5th District Challenger Maxwell Says Economy is Top Issue in District

Second of a four-part series written by Scott Benjamin

DANBURY, CT-- Matt Maxwell, one of the four candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the Fifth Congressional District, said that since January he has ambitiously utilized micro-targeting through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which will likely make it possible to win the seat by spending less than $2 million.

Incumbent Democrat Elizabeth Esty of Cheshire won her second term in 2014 by raising more than $2.9 million, according to OpenSecrets.org.

“Whoever is most effective in utilizing the digital campaign micro-targeting will win the election,” Maxwell said in an interview. “In 2012, for example, the voter information was there, but now in 2016 the tools are there to make it work.”

Campaigns now even have access to the voters’ cable television viewing records.

Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz has stated that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that campaign television advertising has mattered less this year than ever before.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/03/10/trump-train-still-rolling-as-detractors-desperately-try-to-slow-him-down.html

“Linda McMahon showed that you could buy millions of dollars of television advertising and it won’t win you the election,” Maxwell said of the WWE chief executive officer who lost two bids for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut while spending nearly a combined $100 million.

Maxwell, who lives in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, said the economy is the top issue in the district.

Allies of President Obama point to the 4.9 percent national unemployment rate, which is more than a point lower than the 6 percent that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promised in 2012 that he could deliver by 2016.

However, Maxwell insisted that the statistics are misleading. He said some people who lost their jobs during the Great Recession are now working at much lower full-time salaries or only part-time. He added that some gave up looking for jobs.

He noted that minority unemployment in Connecticut is the fourth highest in the country.

“Almost every business I talk to is looking to move out of the state,” said Maxwell, who formally entered the race in December. “If they’re staying, it’s because of family considerations. It’s not because they like the business climate.”

Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) said repeatedly during the 2010 campaign that Connecticut and Michigan were the only states that had fewer jobs than in 1989. Now after a series of budget deficits, the governor is considering substantial layoffs of state employees.

Maxwell said the best way to attract jobs is to lower taxes and reduce regulations at both the state and federal level.

He said he believes that Jackson Labs in Farmington has the potential to create jobs by developing a bioscience innovation hub. Malloy provided state incentives to lure the company from Maine to a site near the University of Connecticut Health Center.