Sen. Harding starts generating $$$ for 30th District campaign

By Scott Benjamin

NEW MILFORD -- State Sen. Stephen Harding apparently operates on a political schedule.

If you are at least close to making your appointment time, then you are on schedule.

Happy Hour is well under way when he arrives at his own campaign fund-raiser. Housatonic River Brewing is decorated with campaign lawn signs and people are filling out donor forms to comply with state election regulations. The mayor and two state representatives are greeting the guests.

Harding (R-30) of Brookfield was 43 minutes late even though he has a campaign manager and a scheduler!

What is this? Does he still think he's in college and can throw the Frisbee across the quad after the start of Introduction to Geekology?

This is life when you are representing the 30th District with 18 municipalities to cover that extend from somewhere near Market Place Tavern in Brookfield to the south to Bad Dog Brewing Company in Torrington to the east to Lime Rock Park in Salisbury to the north. Geographically it is the largest of the 36 state Senate districts in a state that belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records for most winding roads.

Even with Harding’s frenetic schedule, New Milford Mayor Pete Bass said, “We speak probably two or three times a month.”

Campaign manager Andrew Wetmore says he estimated that the Harding campaign would raise $4,000 at this Thursday, February 1, event toward the $17,300 in small contributions from a minimum of 300 residents in the district needed to qualify for the Citizens’ Election Program (CEP). On this night the suggested contribution is $25. Contributions of $5 to $320 can be counted toward qualifying for the CEP.

Wetmore said he anticipates that they should qualify for the CEP grant by mid-April.

The CEP was signed nearly 20 years ago by Republican former Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Brookfield, who served for 10 years as the state representative in the 107th state House District, the seat that Harding, now 36, held for nearly eight years before he was elected to the state Senate in 2022.

The program was established, in part, to address the impact of lobbyists contributing to legislators’ campaigns.

Under the CEP, Harding would receive a grant of $109,500 to campaign for a job that pays $40,000 a year.

“I support the program. I think it has helped keep the special interests at bay,” he said regarding the potential influence of lobbyists.

“It has leveled the playing field,” said Harding, noting that challengers can also qualify for a grant and not face a campaign where the incumbent has a huge advantage in “cash on hand,” which reportedly are the three most cherished word in the political fund-raising vocabulary.

Democratic State Central Committee member Audrey Blondin of Goshen told Patch.com that the party’s candidate committee in the district will meet on Tuesday, February 6, to further discuss potential contenders for the November 5 election. Harding defeated Eva Bermudez Zimmerman of New Milford in 2022. The last Democrat to win in the 30th District was Litchfield attorney Joseph Ruggiero in 1978.

Regarding the CEP, Harding added, “I question the amount of money in the grants. I think you may want re-evaluate that. At the end of the day it is taxpayer money. I don’t think there should be a significant reduction. I would say a 10 percent reduction.”

In recent days, Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) has cautioned that he wants to keep the state’s fiscal guardrails in place and will propose only meager budget alterations during the regular session of the General Assembly, which starts on Wednesday.

As a state representative in 2017, Harding voted for the guardrails, which include a budget spending cap and a volatility cap that funnels higher capital gains revenue toward paying down the pensions for the state employees. State Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford) said late last year that they were only 52 percent funded. Reports indicate that public employee pensions should be at least 80 percent funded.

Some Democratic legislative leaders and rank-and-file members have said the guardrails are starving core state programs.

Harding said he was disappointed that in 2023 the General Assembly only extended the guardrails for another five years.

“I do not think we are starving programs with the guardrails in place,” he commented. “We have a chance to keep taxes low and to keep our fiscal house in order.”

“I think the longer the fiscal guardrails can last, the better,” Harding declared. “What I would like to see is an effort by the Finance and Appropriations committees to identify the programs in the state that we can prioritize.”

In 13 months, what has Harding accomplished for the district?

He said that he has helped preserve open space in a district in which, for example, New Milford, Salisbury and Sharon rank in the top five in the state in square miles of land.

Harding said he also has supported legislation to protect lakes and has helped address bear management, which has been a concern in the northern section of the district.

On the fiscal side, Harding underscored that he voted for a bipartisan budget last spring that lowered the state income tax rates from five to 4.5 percent for the middle class and from three to two percent for the lower income.

Bass praised Harding for being “instrumental in helping us with the DOT [state Department of Transportation] to create some safety measures” along Route 7, which has experienced numerous accidents. He added that Harding has even assisted the local Board of Education in finding more school bus drivers and frequently attends events in town.

Mark Pazniokas of CT Mirror noted recently that four of the 12 Republican senators won in 2022 with 51 percent or less of the vote. A caucus that is outnumbered two-to-one in the upper chamber could be in the single digits after the 2024 election.

The Democrats had blue-ribbon results in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Do the Republicans need a canvassing operation similar to the Fight Back CT operation assembled by U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford) in 2018, which contacted some of the voters multiple times?

“I am not happy with only 12 senators,” remarked Harding. He said the Republican Party needs “a renewed focus” on its messaging and canvassing.

Over the last three state campaigns the Democrats have been winning in suburbs that were previously in the Republican column. For example, Greenwich has three Democratic state representatives for the first time.

However, Gavin M. Wax and Troy M. Olson wrote in their recent book, “The Emerging Populist Majority,” that nationally more voters are trending Republican and will continue to do so. They stated that with its more populist platform of the recent years the GOP is primed to attract more voters among the working class, small business owners and non-globalists.

Commented Harding, “The electorate is changing, particularly among middle-class and working-class voters. I have seen that in my own door-knocking. Politics is cyclical.”