Romano declares Connecticut is in a political identity crisis

By Scott Benjamin

SOUTHINGTON – The reviews might have closed a Tom Cruise thriller before the last letters had been placed on the marquee.

Ken Dixon, a state capitol reporter and columnist for CT Hearst, wrote on the Sunday after the election in a column on the unsuccessful campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski of Madison: “Give lots of credit to Connecticut Republicans for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Gary Rose, the chairman of the Political Science Department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, noted shortly after the election that the Nutmeg State was suffering from high taxes, the need for transportation and road repairs and a lag in job growth. Departing Democratic governor, Dannel Malloy of Essex had the lowest approval rating in the country.

“You would have thought that it would have been a change election,” the professor said of the gubernatorial race between Stefanowski, independent candidate Oz Griebel of Hartford and Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich).

The Connecticut Republican Party lost its third consecutive governor’s race – even though its candidate garnered 100,000 more votes than its 2014 nominee. An election that was supposed to produce a Red Streamer turned into Blue Wave bunting.

The GOP lost five seats in the state Senate and 13 in the House. Since then it flipped one House and one Senate seat out of the five special election races held on February 26.

The Republican Party lost the U.S. Senate race and the five U.S. House contests. That means that it hasn’t captured a federal race since former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, who lived in Bridgeport, was re-elected in Fourth District in 2006.

Four years ago there were four candidates vying to become the chairman of the state Republican Party, and the departing chairman, former congressional candidate Jerry Labriola Jr., at least hinted, according to CT Mirror, that he would be willing to serve another term if there were a stalemate.

The winner was political consultant J.R. Romano, who had managed then-Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst’s nearly-successful campaign for state treasurer in 2014.

After four consecutive election cycles of gaining seats in the General Assembly and reaching an 18-18 tie with Democrats in the state Senate, the Republican Party took an unexpected tumble in 2018.

“When you look at the numbers, it looks terrible,” Romano said in an interview at the party’s headquarters in Southington. “It still hurts to this day. But if you go inside the numbers the margin in a lot of races was so small.”

The party chairman, who once played football at Trinity College in Hartford, explained that 22 races were determined by two percent or less.

Romano noted that although Stefanowski lost by about 44,000 votes, he annexed about 100,000 votes more than GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley of Greenwich did in 2014. Stefanowski lost in a year when there was a presidential-like turnout.

The GOP state chairman said that Stefanowski “has been impacted. He takes it personally. It weighs on him.”

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

Rose noted that the factor related to Republican President Donald Trump was “more pronounced” than the negative feelings toward Malloy, who had announced in April 2017 that he would not seek a third term.

Romano said that many voters focused on “all the problems outside of Connecticut,” instead of the “fiscal crisis” that plagued the state since the 2008 recession. The state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness reported in March 2018 that the pensions for the state employees were only 29 percent funded.

However, the Republican state party chairman contends that there was a bigger factor.

“The Democrats outspent us by close to $30 million,” Romano declared. “This is not as blue a state as the Democrats want you to believe.”

“We underperformed in wealthy communities,” he added.

For more than a decade parts of the Northwest Corner in Litchfield County has been trending Democrat, but now some towns in the Fairfield Gold Coast were in the Democratic column.

Alexandra Bergstein of Greenwich was the first Democrat elected in the 36^th District since 1930 and Will Haskell of New Canaan was the first Democrat since the 1970s to win the 26^th District state Senate seat.

The people in the Fairfield County Gold Coast are “not as impacted when their tax rate goes up half a mill and it means that they can’t buy a new car,” said Romano.

He said that he believes there is “massive “buyer’s remorse” in that corridor after Democrats introduced plans for “forced regionalization” of school districts and toll gantries across the state.

He said Republicans are getting support from voters in Southeastern Connecticut and the Naugatuck Valley, former Democratic strongholds, since they “are the people who punching a clock every day.”

“They’re the party of the one percent,” he said of the Democrats – a reference to the areas that have more wealth and college-educated voters.

In her 2015 book, “The Selfie Vote,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Andreson wrote that Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report has said most Whole Foods stores are in municipalities that vote Democratic and most Cracker Barrel restaurants were located in areas that regularly vote Republican.

There are nine Whole Foods stores in Connecticut, which are located in Danbury, two in West Hartford, Greenwich, and Milford – which also has a Cracker Barrel - Glastonbury, Darien, Fairfield and Cheshire. All eight of those municipalities went for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016.

However, they split evenly four and four between Lamont and Stefanowski in the 2018 gubernatorial race. Danbury, West Hartford, Glastonbury and Fairfield supported Lamont. Greenwich, Darien, Cheshire and Milford backed Stefanowski.

The second Cracker Barrel restaurant is in East Windsor, which went for Trump in 2016 and Stefanowski in 2018.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Cheshire) “played a big role” in the 2018 results, said state Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) of Brookfield, referring to the Fight Back CT initiative which was organized in early 2017 following the women’s marches across the country. CT Mirror has reported that the group, which Murphy helped establish, made 1 million phone calls and knocked on 250,000 doors during the campaign.

David Stemerman of Greenwich- a senior advisor with Emerson Point Financial in Stamford, who placed third in the GOP primary last summer - said the Connecticut Republicans should build a similar operation.

Perhaps, surprisingly following a large election defeat, Romano, a native of Derby, is the only candidate seeking the state party chairmanship in June election.

Yale Political Science Professor John Stoehr was critical of Romano in a New Haven Register column in December, stating that, “On at least two occasions [Romano has] blamed voters publicly for Bob Stefanowski’s defeat and for losses in the Connecticut General Assembly. That’s not leadership. It’s a cop out.”

Interestingly, Nick Balletto of Guilford, the Democratic state party chairman during the last election, was reportedly asked to step down by Lamont even though the Democrats had a banner year. Reports indicate that was due to Balletto discouraging Lamont from entering the governor’s race early last year and that he had been elected chairman at the start of Malloy’s second term and as is sometimes the custom for a new governor, Lamont wanted his own choice for the job. The position went to Nancy Wyman of Tolland, who had been lieutenant governor under Malloy.

“I think at this point, more than four months after the gubernatorial election and just three months before the vote for party chairman, that if anyone else were interested in being party chairman, they would have made an announcement by now,” said Harding in evaluating the campaign for the chairmanship.

He said Romano has been adept at utilizing the social media to identify potential Republican voters and he remained neutral in the primary races last summer even though Stefanowski and Stemerman weren’t even nominated at the state convention and had to petition their way onto the primary ballot.

“I didn’t see that that was my job,” Romano said in regards to endorsing a candidate.

Romano - a former Connecticut GOP political director, marketing specialist and securities dealer – said that since the election he has been meeting, as usual, with town committees frequently, but has spoken more about improving voter outreach and campaigning year round instead of his bid for another term.

What does the GOP need to do to revitalize itself after having gained seats in the state House and state Senate in each of the four previous elections?

“I think that the Republicans in Connecticut have to be willing to say no to the tide,” Stoehr said in a phone interview, in an apparent reference to the movement toward the national party’s more conservative positions.

Stemerman said that what would help the GOP the most would be open primaries. He said that only four states select their candidates at statewide conventions.

“The unaffiliated voters are the largest bloc of voters,” he said.

Stoehr said, “They should stop letting the people regularly watching Fox News determine their candidate out of the primary.”

“They had a credible nominee out of the convention in [Danbury Mayor] Mark Boughton who was saying the right things, but then this no-name guy, Bob Stefanowski, uses his money to win the primary,” he said in a phone interview.

Romano said he believes the “the biggest problem” in establishing an open primary are the constraints from the Citizen Election Program, where, for example, gubernatorial candidates get a grant after raising at least $250,000 in contributions of $100 or less.

“You have a limited amount of money,” he explained. “There probably aren’t going to be a massive number of unaffiliated voters who will participate in the primary. You probably won’t spend the money to educate an unaffiliated voter.”

Romano said that no decisions on open primaries, which is up to a political party to make, would come before the executive officers for the party start their term this summer.

He said he wants to consult an attorney before embracing open primaries, since the party should know if it is possible to only hold open primaries in just the major races instead of across the board.

“I don’t know that we want to open it to all races,” Romano said, indicating that in a state House primary with a relatively small turnout the unaffiliated voters “could sway the results.”

State Rep. Art O’Neill (R-69) of Southbury the possibility of unaffiliated voters dominating the primaries “is not an issue.”

Romano said he would support eliminating the state convention, which costs $80.000 to stage.

“That is money better used for identifying voters, an absentee ballot program or a voter registration drive,” the GOP state party chairman said.

Additionally, Romano said the state convention isn’t settling the ticket, since, for example, there has been a Republican gubernatorial primary during each of the last three elections.

He said to enter a primary, he would want the candidates to have to achieve a “threshold” through campaign contributions and/or petition signatures.

“People tend to run to the right or run to the left because they know to win the primary they have to appeal to the party’s based.” Harding said. “We would probably get better candidates if we had open primaries.”

Romano said ideally the primary should be held in March and then a run-off among the top two finishers would be held in May.

Some observers have called for a run-off since Stefanowski won the nomination with just 29 percent of the vote in a five-candidate field. They have said a run-off would ensure that the winner have at least 51 percent of the rank and file vote before securing the nomination.

“A run-off would give a more pure sense of the Republican nominee,” Romano said.

He added that by selecting the nominee by May, instead of in August under the current system, there would be ample time to develop a platform and interact with voters.

However, for that to happen the General Assembly would have to approve legislation to make conventions optional.

O’Neill, who is the Republican point person on the Government Administration and Elections Committee on the optional convention legislation currently being considered, said there will be a public hearing and possibly a decision by the committee by the end of March.

Romano said even if the state convention is eliminated and there were open primaries, the 169 Republican Town Committees across the state would still play a vital role since candidates would seek their endorsements, ask them to distribute lawn signs and help hold fundraisers. He added that the “RTC members also are the most prolific and consistent primary voters.”

Also, Boughton, who placed second in the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary, said the congressional candidates should start raising money earlier.

Romano said that since the Citizen Election Program went into place nine years ago, it has become more difficult for both parties to attract state legislators to run for Congress.

He said that since they are seeking to get a corps of small donations to qualify for a grant to run for the state House or Senate they aren’t amassing a large network of contributors that could be more helpful later on in a congressional campaign.

Plus, Romano said some candidates might be dissuaded from running for Congress because if they’re interested in higher office they can raise $75,000 in small donations for the nomination for state comptroller or another statewide office and get a grant from the CEP. To run for Congress they probably would have to raise more than $2 million to be viable.

“It can be scary to have to raise that kind of money,” he said.

Romano said since the election, six regional sessions were held to get feedback from Republican town committees and, as usual, he is speaking at town committee meetings, not so much about his bid for another term but how they can use social media to enhance voter turnout.

“We build the road,” he said. The candidates are the car.”

“During my tenure, we have offered hundreds of training seminars, centered around Facebook.” said Romano. “We make the town committees know what tools are available.”

“What we have impressed upon town committees for years is that you can’t operate where they usually started the campaign in June or July,” he said. “Campaigning must happen year round.”

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