“Our state Capital,” said Jody Morneault, co-owner of Stackpole Moore Tryon, a landmark clothing store in Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital city, “is totally crumbling, and it’s devastated. Every corporation is closed. The government buildings are closed. Every financial service company is closed.”
“We’re literally living on savings and credit cards and I
don’t want to close my store so this money meant so much for me,” she said. She
was sincerely and tearfully thanking politicians in Connecticut for providing
her with some crumbs under the table.
Lamont’s reaction to her tearful
testimony was disturbingly empathetic. “Believe, me I hear that pain,” said the man
whose dicta, in the absence of fully functioning legislative and judicial
branches of government, has caused widespread unemployment in the state. “I’m
not much of a clothes guy myself, but I’ll get my kids over there and that should
be a decent day.”
But, of course, man does not live by crumbs alone. And neither
do cities.
Striking a similar chord in a piece he wrote for the Wall
Street Journal, Bob Stefanowski was instantly and artfully
misunderstood by Democrat politicians. Mayor of Hartford Luke Bronin said
Stefanowski, born in New Haven – Bronin arrived in Connecticut by way of New
York -- could not possibly understand Connecticut cities; others wrote in to
the principal newspaper of the state’s capital city, the Hartford Courant,
which recently vacated its property, to say that Stefanowski was misleading the
people of Connecticut, perhaps in a craven political bid to become the next
Republican governor of the state.
Stefanowski ran for governor of Connecticut in 2018 against
Ned Lamont -- born in Washington D.C., reared in Long Island -- and lost to Lamont by a narrow margin, 48.4
percent to 47.1 percent; this in a state in which Democrats outnumber
Republicans by a ratio of two to one.
Bronin, formerly Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief counsel, had
saved Hartford from imminent bankruptcy by begging crumbs from his former boss
and, with a signed deal under his belt, according to which the state of
Connecticut would pay off Hartford’s debt for a few cycles, Bronin went on to become
Hartford’s mayor.
But, Stefanowski pointed out, cities do not live by crumbs
alone, nor do states, a critical note that cut to the political bone.
For a half century, Democrats have been able in political
campaigns to win the hearts and minds of urban dwellers in the state’s largest
cities, the diamonds in the state Democrat Party’s campaign crown. The mayor of
New Haven is Justin Elicker; the last time Republican won the mayoralty in New
Haven was in 1945. The mayoralty in Bridgeport is held by ex-felon Joe Ganim,
the come-back kid who, like former Governor John Rowland, spent many of his
prime political years in prison. Ganim was convicted in 2003 on 16 federal
counts: one count each of racketeering, extortion,
racketeering conspiracy, and bribery; two counts of bribery
conspiracy; eight counts of mail fraud, and two counts of filing a
false tax return. None of the convictions stood in the way of Ganim’s
successful campaign as mayor after he had stepped out of the long nine year
shadow of prison confinement.
Stefanowski no doubt will be asked, as have other Republican
office holders, for a ritualistic denunciation of Trump, these denunciations
serving as a ticket to political office liberally handed out by so called objective
and independent journalists, none of whom have yet demanded the impeachment of
Ganim, or praised Stefanowski for not having contested in court his narrow 2018
election loss to Lamont. Very likely Stefanowski feels, as does nearly half the
country, that Trump has moved the liberty ball forward while in office.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been graced with three new
justices, all of them originalists. It was the dearly departed Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, a close friend of Justice Antonin Scalia, who said,
approvingly, “We are all originalists now.” Most of the rhetorical garbage
spewed by Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators, Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy,
during the senatorial hanging of Justice Neil Gorsuch dissipated when Gorsuch,
an originalist, wrote a decision in a history making case bringing gay
marriage under the protective shield of the 14th amendment. The month
long assault on Justice Brett Kavanaugh brought disgrace only upon the assaulters.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett escaped much of the Democrat fire and brimstone in part because
she was a woman, and chivalrous congressmen on both side of the political
divide -- mostly politically privileged white males -- felt bound by an outworn
code of manners nowhere in evidence when males are hauled before congressional
tribunals.
Trump slapped China’s cheek, assassinated a murderous Iranian
terrorist facilitator, moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, drew
important Arab states into a Middle East peace net, pumped federal dollars into
a military depleted by President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden, and
will leave the White House, after some bitter recriminations, to Hunter Biden’s dad.
There are signs here and there that people in Connecticut are
weary of the trench warfare of partisan hacks. The problem with being in the
trench is that you cannot see the horizon from that vantage point. As a general
rule, those who have lived their entire lives behind political barricades, both
politicians and members of an increasingly insular media, are prevented by this
from seeing politics from the outside in, the world view of most people. Within
their claustrophobic view, politicians are able to close their imaginations
only around the intensions of a bill or policy, for instance, but are blind to
the practical consequence of their legislation. Full of empathy, they do not
know what they do.
Stefanowski is not one of these.
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