Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A recent story in the Hartford Courant, “ Lamont Gaining Party Support ," focuses on U.S. Senator Chris Murphy as a Democrat Party kingmaker. Murphy is a kingmaker by default. Party bosses disappeared long ago. They were done in by two things: an anti-boss movement that had been picking up steam since very early press attacks on Tammany Hall, and reforms in election processes. The old party boss, usually a party chairman, fell victim to primaries and open elections. But necessary functions in politics do not disappear; they are transformed. In post-reform modern times, the party boss is the party’s most important elected official.

“If you don’t know where you are, how can you get to where you’re going? That’s why you’ve got to take stock of yourself every so often” – a waitress to a customer in a diner. Q: You’re getting on in years; isn’t it time for some sort of summing up? A: I don’t see any pressing need. Q: You’ve written a great deal about politics in Connecticut… A: … most of it lying dead in newspaper morgues… Q: Maybe so, but a record has been established in Connecticut Commentary for those who wish to consult it. Has anything changed because of your writing?

Former US Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, the bad conscience of Connecticut’s Republican Party, has surfaced once again in one of his usual haunts, the Hartford Courant , a paper that has in the past managed to oblige Weicker’s whimsy, whether he was muscling the General Assembly into passing an income tax or torpedoing Republican campaigns against then US Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, or supplying the Republican Party in Connecticut with the rope Weicker suspected it would use to hang itself. Having appointed his majordomo, Tom D’Amore, as state GOP Chairmen, D’Amore proposed that the Republican Party should allow independents to vote in party primaries, thus assuring the election for life of then US Senator Weicker. At the time, D’Amore assured the party’s central committee that he had not assumed his responsibilities as Chairman to preside over the demise of the Republican Party. Republicans declined the offer of the rope; D’Amore later was replaced by a cha...

The Hartford Courant has only recently discovered the vital connection between taxes and spending: The more you tax, the more you can spend. For many years, stretching back to the administration of maverick Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, the paper argued in countless editorials and op-ed pieces that Connecticut did not have a spending problem; it had a revenue problem. Translation: The state needn't worry about the level of taxation or spending or regulation, a hidden tax on the cost of business in the state, for as long as Connecticut was viable enough to continue to increase taxes. Any bumper stickers from the failed anti-income tax years reading “I survived the Weicker income tax” are, this year, 23 years old. In two years, Connecticut will be celebrating the 25 th anniversary of the Weicker income tax – which, during its day, was thought to have solved Connecticut’s revenue and tax problems.

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell , the George Patton of the reality movement in Connecticut politics, examined a report issued by Governor Dannel Malloy’s Brain Trust and found it “shocking for its obliviousness.” The report, Powell argues, renews commitments to failed programs and did not recommend “a single important change that might save big money and help restore solvency to state government.” While the report acknowledges that Connecticut’s formula for municipal educational financing is broken, “… the formula, while often adjusted, has accomplished exactly what it was created to do: send more money to poverty-infested cities. This has achieved only prosperity for city school employees, not any improvement in educational outcomes." There is little direct connection between money spent on education and educational outcomes: “But then the problem with educational outcomes has never been the aid formula. The problem has always been the premise that st...

When former senator and governor Lowell Weicker – now retired, sort of – looked around to tap someone to run against his battle hardened old political enemy, current Senator Joe Lieberman, his gaze fell upon fellow Greenwich millionaire Ned Lamont, who obligingly agreed to pay any price, shoulder any burden for the sake of his party and Weicker. Weicker is pretty much the antitheses of a party guy, famously having denominated himself “The turd in the Republican Party punch bowl.” Lamont wants to be a party guy; at least, he has surrounded himself with party activists who claim they have the best interests of the Democrat Party in mind – with one exception. That would be Tom D’Amore, Wicker’s battle hardened major domo and no friend to political parties. D’Amore has been around the political block several times, as an aide to former governor Tom Meskill, later as Weicker’s chief aide and state Republican Party Chairman, still later as an aide and consultant to Russ Potts, an “independen...