Sullivan says legal experience is valuable training for Congress

By Scott Benjamin

NEW FAIRFIELD – David X. Sullivan says attaining a law degree is costly, time-consuming and stressful – but it has enviable value.

He said his two law degrees have provided him with “more Washington experience as a non-politician, as a non-elected official than many of the individuals that have run for office the first time.”

Sullivan of New Fairfield recently retired after more than 30 years as an assistant U.S. Attorney, prosecuting federal cases, and is now seeking the Republican nomination in the Fifth Congressional District, which has elected nine congressmen since 1972.

“I’ve worked with the federal government and I know what it is like dealing with the Washington bureaucracy,” said Sullivan. “I think that for a lot of new congressmen who don’t have that experience, they are in for a rude awakening. There are a lot of agendas and at times agencies that have duplicative efforts.”

He said he has handled “hundreds” of cases, for example, with the Internal Revenue Service.

Six of the last 10 congressmen from the Fifth Congressional District have been attorneys – John Monagan (D-Waterbury) Ron Sarasin (R-Beacon Falls), Bill Ratchford (D-Danbury), Jim Maloney (D-Danbury), Chris Murphy (D-Cheshire) and Elizabeth Esty (D-Cheshire).

The ABA (American Bar Association) Journal reported in 2015 that about 40 percent of the U.S. House members are attorneys, down from 60 percent in the 1960s.

The Vox online news web site reported in 2016 that attorneys running for Congress for the first time usually “blow everyone away” in early fund-raising since they are often well-acquainted with many wealthy people.

Sullivan is running for the GOP nod against Ruben Rodriguez of Waterbury in the sprawling 41-municipality district that includes part of the metro Danbury area, most of Litchfield County and part of the Farmington Valley.

Esty has called it “one of the most diverse” districts in the country. Also, since the 1972 election no congressman has represented the Fifth District for more than six years.

The eventual GOP nominee will try to unseat first-term Democrat Jahana Hayes, the 2016 national teacher of year from Wolcott, who according to CT Mirror has raised more than $872,000 toward her re-election campaign, the most of any of the five members of Connecticut’s U.S. House delegation.

Sullivan has a Juris Doctorate law degree from Catholic University and another in taxation from Quinnipiac University.

He currently teaches in the criminal justice program at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, helping prepare some of his students for law school.

“It’s not that it’s difficult to get through,” said Sullivan of law school. “It’s that you have to make a commitment and be prepared to make it a very strong focus in your life for at least four years, because you spend six months trying to get into law school and preparing for LSATs and then of course you go to school and graduate after three years and you then have to take the bar exam. For anyone who has never passed the bar exam on the first time, I felt so badly for them, because it was another six months of their life that they would have to devote to that exam again.”

“It can be a valuable education for even non-traditional areas that aren’t directly related to the practice of law,” he said. “There are a wide range of subjects that the law touches and at law school you are taught to analyze issues.”

Attorney William Sullivan, his late father, was the state representative for New Milford, New Fairfield, Sherman and Bridgewater in the early 1970s and also served as the Republican Town Committee chairman in New Fairfield and in Danbury.

He was a member of an impressive class at Yale that also included former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker, former GOP nominee for lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate Gerry Labriola and former U.S. District Judge and U.S. Attorney Peter Dorsey.

Sullivan said that the practice of law has changed since he entered the profession in 1988.

“We don’t have a lot of lawyers now doing transactional work or real estate closings,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of new businesses. My father also had an LLM in taxation, and one of the things he specialized in – other than estate and gift taxes – was business planning. I often wonder how his practice would look today – trying to make a living helping people starting businesses in Connecticut, where they are few and far between.”

Connecticut, where on average there is a net loss of 428 residents per week, is beset with a state employee pension system that is only 29 percent funded, partly as a result of not putting adequate money into the system for decades.

The Republicans haven’t captured the Fifth District since 2004 when Nancy Johnson of New Britain garnered her final term in a 24-year career in the U.S. House that began in the now-defunct Sixth District.

Republican operative Dave Boomer, who managed Johnson’s 2002 and 2006 campaigns, has said that since the reapportionment in 2002 a Democrat needs to win the five cities – Waterbury, Danbury, New Britain, Meriden and Torrington – by a combined plurality of at least 15,000 votes. The Democratic candidates have accomplished that in each of the last seven elections –dating to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-Cheshire) victory over Johnson in 2006.

Additionally, over the recent elections the Democratic candidates have captured towns in Litchfield County’s Northwest Corner and in the Farmington Valley that had typically been annexed by the Republican candidates.

Sullivan insists that it is “winnable” district for Republicans, noting that Hayes raised $1.5 million in 2018 to the $70,000 accumulated by former Meriden Mayor Manny Santos, the GOP nominee, but only won 56 to 44 percent.

The conventional wisdom is that U.S. House members are most vulnerable in their first race for re-election. However, in Connecticut no first-term congressman has lost since former U.S. Rep. Larry DeNardis (R-3) of Hamden in 1982. Although, in the Fifth District, Ratchford, in 1980, and Maloney, in 1998, scored wafer-thin victories for their second terms.

What has more often happened is that congressmen in Connecticut have been defeated when the tide was going against their party nationally, as was the case with Johnson and former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons (R-2) of Stonington in 2006 and former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays (R-4) of Bridgeport in 2008.

2020 is a presidential election year and the Democratic presidential candidate has taken Connecticut in every race since 1992.

No Republican has won a congressional seat in Connecticut since Shays narrowly captured his last term in 2006.

Sullivan said that Hayes – a teen-age mother who rose to become national teacher of the year and became an administrator in the Waterbury schools – has “an inspiring story” and he is impressed that she has co-sponsored legislation with Murphy to address hunger on college campuses.

However, he said she indicated during last year’s campaign that she would not support U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA.) for speaker, but did so anyway, explaining that she couldn’t vote for the Republican choice, Kevin McCarthy of California, who became the Minority Leader.

Sullivan said Hayes could have resolved that dilemma by voting “present.”

He also criticized Hayes for referring to Republican President Donald Trump as a “psycho” in a Rolling Stone story. She later apologized for that comment in an interview with WVIT-30 television.

Regarding issues, Sullivan said Hayes is “a proud co-sponsor” of the New Green Deal – a plan to eliminate fossil fuels in 10 years.

“The environment is so important to all of us,” he said. “It can’t be ignored anymore.”

But he labeled the proposed program a “$93 trillion mistake.”

“Coupled with Connecticut taxpayers already pay,” Sullivan said. “It isn’t practical.”

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) also has said the country won’t be able to pay for the New Green Deal.

On the economy, Sullivan said he is “inspired” with Trump’s 2017 economic reform, which included a large across-the-board tax cut. For example, the national unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years. However, he won’t be “happy” with it until Connecticut’s economy, which has trailed behind the rest of New England in job recovery since the 2008 recession, is again robust.

He complained that Connecticut residents are “inundated with state and local taxes.”

Aren’t those issues that are primarily addressed by state and municipal officials?

“They are,” Sullivan said. “But at the same time where are the five Democrat congressmen and two Democrat U.S. senators? Where are they every year when the state Legislature babbles over trying to get a budget that works for people. You have to have a partnership between state and federal government.”

On the national economy, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich said last year that if the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles committee economic plan of 2010 had been enacted, the federal budget would be on its way toward being balanced.

Among other things, the committee advocated tax increases and reductions in some entitlement spending, including a further increase in the Social Security retirement age.

“I’m not going to speculate on that,” said Sullivan regarding possible economic benefits that might have been derived from the Simpson-Bowles proposal.

Robert Samuelson, the economics columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in June that in 1960 52 percent of federal spending was devoted to defense and in 2018 just 15 percent was devoted to that area.

He has stated that since World War II, the United States has “assumed strategic responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe, Asia and Middle East. Neither China nor Russia has yet embraced similarly sweeping goals.”

Is entitlement spending crowding out money that could be used for defense? Wouldn’t it benefit Connecticut if the federal government spent more on defense since the state has major contracting facilities at Igor Sikorsky in Stratford, Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney in East Hartford and Electric Boat in Groton?

“I’m not comfortable nor uncomfortable at this time,” said Sullivan. “If there is a need to increase [defense] spending I would be inclined to support that. There would have to be a valid need. We’re not at war anywhere in the world at this time. I am comfortable right now with where we are with our national defense. If it requires more, I would certainly make sure that we are uncompromised in national defense.”

On Democratic criticisms of the president’s ambitious use of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, he said, “I don’t believe – and I’m troubled – on the attacks on ICE and ICE facilities and now going so far as to say abolish the Department of Homeland Security. That is inexcusable.”

Sullivan said the issues regarding illegal immigration should be addressed through existing laws.

“People are forgetting that [annually] more than one million people come in here legally,” he said.

Regarding recent criticism that Trump recently made racist Twitter statements toward four Democratic congressmen, Sullivan said, “I don’t support the tweeting, whether it’s one side or the other. As a former federal prosecutor who has stayed off social media; it’s like fire for the first time. It can be very useful, but it can hurt you. What we’re seeing with tweeting; it’s destructive, it’s divisive.”

He criticized the U.S. House for becoming “dysfunctional" under Pelosi’s leadership. He noted that she recently “walked off the floor after calling the president a racist – contrary to the parliamentary rules that had been set up by Thomas Jefferson.”

On another topic, former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote in his 2018 book, “The Right Answer,” that largely based on insight from former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Mn.), who served from 1975-1981 and again from 2013-2019, Congress should revert to its schedule of a generation ago when there were more weeks at the Capitol with lawmakers staring work on Monday at 9 a.m. and ending business on Friday at 5 p.m.

“We have persuaded our constituencies that they should expect us to function like mayors, going to one event after another, shaking hands, giving speeches and cutting ribbons,” he wrote. “But that ought to be the province of local government officials.”

“Would you rather have your U.S. representative spend time shaking hands at the country fair or working in Washington to gain grants for community colleges and secure funding for improving highways?” Delaney continued. “These days our time is so limited that all we can do is pop in and out of meetings.”

“No, I don’t,” Sullivan said when asked if congressmen should spend more time in Washington. “I think it’s important to people in your district, that they see you in both places.”