capitol Hill.

Former U.S. Rep. Jim Maloney (D-5) of Danbury, who served from 1997 to 2003, has said that he typically worked 80 hours a week, which should have been a concern to his constituents, but what should have been of concern was that usually 20 of those hours were devoted to campaign-related activities.

Rodriguez said one his primary motivations in seeking the seat is that, “I’ve seen how Congress has been going all crazy and they haven’t been doing their job. “The fighting with the president.”

He said Hayes has been among the worst offenders.

“She has not done what she was elected to do,” he declared. “She was elected to work for the district – not to right with the president and not to go around with [U.S. Rep. Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez [(D-N,.Y.)] and fight with the Speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi].”

However, politically, does it make sense to strongly support the president since Gary Rose, the noted Government instructor and author at Sacred Heart University, recently said on the Capitol Report at WTNH-Channel 8 in New Haven that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker - a Republican from a neighboring state who is the most popular state chief executive in the country - has kept the president at arm’s length?

“The president has done a good job,” said Rodriguez.

“We’re spending taxpayer money on stuff that already has come out; how he was not involved in stuff in Russia,” he said of the congressional investigations into the president’s activities.

However, famed author Bob Woodward said during an appearance last November at the Horace Bushnell Performing Arts Center in Hartford that based on research for his best-seller, “Fear,” everything that Trump does “is a gamble.”

“The president is doing the best for our country,” said Rodriguez.

Getting back to the economy, Gary Cohn, who was the president’s first director of the National Economic Council, has recently said the president’s trade tariffs are hurting the domestic economy.

“I don’t see it that way,” Rodriguez said. “China has taken us for granted” and manipulated its currency. “That has to be changed.”

Congress recently approved a two-year budget that extends the debt ceiling until June 2021.

Rodriguez said he objects to the extension of the debt ceiling.

“We’re going to have the same problem every two years,” he explained.

However, Rodriguez said he does support increasing spending for the military. Samuelson of the Washington Post recently reported that defense spending made up 52 percent of the federal budget in 1960 and just 15 percent in 2018.

“We have to fight for our freedom,” he said. The candidate added that too many military personnel are “not getting the right pay and benefits.”

On another subject, Rodriguez said he is concerned about the Democratic verbal attacks on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

“There are a lot of good people in ICE,” he said., noting that ICE agents have been effective in seizing narcotics and arresting gang members.

“They’re doing their job,” said Rodriguez.

Greenwich Patch reported last year that U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich has been critical of Trump’s foreign policy, saying that, among other things, he’s alienated some American allies.

“He’s a business person, and he knows how to talk to those people,” Rodriguez said. “You’re not going to always be liked.”

Is the president too close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin?

Rodriguez said, Trump has indicated, “Why don’t we create relations instead of separations.”