Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has finally declared he will run for a third term, a “feat that has been accomplished by only one other Connecticut politician during the past 200 years,” the Hartford Courant reminds us. Former Governor John Rowland was on his way to completing his third term in office when fate and corruption intervened.
The good news is that Lamont is not Zorhan Mamdani, the newly elected Mayor of
New York City. Most Connecticut political commentators may agree that the state
is not yet prepared for a socialist/communist putsch.
The not so good news, from Lamont’s perspective, is that the
governor likely will be challenged in a Democrat Party gubernatorial primary by
former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin among others.
“Lamont,” the Courant notes, “has been asked constantly by
reporters when he will make the formal announcement, and he has repeatedly
stated that he wanted to postpone the decision for as long as possible so that
he could focus on governing instead of campaigning” -- unlike, the paper did
not note, Democrat senators in the U.S. Congress who have postponed reopening
the national government for as long as possible because they prefer campaigning
to governing in a U.S. Congress barely controlled by Republicans. When the Democrat
inspired shutdown farce ended with a whimper, progressive Connecticut U.S.
Senator neo-progressive mouthpiece Chris Murphy commented
"There's no way to defend this," and Vermont socialist U.S. Senator
Bernie Sanders warned moments before the Democrat’s spinal collapse, "It
would be a policy and political disaster for the Democrats to cave."
Connecticut, as Republicans well know, is a state that in
the past few decades has had little to fear from Republicans and nothing to
fear from a legacy media that has everything to gain and nothing to lose from
Democrat Party hegemony.
Hegemonic governments can power their way to progress and partisan
success. The last Republican governor of the state was Jodi Rell, who
voluntarily left office after two terms in 2011. The last time Republicans
achieved near parity with Democrats in one House of the state’s General Assembly,
a non-partisan legislature in 2017 enacted fiscal guardrails, a set of budget
controls designed to ensure responsible budgeting and fiscal stability. The
last Republican member of Connecticut’s all Democrat U.S. Congressional
Delegation in Washington D.C. was Representative Chris Shays, who surrendered
his office to U.S Representative Jim Himes in 2009. The large cities in
Connecticut have been run – or misrun, depending on one’s point of view –
roughly for three decades and more by Democrats. Registered Democrats in the
state outnumber registered Republicans by a two-to-one majority, and non-affiliateds
slightly outnumber Democrats.
Connecticut, like New York, New Jersey, California and
Massachusetts, has been a Democrat one-party hegemon for decades. There are in
Connecticut no Republican San Juan Hills for Democrats to storm. And because
there is no enemy to the left in the Northeast corridor, the left’s tail has
for decades been permitted to wag an immoderate and very expensive Democrat
dog. The party of Mamdani is not the liberal Democrat Party of President John
F. Kennedy or even President Bill Clinton, and Mamdani’s unoriginal view of
government appears to be plucked from the pages of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy
of the Oppressed. Freire’s highly influential book – in fact, the
third most cited book in the social sciences – had been widely used in teacher
training and certification courses.
The Kennedy administration may ring a distant bell in
Lamont’s mind. The 71 year old, two term Connecticut governor is regarded by
Connecticut’s media as fiscally moderate and socially liberal. Like Trump, the
deep-pocket millionaire has made lavish contributions to his own past
campaigns. “A multimillionaire from Greenwich,” the Courant tells us, “Lamont
has spent more than $60 million of his own money on four statewide races that
include his first major race for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman in 2006.”
Lieberman, who died recently, incurred the hostility of
comfortably situated incumbent Democrats by bringing to an end the long
senatorial career of then Republican Senator Lowell Weicker, the father of
Connecticut’s income tax. Weicker, the state’s most
celebrated Republican In Name Only (RINO), incurred the disfavor of Connecticut
Republicans by using his own party as a foil to garner Democrat votes. During
his last year as senator, his liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)
rating was ten points higher than that of Democrat U.S. Senator Chris Dodd.
Weicker was also a millionaire. Some regarded Lamont as his protégé.
Staring down the barrel of a possible Democrat Party primary
in August, Lamont has refused to engage critical Democrat gubernatorial
wannabes such as Josh Elliott of Hamden, who recently unleashed the following
thunderclap: “Ned has had eight years to show not just the party, but the
state, how their lives would be improved with him returning to lead. By nearly
every metric, he has not done so. His track record on housing, affordability,
education, taxes, and most recently, on SNAP benefits shows that Ned is out of
touch with working-class people. Instead of doing what’s best for everyday
Connecticut residents, he consistently makes decisions based on what is best
for his friends on Wall Street.”
Lamont, according to the Courant, has so far declined to
engage in the back and forth with any of his opponents.
“I’ve got to pick my battles,” Lamont told The Courant
previously. “That’s not one I need. I’ve got enough issues fending off what’s
happening in Washington. … I’m going to stay out of it.”
The sun is always shining in Greenwich, Connecticut. The
governor has eight years tucked into his gubernatorial belt, a much diminished
Republican Party, wagonloads of cash, and he appears to be in good odor with
nearly all of his state’s legacy media.
What could go wrong?
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