Tooker brings municipal, corporate portfolio to GOP gubernatorial race

By Scott Benjamin

WESTPORT – When she stops in the supermarket parking lot Jen Tooker tells her three children, “I’ll be right back.”

Her son and two daughters – one graduated from college, one in college and one in high school – “roll their eyes.”

“They know I’m not going to be right back,” says the first-term First Selectman of Westport, the town where Paul Newman lived and where Ray Dalio now runs his renowned hedge fund.

“You’re always stopped,” Tooker explained. “People always have things that they want to talk to you about.”

The role model is her immediate predecessor, Jim Marpe, a Republican who had the position for eight years.

Tooker commented that he taught her that, “Probably the most important characteristic in a job like this is that people know that they’re being heard.”

Before being elected as a selectman and then ascending to the top elected position she worked in the reinsurance industry. She spent about a decade managing offices in foreign countries.

“Living and working overseas as long as I did is hugely insightful to this job,” said Tooker.

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford) told John Dankosky of CT Mirror last year that the Connecticut General Assembly should enact zero-based budgeting.

Tooker remarked, “People love to use the phrase ‘zero-based-budget.’ As someone who spent 25 years in the private sector, I really know what that means.”

“I gravitated to executive branch jobs,” Tooker said. “The buck stops here.”

Tom Kiely, Westport’s director of operations, said that Tooker understands that you can’t run government like a business but there are certain business principles that can be employed.

“She is very business-savvy,” he said. “She supports her team and trusts her department heads. She gives them a lot of leeway to make decisions on their own.”

Added Kiely, “She sacrifices a lot of her personal time. She is at functions and events. I am on the Traffic & Pedestrian Task Force and she shows up at public meetings when she doesn’t really need to be there. She is supportive of her team.”

In March, Tooker, a Republican, became the first formally declared candidate in the 2026 gubernatorial race. She has opted not run this fall for a second term as first selectman.

Former U.S. Rep. Jim Maloney (D-5) of Danbury has said that first selectman or mayor is better training to become governor than serving on Capitol Hill.

Four of the last nine Connecticut governors had served as municipal chief elected officials – Democrat John Dempsey, Republicans Tom Meskill and Lowell Weicker and Democrat Dannel Malloy.

Washington Post columnist George Will said in a 1990 television interview that Ronald Reagan’s popularity was 85 percent due to his “ideas” and 15 percent due to his “charm.” He noted that Reagan’s approval ratings declined during the 1982 recession.

Will explained that the American voters “insist on performance.”

Tooker said she agreed that performance is most important.

“You can drive across this state in two hours,” she commented. “I think people in this state want to know who they are voting for. They want accessibility and they want results. I think anyone running for governor in this state should understand that this is retail politics. You have to be able to kick tires.”

Her campaign web site notes that she is a Republican first selectman in a town where Democrat Kamala Harris took more than 70 percent of the presidential vote last year.

Connecticut has undergone a political identity change over the last decade.

“We’re the deepest blue county in the state,” Tooker said of Fairfield County, which for nearly two generations – until 2008 - used to help send moderate Republicans to the U.S. House in the Fourth District.

New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart – a millennial who was initially elected around the time that Couple # 4, Jenny Nichols and Famous Hooks, won the American Bandstand dance contest - apparently is the likely front-runner for the Republican nomination. She already has assembled a grocery list of endorsements as she raises money through an exploratory campaign committee. She had briefly made a bid seven years ago for governor and then placed second in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor.

Matt Corey and Peter Lumaj, who have previously run for statewide office, also are exploring bids for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

What are the odds that Tooker can join Democrat Wilbur Cross (from 1931 to 1939) and Republican John Davis Lodge (1951 to 1955) as a Westport resident who ascended to the governorship?

Government Professor Gary Rose of Sacred Heart, who wrote a book on the Connecticut Republican Party in 2023, stated, “The fact that Jen Tooker has won election as First Selectwoman in a town filled with liberal Democrats should make her an attractive candidate to Republicans, as a moderate woman could build the type of coalition necessary to win the governorship. But with the Republican Party drifting right and with low turnout in an August primary there could be a problem securing the nomination. But that said, if her primary opponent is Erin Stewart then that would be a contest between two moderate candidates.”

He added, “Jen Tooker’s background in insurance would be a big plus for Republican primary voters along with positions she has held within her town government. Name recognition might be a problem but can be overcome in many ways these days.”

Alfred Branch of Patch.com has reported that she raised $66,000 during the first quarter toward the $350,000 needed to qualify for a Citizen Election Program grant,

Tooker laments that Connecticut is the nation’s fourth highest taxed state.

In 2023 Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed a reduction in the income tax. The middle-class rate went from five percent down to 4.5 percent and the lower-class rate fell from three percent down to two percent.

Should those taxes be slashed further?

“I’d love to,” said Tooker.

But she cautions that the income tax represents “50 to 55 percent” of the revenue.

“I need to make sure the math works,” she explained. “You have to consider that when you want to tweak that large a source.”

How important is it to maintain the fiscal guardrails that Connecticut enacted in 2017?

“It is non-negotiable,” remarked Tooker.

The guardrails direct surplus money into the rainy-day fund and toward paying down the considerable debt in a state employee pension system that was structurally under-funded each year from 1939 through 2010, according to Ct Mirror Budget Reporter Keith Phaneuf.

The “Connecticut Employees Retirement System” report of June 30, 2024, stated that the pensions are 55.2 percent funded. That is a noted improvement from the 2018 report from the state Commission on Fiscal Stability & Economic Competitiveness, which put the figure at 29 percent.

Brookfield Democratic First Selectman Steve Dunn, who is serving his fourth term, has said that the fiscal rating agencies are looking at a threshold of at least 80 percent to be considered excellent.

With Connecticut generating budget surpluses under Lamont, some Democratic progressives in the General Assembly want to revise the guardrails.

Tooker disagreed. She remarked, “If you have those long-term obligations dragging on your finances, it is like carrying credit card debt with a 21 percent interest rate.”

Like the legislative Republican caucuses, Tooker criticized Lamont for signing agreements that with salary increases and bonus pay have boosted the state employees’ salaries by 33 percent since he took office six years ago.

“When you are giving salary increases of that nature it drastically increases our obligations from a pension standpoint,” she commented. “It is compounding the problem.”

In 2019, Rose wrote a book on the previous year’s gubernatorial campaign that was titled, “Connecticut In Crisis.”

Today, he states, “I still contend that Connecticut is in crisis and from what I know about the state pensions there is still a problem with funding and meeting long term obligations. This is an issue that is still unresolved and will continue to be a major challenge for our next governor.”

State Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding (R-30) of Brookfield has said he was disappointed that the 2017 agreement with the state employees only established a hybrid pension program for the new state employees. He would have preferred a less-expensive direct contributions plan, which is typically offered in the private sector.

Tooker said that the best way to establish “serious long-term changes to your long-term obligations.. . would be to go to direct contributions,” noting that Westport has had that system since 2012 for its municipal employees

She said that Westport’s municipal employee pensions are 96 percent funded.

Tooker said that 10 years ago, “They were severely underfunded.”

What has been the impact of increasing the state’s minimum wage more than $6 an hour over the last eight years bringing it to $16.35 an hour?

“I think you would find that small business owners would say that it is difficult to afford,” Tooker commented. “However, I would say that our small business community wants to make sure that the people that work for them make a living. It is a very delicate balance.”

She said Connecticut “is not a business-friendly state” and needs to improve its job training.

Ct Mirror Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Pazniokas wrote in 2019 that Lamont signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Workforce Council, an effort to deliver on a campaign promise to bring new methods and energy to workforce development, a buzzword that suggests a holistic approach to what once was called job training. It is tasked with expanding the workforce, then matching supply with significant demand.

Last summer Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown) said that approach has been effective as the state’s “biggest employers and small and medium businesses meet with the public and private colleges to decide what we need and what can we do to develop training programs.”

She said it also has provided training for people “coming out of our corrections system.”

Still, Tooker says the state needs to upgrade its job training.

“We do not have the right vocational training at the moment,” she remarked. “Essentially they [ the companies] are now responsible for training and apprenticeships.”

“They actually have to provide training for people who come up through the ranks. “We need to make sure our education systems match up with the needs of companies,” said Tooker.

“We have more jobs than we have people to fill them,” she explained.

Last July, Bysiewicz told Patch.com that that Connecticut had 90,000 job vacancies and 100,000 more units of housing. She insisted that there was a correlation between those figures

Said Tooker, “Our lack of housing of all different types is hurting our ability to bring people into the state. We need to building housing of all types.”

“Decisions should be made locally,” she insisted.

Said Tooker, “We do not have a city that really works in the state of Connecticut.”

To address that, she wants to develop information technology hubs across Connecticut and replicate Start-Up Westport, which has almost 2,000 members and has generated an eco-system in her town.

“We make connections,” Tooker explained. “We find employees, find contractors.”

Regarding Connecticut’s electricity rates, which are among the highest in the nation, Tooker said that she agrees with Harding that the state needs to expand its supply and that natural gas and nuclear would be the best options.

On another topic, Lamont unsuccessfully sought a tolls plan in 2019, his first year in office, to finance a major road construction program. The 2015 study from the ad-hoc committee chaired by former state Rep. Cameron Staples (D-New Haven) called for $100 billion in improvements over 30 years.

Commented Tooker, “We need to get people on Metro North. We need to get Metro North faster today that it was 30 years ago.”

What did she learn at Notre Dame – which she graduated from in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Studies - that has helped her in her career in government?

Tooker noted that, including Notre Dame, she was educated in Catholic schools for 16 years.

“It really instilled in me the importance of serving others. Fundamentally, give back to the community,“ she commented.

Is Lou Holtz the greatest college football coach of all time?

“Of course I say he is the best coach,” she says with a laugh. “We won the national championship my sophomore year. I was at the game.”

Holtz has said that: “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”

Tooker said that she agrees.

“There are many things out of our control,” she said. ”Don't focus on those issues. Focus on what you can control. Your actions in and reactions to a situation are certainly under your control and will make a difference."

Resources:

Interview With Jen Tooker, Patch.com, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.

E-mail interview with Jen Tooker, Patch.com, on Monday, April 28, 2025.

Phone interview with Tom Kiely, Patch.com, on Wednesday, April 30, 2025.

E-mail interview with Gary Rose, Patch.com, on Thursday, May 1, 2025.

https://ctmirror.org/2019/10/2...

https://patch.com/connecticut/...

https://patch.com/connecticut/westport/tooker-announces-1st-quarter-campaign-fundraising-total

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Davis_Lodge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Lucius_Cross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAZEtJaCULw&t=1011s

Jim Maloney interview with The Brookfield Journal, 2005.

https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/connecticut-needs-more-kilowatts

Keith Phaneuf presentation to Wilton League Of Women Voters, April 4, 2019.

Stephen Harding presentation to constituents, July 2017, Brookfield Town Hall.

https://ctmirror.org/2024/12/04/watch-in-the-room-with-state-comptroller-sean-scanlon/

Connecticut State Employees Retirement System report.

https://patch.com/connecticut/...

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