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| Fazio |
Ryan Fazio – running on the Republican ticket for governor of
Connecticut against (four) possible primary opponents and Governor Ned Lamont,
who occasionally presents himself as moderate on economic issues and a neo-progressive
on cultural issues – was regrettably late for a meeting in Tolland,
Connecticut, as was this longtime political commentator.
The weather, trying its best to move into spring, was not
obliging, and the roads were clogged with traffic, delaying Fazio, who was
coming from downstate. I was late because I had gone to The Radial Coffee Company in Vernon rather than Tolland, 10
miles distant.
Barbara Broadrick, the co-owner along with her husband of
Radial, was in a commiserating mood. We both like dogs.
“It’s only about 11 minutes from here.”
She and her husband had started the company a few years ago.
Business was brisk and plentiful enough to allow its owners to have opened
multiple outlets. The service space was reminiscing of an updated kitchen.
Young people pounding their computers and I-phones were engaged, sadly not in
animated conversation with each other, as was the case in Britain when one
would stumble across a Samuel Johnson and James Boswell batting the breeze. It
was, I like to think, coffee that spurred the great journalists of the 18th
century. Honoré de Balzac, the father of French naturalism and a prolific
novelist, somewhere said he wished to have engraved on his tombstone the
epigraph: I died of ten thousand cups of coffee.”
In what respect, I wanted to know, was Radial different from
other coffee shops. The Head Roaster and Green Coffee Buyer gave me a quick
rundown. Much of her product comes from Columbia, and it is processed in-shop.
The key to commercial success is no mystery: You must have a superior product,
the means to produce it, and a grateful clientele.
Those are the same components of a successful gubernatorial
political campaign. The product Fazio is selling is Fazio. Americans generally are cautious buyers – cautious and
impatient. Time and chance are ever-present difficulties, the management of
which is usually finessed by truckloads of very expensive political advisors.
The same people are responsible for selling the product.
Fazio is an unapologetic conservative endorsed by State
Senator Rob Sampson, the voice of common sense conservativism in the General
Assembly, and Republican leaders in the Assembly Vincent Candelora and Stephen
Harding, both weary of being side-lined by Democrat Assembly leaders and
legislative gate-keepers Bob Duff and Martin Looney.
Conservative legislators are convinced there are no problems
in Connecticut’s economy and culture that cannot be successfully attacked by a General
Assembly committed to public hearings and
tried and tested rational solutions consistently blocked -- mostly for campaign purposes – by tax
guzzling neo-progressives.
At the Tolland meeting, Fazio, uninterested in hard-sells,
was not burdened by such baggage. He travels light, listens carefully rather
than unreeling complex prepared speeches carefully tailored to his audience
that have been written remotely by friendly political associates. Fazio will
not be mistaken for Lamont, even by inattentive journalists, and he resists
being “laid to rest” (RIP) in politically convenient ideological coffins.
Here is Fazio speaking recently at a press conference concerning Connecticut’s Democrat
Party tricks of the trade. There are no notes in hand. Fazio is speaking
directly to his audience about legislation to be introduced in an upcoming
“short” legislative session. His delivery is unstrained and unmarred by the
usual attention getting rhetorical bombast:
“Today, the
Senate's about to consider four significant and complicated and consequential
pieces of legislation, all of which were only introduced and released to the
public a mere couple of hours before they were debated and voted upon in the House
just yesterday.
“This is
not how we're supposed to govern. This is not what the public elected us to do.
Many of these significant and consequential proposals had no public hearing,
had no negotiation with the minority party in the legislature, have not seen
the light of day for more than hours, and are going to significantly remake
public policy here in Connecticut.
“The most
offensive of those four pieces of legislation is a 53 section housing bill,
which is the most significant undermining of local control of decision-making
for towns and cities in a generation in this state.
It was
introduced just one hour before debate started on the House floor yesterday in
its final form. Many of the most significant sections of that bill never had a
public hearing ever in the years that we've considered proposals like this. The
most defensible or arguable pieces of legislation being proposed today are ones
that we know will increase our debt burden or our spending and tax burden by
hundreds of millions of dollars. And of course, the supermajority of Democrats
and the governor cannot go to a special session without undermining law
enforcement and public safety and protecting people who are in this country
illegally who have also been convicted of serious crimes and felonies or
arrested for them. This is not what anyone was elected to do. This process is
rotten and it is bad government. No matter what party you're [affiliated with]
you’re part of it, we will fight on the floor today to stop all of these bad proposals,
especially the most significant affront to local control that our state has
seen in a generation.”
During his own service in the state legislature, Fazio has
focused a good deal of his energy on pointing out the political effronteries of
Connecticut’s arrogant and hegemonic Democrat Party. Once distant bells – the
increase in the state’s debt burden; the undermining of public safety by
improvident spending in the dark shadow of an accumulative budget deficit; the
signal failure to protect Connecticut citizens from the predations of illegal
border jumpers; and the state’s gradual incorporation of municipal prerogatives
– are beginning to sound loudly in voter’s ears, not to mention associated ills
such as eroding personal assets. People
are beginning to suspect they no longer can support the improvident spending of
“problem solving” neo-progressive Democrats.
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