Appearing at a campaign debate with Republican gubernatorial
challenger Tom Foley and Independent challenger Joe Visconti at New London’s
Garde Arts Center, Governor Dannel Malloy adroitly complimented Mr. Visconti
concerning his “principled” opposition to Mr. Malloy’s recent gun law.
Mr. Malloy said that while he disagreed with Mr. Visconti’s
position on legislation that had been designed to forestall yet another Sandy
Hook massacre, he appreciated Mr. Visconti’s clear position on the bill
championed by Mr. Malloy. Both Mr. Visconti and Mr. Foley have said that the
bill favored by Mr. Malloy as a multiple murder prophylactic will not in the
future prevent the Adam Lanzas’s of the world from slaughtering innocents.
Mr. Malloy’s plaudit was, some may have noticed, a
backhanded compliment to himself – like Mr. Visconti, a politician willing to
take a clear view of a pressing problem affecting the public’s safety. At the
same time, the compliment was a gauntlet thrown down at Mr. Foley’s feet. Mr.
Foley’s position on the Malloy bill was more nuanced, and in political debates
political nuance is usually the first casualty.
Later in the debate, according to one account, “the
governor used Visconti as part of his justification for a mailer, which the
Democratic Party funded on his behalf using money from an account designated
for federal races. Malloy was asked whether the move ‘made a mockery’ of state
campaign finance laws. He said the party was complying with federal law, if not
state law.
"Once again using Mr. Visconti as a political prop, Mr.
Malloy answered, ‘Right now, we’re in a pretty tight race and we have a
third-party candidate [Mr. Visconti], who appears to be coming on. And we need
to spend money.’”
In a one party state such as Connecticut, political need
prevails over ethical considerations. If Mr. Malloy had taken a truth serum
before his appearance in New London, he might have said something like this:
“We want to defeat Mr.
Foley, and to do this we need lots of money to buy killer ads that besmirch his
reputation. Since Mr. Foley never has been a politician, he has not left behind
himself a political trail that might be successfully assaulted. His business
record, properly refashioned by Washington D.C. attack monkeys, is fair game. Both
federal and state regulations would allow such ads, provided the ads were
financed through my campaign. However, state party coffers have been depleted
by campaign finance laws that prohibit large donations. Owing to a loophole,
such funds may be provided to political parties through federal accounts. The
campaign finance law itself has created a gap through which large donations may
flow from PACs, to cash starved governors such as myself. Because PACs are
prohibited by law from creating positive ads promoting specific candidates, the
majority of ads created by PACs ideologically associated (wink, wink) with
specific candidates are NECESSARILY negative. And this answers our purposes
perfectly. In addition, the existence of a federal law that, properly advantaged,
would make available to me an ad that
did indeed support my campaign negates Connecticut’s state law, trumpeted in
dozens of editorials and celebrated by scores of politicians concerned with
preventing state contractors from corruptly buying their services. Of course,
my campaign COULD utilize such ads and bow to the ethical features of the
Connecticut law by returning the tax money provided to us on condition that we
may not accept large campaign contributions from Connecticut contractors with
whom we almost certainly will be doing political business. We could do that.
But we are not required to do it under the provisions of Connecticut’s campaign
regulations because … well, because federal laws -- though most certainly not
the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – trump state laws. In short, we
are doing what we want to do because we want to do it. That’s politics:
Politicians who own the sandbox get to decide who plays in the sandbox.”
We should all remember that politicians, especially
successful ones such as Mr. Malloy and Mr. Obama, are not on their oaths in
debates. There were no guffaws from the audience -- possibly because New London
audiences are exceedingly well behaved -- when Mr. Malloy asserted he was
compelled to accept federal funds because the threat of Mr. Visconti’s independent
campaign had now become serious, but the claim may yet produce some titters
among the editorial page editors of Connecticut major newspapers.
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