Governor Dannel Malloy assured Connecticut’s Democratic
Party, early on in the political season, that he will not be running for a
third term. Democrats are rather hoping this may somewhat deflate the
Republican march to the governor’s office. There are two groups that have been
running against Mr. Malloy during his two terms: Republican gubernatorial
hopefuls patiently awaiting the moment Mr. Malloy would throw
his hat in the ring once again, and Mr. Malloy himself, whose progressive
political prescriptions have curdled. His own worst enemy, Republicans will
sadly bid Mr. Malloy good-bye.
Not so Democrats. Mr. Malloy’s not unexpected announcement
has thrown wide the door to multiple possibilities. Perhaps the most amusing is
the non-announcement of Democratic President Pro Tem of the Senate, Martin
Looney, who was asked if he had plans to enter the gubernatorial race. Mr.
Looney did have such plans, but they were narrowly circumscribed by conditions:
if Mr. Malloy would do Mr. Looney the courtesy of leaving office before his
term expired, launching Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman into the governor’s seat;
and if Ms. Wyman were to decline to run as governor; and if Jupiter were
perfectly aligned with Mercury, bringing in the Age of Aquarius – then Mr. Looney
might consider running for governor.
That’s a no.
Mr. Malloy’s terms in office have not been Camelot. After
two massive Malloy tax increases, the governor and Democrat controlled General
Assembly are still struggling to discharge deficits, largely because the ruling
party has pointedly avoided noticing any connection between massive increases
in revenue and increased spending. Democrats are hoping that a change of
riders, if not horses, may induce forgetfulness in enough voters to allow their
besieged party to recover its footing. Over the past few years, Republicans
have drawn even in the State Senate, and they have made alarming gains in the
State House.
If not Looney – who?
Democrats need a shiny nominee whose effulgence will
bedazzle wounded voters, scatter further their already scattered wits and give
excessive regulation and continued big spending yet another chance.
State Senator Ted Kennedy of the 12th District, a
scion of Camelot, has given no firm indication that he is willing, in the
departing governor’s words, “to continue implementing [the present]
administration’s vision.” When he became governor in 2011, Mr. Malloy could
hardly envision the condition of his state twenty months before he is due to
leave office. Connecticut is among the highest taxed states in the nation, the
only state in the grand republic that has suffered a population loss, a busy
beehive of deathless deficits, increasing taxation, business flight and
progressive politicians and policies that have only a nodding acquaintance with
economic reality.
U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is still lustrous. But alas, he
seems snug as a bug in the Beltway rug where, continuing his twenty-one year
performance as Connecticut’s Attorney General, he has become the state’s first
consumer protection senator. Owing to Mr. Blumenthal’s extremist and reflexive
support of the largest abortion provider in the United States, he has been
tagged by some “the senator from Planned Parenthood, “and his catatonic support
of former President Barack Obama’s deal with the anti-feminist ayatollahs in
Iran, a country that has pledged to push Israel into the sea, may have cost him
a few Jewish votes. Still, he shines and continues to wear above his head the
secular equivalent of a halo – a 58 percent approval rating. Mr. Malloy’s own
halo is badly damaged; the lame duck governor’s approval rating is 28 percent,
two points up since he threw in the sponge.
Can Connecticut Democrats bounce back from charges they have
presided over the destruction of the state? The Democrat dominated General
Assembly has just now entered a process in which legislators, having received a
budget from Mr. Malloy, will refashion it according to their lights. Some
Democrats, suffering blow-back from a Malloy measure that forces municipalities
to assume a large portion of the costs of pension obligations, are kicking
against Mr. Malloy’s pricks. Others are not convinced by the revenue
projections baked into his budget. Democrat leaders in the General Assembly
have assured the front line troops that the budget Mr. Malloy deposited in the legislative
sausage grinder will be wondrously changed before the upcoming elections. Mr.
Malloy, by eschewing a third term in office, has freed himself of such cares;
his brothers in arms are not so fortunate.
On the Republican side of the political barricades, there is
also a great deal of motion, as well as a sobering feeling that the GOP has a
pretty fair chance of capturing at least one house in the General Assembly and
the governor’s office if – very big “if” – the party can put forward a slate of
candidates that is experienced, thoughtful rather than utopian, and acceptable
to an aroused public weary of struggling to no purpose in a sinkhole. Everyone
in Connecticut yearns for a safe, sane and steady government.
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