Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

There is no log cabin in Lieutenant Governor Mike Fedele’s biography, but it’s an interesting read anyway: Born in Italy, Fedele came to the United States as a tot, worked hard and made good. He was plucked by Jodi Rell from the State House of Representatives to run as her Lieutenant Governor following the dark days of the John Rowland administration. Fedele now is running for governor on the Republican Party ticket, and there are some perilous cliffs he must negotiate along the way. The position of Lieutenant Governor is not the brightest spot in the political heavens. It is comparable on a state level to the Vice Presidential office, famously defined by John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President, as being (a clean translation follows) “not worth a warm bucket of spit.” Garner ran for the presidency and lost to Roosevelt but was chosen by the Democratic convention to share the ticket after he had released his pledged delegates to FDR. Garner later opposed Roosevel...

At some point – assuming Joltin’ Joe Lieberman marches back into office clutching in his fist the highest vote total of any Democrat U.S. Senator in Connecticut history – the majority party in the state will realize that they have a Weicker problem on their hands; for Lieberman is the mirror image of former senator and governor Lowell Weicker. Conservatives used to gnash their teeth over Weicker, a Republican who voted like a Republican but thought like a Democrat, until he was polished off by Lieberman, a Democrat who votes like a Democrat but occasionally thinks like a Republican. The beef on Weicker was that he was undermining the Republican Party. Why doesn’t someone take over the state GOP, Weicker once mused, it’s such a small and insignificant thing – unlike, well … you know who. Weicker then persuaded Republicans to accept as their chairman his long-time aide and major domo Tom D’Amore, who has now resurfaced as a consultant to Ned Lamont, the Greenwich millionaire who hopes to...