Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Whether or not U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty will serve the remainder of her term or resign immediately is very much an open question. But, in any case, the battle for Connecticut’s 5 th U.S. Congressional District has begun with a show of unexpected fireworks. For many years, the 5 th District was a toss-up proposition; both Republicans and Democrats have held and surrendered the seat. Geographically the 5 th District touches the border of New York from Connecticut’s northern-most point to Danbury in the southern quadrant and includes much of Litchfield county and parts of Fairfield, Hartford and New Haven counties. Party affiliation is competitive, in round figures, 30 percent Democrat, 25 percent Republican and 45 percent unaffiliated. Over the years, the Democrat Party in Connecticut has moved from the center to the left, but the 5 th District has been a moderate preserve. During the Obama presidential election, Republican moderates within Connecticut's U.S. ...

Looking forward past the gravitational pull of the current election season, what do we expect of Connecticut’s media? Connecticut’s only state-wide paper – though this characterization must be amended somewhat, since the Hartford Courant no longer penetrates every town in the state – has nearly finished endorsing Democrats and pummeling Republicans on its editorial pages. The paper’s endorsements themselves read like re-cycled Democratic campaign posters. All seven members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation have been re-endorsed by the paper. The last time the Courant endorsed a Republican running for the U.S. Congress was many moons ago, certainly beyond the ken of any millennial voter.

Matthew Corey is the Republican Party’s sacrificial lamb this year in the 1 st District’s U.S. Congressional contest ( “Sacrificial lamb,” a term derived from Abrahamic religion traditions in which a lamb is prized as a highly valued possession and then sacrificed to a higher power ). Mr. Corey is running in a gerrymandered district that Republicans last held in 1957. In fact, the District has been a Democratic satrapy for all but six years since 1931. The demography of the District is a very picture of fate as it was understood by the ancient Greeks – powerful, tragic or comic and always inescapable. The voter breakdown in the District runs like this: Democrat active voters 156,784; Republicans 71,932; Unaffiliateds 172,626.  The Harford Courant, not unexpectedly, has recently sprinkled its endorsement over Democrat U.S. Representative John Larson. Two days before aspersing Mr. Larson with journalistic holy water, the paper encouraged the nation t...

“May you be born in interesting times” – a Chinese curse U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty, elected to office a little less than four years ago, is up for re-election in 2016, and Republicans may have a good shot at the seat for a number of reasons. The 5 th is a swing District; the Democratic Party’s nominee for President likely will be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not as charismatic a public figure as President Barack Obama, who has lost considerable luster during his second term; world events have cast a dark shadow over foreign and domestic policy prescriptions that appear to have failed; and Ms. Esty is the least politically adept of the seven members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation.

The picture shows former State House Speaker Chris Donovan smiling broadly and sporting new hair on his face, a white trimmed beard and moustache. He is chatting with Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who is smiling and appears to be sharing a humorous confidence with Mr. Donovan. Could she be remarking on his spiffy new look? Or perhaps she is congratulating the recipient of NARAL’s (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) attentions at having escaped the prosecutorial noose that hanged his campaign finance director and other staff members who worked on Mr. Donovan’s failed U.S. House bid in Connecticut’s 5th District.

Any admission from Colin McEnroe, a Courant commentator and host of his own radio show on National Public Radio, “The Colin McEnroe Show,” that he is disposed to vote Republican should be taken, as Mark Twain once said, “with a ton of salt.” Mr. McEnroe wrote in a December 07, 2012 column, “ Searching The Ballot For Worthy Republicans ,”  that he was “itchin' to vote for a Republican.”  And he even provided some tantalizing biographical information: Both of his parents had been Goldwater Republicans. Political obligations to one’s parents, however, rarely survive a Yale education,  the fifth  commandment having been seriously eroded by sophomore year.  Mr. McEnroe noticed that his father had been sliding towards the Democratic heresy at the end. In his later years, his father had “ taken to slipping into the voting booth and quietly voting Democrat. I could tell this was happening because he slowly stopped saying anything about politics in front of my mot...

Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation, the chorus of crying Democrats, is running out of active enemies. There are no longer any Republicans aboard; haven’t been since the last moderate Republican in New England, Chris Shays, fell to a young, seemingly moderate Democrat, present 4 th  District U.S. Representative Jim Himes. In the past 15 years, no fewer than 3 moderate U.S. Congressional Republicans in Connecticut have been displaced by Democrats. U.S. Representative Nancy Johnson was displaced by former U.S. Representative Chris Murphy. Mr. Murphy is now a progressive U.S. Senator. U.S. Representative Rob Simmons fell to Democrat Joe Courtney.

On “social issues,” as defined by Democrats in the Northeast, here is no “there” there within the Republican Party’s ancient regime. Northeast Republicans have only one election card on their table – the economy, stupid. There ain’t no more.  Slothful Northeast Republican Parties have permitted Democrats to define all the social issues; for them, such subjects as abortion on demand, gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty are strictly verboten.  Among gentlemen Republican moderates in Connecticut, discretion on social issues has been the better part of valor for more than two decades, which may help to explain why there are no more social issue averse Republicans in New England.

Seniority equals clout in the U.S. Congress. New Senators and House members entering the portals of the U.S. Capitol are expected to be seen and not heard for their first year or so in office. Both Connecticut’s U.S. Senators are new arrivals. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who appears to be having a problem shedding his past as Connecticut’s Attorney General, the state’s litigator-in-chief and consumer advocate, passed his first year blinking as the world slid chaotically by. With a couple of years in the Senate under his belt, Mr. Blumenthal may now be prepared to open his beak and sing a song. Political watchers in his state are hoping the melody will not be freighted with bills he wished he had been able to enact as attorney general. The state’s soon to be Senior Senator, after a scant two years in Congress, has not favored his favorite newspapers with exhaustive opinions on a raft of recent nettlesome issues, including the destruction of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, the murd...

The last of the Hartford Courant’s increasingly irrelevant U.S. Congressional delegation endorsements appeared in the paper on Friday. The Courant -- shocking the entire state – endorsed U.S. Representative Chris Murphy over former soft-porn WWE impresario Linda McMahon who, in the course of her run for Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, snubbed Connecticut’s left of center media. Courant endorsements are “conservative” in the bad sense. Connecticut’s congressional delegation is non-diverse; all the members of the delegation are Democrats, and it is clear, following the paper’s endorsement of Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback, that the publisher of the paper and its editorial board members prefer it this way. Adding its endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty’s to that of former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi, the Hartford Courant in its editorial, “Democrat's positions edge Andrew Roraback's bona fides,” tipped its hat to moderate...

In true blue Connecticut, the left of center media acts like a semi permeable membrane: Conservatives are filtered out at the beginning of post nominating convention campaigns, so that the general election contest between candidates will not be cluttered with inconvenient right of center messages and principles. Conservative corpses are carried out the back door, in the dead of night, and quietly laid to rest. John Zakarian, the longest serving editorial page manager ( 1977– 2004, 27 years) at the Hartford Courant , Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, at one point boasted that conservative political writers would be hired by thepaper only over his dead body , and though Mr. Zakarien left the paper some time ago, the tradition gamely marches on. Because conservatives are strangled in the nursery bed – though lately a few weeds have cropped up – Republican candidates who survive to a general election fall to the center or slightly left of center on the political spectrum...

Andrew Roraback is a “fiscal conservative,” which is to say he is not a “social conservative,” which is to say he is pro-abortion but not sufficiently enthusiastic concerning abortion to merit the approval of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, a pro-abortion group that will admit no exceptions to abortion on demand. The very term “social conservative” is highly misleading. There are no congressional bills or judicial decisions that have no social ramifications. Everything politicians say and do and think is said and done and thought with a view towards enforcing or changing the society affected by human action. Even budgets – the last real budget was passed by the U.S. Congress in1997   before Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008 -- profoundly affect the social sphere. The science of economics, dismal though it may be, is a science of human action.

The question before the house now that Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan has been bested in a Democratic primary by former state Representative Elizabeth Esty is: Will Mr. Donovan join a majority of Democrats in Connecticut and support the people’s choice for the U.S. Congress in the 5 th District? Mr. Donovan was defeated in the recently concluded Democratic primary by a large margin: Esty's final vote total was 12,678 to Donovan's 9,212 and Roberti's 6,583. In the general election now upon us, Republicans have chosen state Senator Andrew Roraback to lead a Republican Party effort to reclaim the 5 th District; Nancy Johnson, considered a moderate Republican, held the seat for nearly a quarter of a century before she was ousted by current U.S. Representative Chris Murphy. Within the Republican Party, moderate politicians have all but disappeared everywhere within New England. Former U.S. Rep Chris Shays, defeated in his primary contest for the U.S. Senate b...

It began as a “First Five” program and then, as happens with the usual governmental fix, quickly expanded, while retaining in its name the modest number “Five.” The day after Democratic voters in Connecticut went to the primary polls and chose Elizabeth Esty over Chris Dovovan in the 5 th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Donovan having caught his foot in an FBI snare, Governor Dannel Malloy announced he had given to Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund,   a $25 million ten-year forgivable loan at 1 percent, a $5 million job training grant, a grant up to $5 million for the building's alternative energy systems and up to $80 million in urban and industrial reinvestment tax credits.