Voters: Frustrated by inflation at gas pumps, supermarkets, real estate offices

By Scott Benjamin

BETHEL –What did he learn in 2024 that will help him in 2026 to become the first Democrat to capture the 28^th District state Senate seat since Barry Manilow made his 1974 debut on American Bandstand?

“I have a funny answer,” says Rob Blanchard of Fairfield, who is making his second bid in the district, which covers Fairfield, Newtown, Bethel and Easton.

“My wife gave birth to our first child six weeks before the election,” he explains. “I joke that I won’t time the birth of a child with election day again.”

More seriously, Blanchard said, as was the case two years ago, affordability is the prime issue.

“A lot of people will base their frustrations on the party in power at the national level. State and local races can be nationalized,” said Blanchard, who is a senior advisor in Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D-Greenwich) re-election campaign and until April was the governor’s director of communications.

He remarked, “There was frustration with the Biden Administration in 2024, and I think it made it more difficult for people to believe that a Democratic candidate [for state Senate] would make a difference.”

Over the last five years there have been two inflation shocks – the surge in 2022 following the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, and the current escalation resulting from Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

Blanchard, who won the Democratic convention nomination in the district in May, commented, “I think the Trump Administration is exacerbating the cost of living. You just have to go to the gas pump.”

This spring, Lamont proposed a temporary gas tax suspension, but a number of Democratic legislators said that money, which goes into the special transportation fund , is vital for road repairs and plowing the snow off the highways.

“That’s a great point,” Blanchard said.

“But I certainly think it is still needed,” he remarked. “The people filling their gas tanks think it is needed. It could provide $20 a month in savings for a typical person. I think it is important that we promote relief.”

The Baby Boomers became adults during the Great Moderation. From 1983 to 2007 there were only two short, mild recessions. Former Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that there has never been such a long period of fiscal stability in the American economy.

Blanchard, who graduated from college in 2010, said his generation – the Millennials – and the younger Generation Z “have experienced a quiet inflation. The wages aren’t keeping up.” The job prospects have been meager.

Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph C. Sternberg has written that the Millennials are registering unaffiliated at a greater rate than their parents.

Exclaimed Blanchard, "Unaffiliated voters aren't apathetic, they're exhausted and annoyed. They've watched both parties fight each other rather than address the issues facing them, and they've decided neither label fits their beliefs.”

At about 43 percent, the unaffiliated voters are the biggest voting bloc in Connecticut.

However, for at least eight years Connecticut has undergone a political change.

Sacred Heart University Government Professor Gary Rose has described it as a diploma divide. The college-educated are more likely to vote Democrat, which has changed the dynamics in some former Republican strongholds.

“I think all of Fairfield County has started to shift that way,” Blanchard said. Over the recent years, three other districts based in the county - the 36th and 26th and 24th - have elected a Democrat after decades of Republican rule.

The race in the 28^th District also has a noticeable difference from the 2024 campaign.

The Republican incumbent that Blanchard lost to two years ago, Tony Hwang of Fairfield, is not seeking a seventh term. Hwang, who had been praised for his retail politics, annexed 54.6 percent of the vote in 2024. Hwang campaigned unsuccessfully earlier this year for first selectman of Fairfield.

Blanchard, the deputy majority leader of Fairfield’s Representative Town Meeting, won the convention nomination in May.

Amybeth Laroche, a member of Newtown’s Board of Finance, has secured the Republican nomination.

Bob MacGuffie of Fairfield, the Republican convention nominee in the Fourth Congressional District in 2024, said she has “some of the best political instincts I’ve seen in a candidate in 15 years.”

Rose has stated that with Blanchard on the ticket the Democrats “ have a very real chance of flipping this district “Blue.”

On housing, Blanchard said under the signature bill that Lamont signed last fall, he believes the state and municipalities can work together to develop more middle housing – including starter homes.

He added that he would support rent controls on “private-equity apartments.”

“We need to deal with the spikes in the rent,” said Blanchard, noting that, among other things, young residents paying high rents cannot afford to save to purchase a home.

Laroche stated that, “To truly address affordability, we must recognize that the problem is not a failure of the free market, but rather years of burdensome regulations and one-size-fits-all mandates that have limited housing options and increased costs. Instead of more top-down directives from Hartford, Connecticut should look to successful approaches implemented in other states, such as Florida, that encourage targeted development through incentives rather than mandates.”

On another topic, Blanchard said he supports removing iPhones from the public-school classrooms.

“It is a massive distraction,” he explained. “I think it is challenging for the teachers and it has had an impact on our students’ mental health.”

“I think there are ways that technology is successfully integrated into our curriculums. Kids can bring in their iPhones and put them in a pouch,” Blanchard exclaimed.

Legislation to ban the iPhones was approved this spring in the state House but was not considered in the state Senate.

CT Inside Investigator has reported that enrollment at Connecticut Board of Regents colleges declined 20 percent between 2018 to 2023.

However, Blanchard doesn’t think that the campuses – some of which were expanded a generation ago – should be downsized.

Western Connecticut State University in Danbury has had two campuses since 1982.

However, former Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker, the Democratic candidate in the 32^nd state Senate District, recently told Patch.com that with a much smaller enrollment now than before the Great Recession, “It would make sense to have the university [completely] at the west side campus” - which has 365 acres, more than 10 times the size of the midtown campus.

However, Blanchard said some professions, such as health care, have “massive shortages” – which the colleges and universities could address in partnership with Connecticut’s employers.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio of Greenwich supports zero-based budgeting for the state fiscal blueprint.

Blanchard commented, “I don’t think it is realistic because you look at our budget and a majority of it is fixed costs.” It could “wreak havoc” with further paying down the pension debt for the state employees.

In 2018, according to the report of the state Commission on Fiscal Stability & Economic Competitiveness the debt was only 29 percent funded. CT Mirror has recently reported that it is currently 60 percent funded. Brookfield First Selectman Steve Dunn has said that in the public sector 80 percent is considered “good.”

Blanchard said plans to eliminate the income tax, as Laroche has suggested, are unrealistic

“The income tax funds about half of the budget,” Blanchard remarked.

In 2023 Lamont and the General Assembly lowered the income tax rate for the middle class from five down to four and a half percent and for the lower class from three down to two percent.

Blanchard remarked, “I think we can find ways to cut the income tax rates further but it can’t be done by ripping up contracts” with the state employee collective bargaining units.

He previously worked for former state Attorney Gen. George Jepsen of West Hartford and state Comptroller Sean Scanlon of Guilford, both Democrats.

He said having bagels with a colleague will do much more than delivering a well-crafted floor speech.

“It’s all about relationships,” Blanchard said. “On day one, I’ll have relationships on both sides of the aisle in both chambers and at the local level.”

Blanchard also worked as a communications aide on Lamont’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign.

Is the reason that Lamont has a good rapport with reporters because he once was a reporter?

In 1977, shortly after graduating from Harvard, he served as Editor for a year at the Black River Tribune in Vermont, where he worked with Jane Mayer, now a staff writer for The New Yorker.

“Certainly,” said Blanchard. “He values the role of the press. When you’re doing one or two press conferences a day and interact with the media, you build a level of comfort.”

What did Blanchard learn at Syracuse University’s acclaimed George Holmes Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in History, that has helped him in his career in government?

He said his six-hour-a -week internship for an elected official made him “realize how much of a difference you can make in public service. That was a turning point for me.”

“Amid the Great Recession, I saw elected leaders working to resolve the foreclosure crisis and fight for consumers when they were working with airlines and banks,” Blanchard explained.

He said he regrets not taking any courses at the Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications – which has produced such notables as ESPN.com baseball writer Jeff Passan and NBC Sportscaster Mike Tirico.

Said Blanchard “However, my communications work happened later in my career.”

Who is Syracuse’s most famous graduate– Joe Biden or Dick Clark?

“Dick Clark,” says Blanchard.

That must be because the ratings for The $25,000 Pyramid in daytime were higher than those for Biden’s State of the Union addresses in prime time.

Or maybe it is because Clark was quoted in a 1971 TV Guide profile that he had a wager with friends that whenever he was on a plane one of the flight attendants would say that while in high school, she watched American Bandstand.

Blanchard says, “Perhaps the answer is Bob Costas.”

Resources:

Rob Blanchard interview, Patch.com, on Monday, June 15, 2026.

Rob Blanchard, e-mail interview, Patch.com, on Tuesday, June 16, 2026.

E-mail interview with Amybeth Laroche, Patch.com, on Tuesday, June 16, 2026.

Interview with Matt Knickerbocker, Patch.com, on Saturday, June 13, 2026.

https://ctmirror.org/2025/11/14/ct-unaffiliated-voters/

https://insideinvestigator.org/despite-overall-ct-enrollment-declines-uconn-sees-increases/

https://ctmirror.org/2025/11/14/ct-unaffiliated-voters/

Bob MacGuffie, e-mail message, May 2026.

Gary Rose, e-mail interview\, May, 2026.

Robert Samuelson, “The Great Inflation,” Random House Publishing Group, 2008.

Joseph C. Sternberg, “Theft Of A Decade,” PublicAffairs, 2019.