No one quite knows for certain how the play will unroll
during the upcoming 2018 elections, but the cast of characters is slowly taking
shape.
Last April, Governor Dannel Malloy announced he would not be running for a third term. Said Malloy, a rare emotional hitch
in his voice, “I am today announcing that I will not seek a third term as governor.
Instead, I will focus all my attention and energy – I will use all of my
political capital from now through the end of 2018 – to continue implementing
my administration's vision for a more sustainable and vibrant Connecticut
economy."
Malloy’s announcement opened a Pandora’s Box. Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who rode
shotgun on Governor Dannel Malloy’s coach for eight years, has only recently
bowed out of the race. Wyman, it appears, has children and grandchildren whose
company, she has belatedly said, she at long last would like to enjoy. Her
bow-out, we are to understand, had nothing to do with Malloy’s failed policies.
Comptroller Kevin Lembo, a young progressive relatively unbesmirched
by the failed Malloy regime, considered running for governor but, on second
thought, bowed out. Mayor of Hartford, Luke Bronin, also has had second
thoughts since Wyman’s announcement; he’s back in consideration. Middletown
Mayor Dan Drew, the focus of an ethics complaint,
is still plugging away, though one of his wings may have been clipped. Mayor of
Bridgeport Joe Ganim, an ex-felon who very well might be the poster boy for
Malloy’s “second chance society” is making noises. West Hartford Mayor Jonathan
Harris, former prosecutor Chris Mattei, former Wall Street finance executive
Dita Bhargava and former State Veterans Affairs Commissioner Sean Connolly are
all teasing us.
“On the Republican side,” a Hartford paper advises,
“Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, Trumbull first selectman Tim Herbst, state Rep.
Prasad Srinivasan, former federal official David Walker, state Sen. Toni Boucher and Shelton mayor Mark Lauretti are
among a large field.” Peter Lumaj, who has managed to light up conservatives,
is yet in an exploring stage, and somewhere off in the distance Joe Visconti,
who has described himself as “Trump without the millions,” is breathing
heavily.
Most of the chaff will be sifted during the Democrat and
Republican nominating conventions, after which the wheat will lie exposed.
Until then, opinionators are keeping their powder dry, though it is not
difficult to deduce their preferences from editorials and opinion pieces. In
the recent past, editorial boards in Connecticut have voted more or less
straight Democrat; endorsements of Republicans have been rare. The betting from
political watchers outside the magic circle is that editorial boards will
by Election Day have learned nothing and forgotten everything. “The land of
steady habits” is an expression that may no longer apply to voters, whipped as
they have been by progressive lashes, but it still applies in spades to some editorial
boards and fake reformers who have committed themselves to an ancient dying
creed.
The truth of the matter is that modern progressivism of a
kind practiced in Connecticut -- which favors high taxes, the slavish support of
state worker unions, an expansion of the role of government in business
decisions, excessive regulations as a means of controlling unsavory business
ethics, a view of state government as the principal business investor, a “forward
looking” vision that discounts tradition and what G. K. Chesterton used to call
“the democracy of the dead,” a utopian outlook that blithely ignores the
real-world consequences of superficially appealing policies – is a demonstrable and disastrous
failure that has, in the land of steady bad habits, reduced the prospect of business growth, job
creation and most other joys that a pragmatic and realistic polity is heir to.
And the people in Connecticut most severely impacted by utopian progressivism
are the poor who live in the state’s corrupt and deteriorating cities.
Politicians in the state are no longer in the saddle
directing events; indeed, it is events that are now riding politicians – and
the rest of us.
The way out of this dark and unwelcoming wood, far more
menacing than anything one meets in fairy tales, is the way in – in reverse.
You begin to work your way out of the enchanted wood by stopping your advance,
reversing course and marching towards the beginning of your journey with a view
toward progressing in an opposite direction.
Focusing all his attention on his visionary schemes for
Connecticut and spending his depleted political capital, Malloy recently effectively vetoed the efforts of both Democrats and
Republicans to restore in a bi-partisan budget crippling reductions in state
aid to municipalities he had previously imposed, a provocative move that
elicited from mild-mannered State
Representative Tami Zawistowski, “Outrageous that the Governor
unilaterally cut $91 million from education aid to our towns - well beyond the
reductions in the legislatively approved budget.” The larger part of Malloy’s
legacy when he finally leaves office will be that he had his way with both
Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly.
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