Gov. Ned Lamont has been shy when asked by reporters whether or not he’s running for a third term. However, he has spent the summer highlighting his administration’s successes.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “It’s clear Lamont wants a 3rd term, less so what he would do,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Mark. Governor Lamont has yet to declare he's seeking a third term. So could you explain how you've been able to decipher from his recent moves that he is seeking a third term in office?
MP: Well, it's a very sophisticated analysis, which goes, if he walks and talks like a candidate, I think we can assume he's a candidate. To give a little bit more, he has stopped really being coy about whether he's truly undecided. And if you look at his schedule, he is acting very much like a candidate, putting a nice gloss on the last session, as well as his previous almost seven years in office. But as I know you know, he doesn't give us much of an idea of what his ambitions are for the third term. He wants to get there, but what does he want to do with it?
WSHU: So, tell us what his record is right now, and if he does declare for a third term, what do you think he would say he wants to do for a third term?
MP: Well, he has emphasized returning a certain degree of stability to the Connecticut state government, particularly its finances. It's not the most exciting issue to run on, but it's an important issue, and that has been his emphasis, really, since he took office. He had a horrible first year in office over a failed proposal to bring back highway tolls. But the thread that connects that failure to some of us is his successes is that he said Connecticut is not paying its bills, that Connecticut needs to have a balanced approach to spending, and that included the special transportation fund that, at that point, was headed for insolvency, so that's what prompted that. But since then, he has been somewhat lucky. Let's be honest, a significant amount of federal funds has been allocated to Connecticut and other states as a result of COVID-19 and the aid that has flowed from the federal government. On top of that, he has been a defender of the volatility cap, which preceded him, which was passed in 2017. And the real short version of that is, tax revenues that tend to be more volatile, you have to bank them. You have to either put them into the rainy day fund, and once that is full, it has to go to paying down Connecticut's really horrific pension debt, unfunded pension liability, which has built up over a decade.
WSHU: And also, the stock market has done pretty well, and that's what the volatility issue is all about. You know, when the stock market does well, we make a lot more revenue, and if we can hold on to some of that revenue for longer, it might help us out on a rainy day, correct?
MP: Connecticut's income tax structure is very sensitive to how Wall Street is doing. In good times in Connecticut, the money just flows in. So, the governor's approach to this has been to avoid what he calls the yo-yo effect: in good times, you spend a lot, and then two, three years later, you have to make cutbacks in those areas. So again, his mantra has been stability and certainty.
WSHU: And what he's got to show for that is we have a better credit rating now.
MP: Yes, the credit rating has been upgraded several times since the governor took office, and that means Connecticut can borrow money at a lower rate. The other argument he makes on behalf of his approach is that Connecticut's fixed cost, and I'm talking about contributions, the annually, actuarially required contributions to the pension fund, they actually get lower as the financial condition of the pension funds improves. So by the governor's calculation, the state is paying maybe $700 even $800 million less a year, and that is money available to do other things, which is the argument that he makes to offset the complaints that Connecticut is being a little bit too tight with Its money in this era of huge surpluses, and that there are significant unmet needs in Connecticut. Nobody really disagrees with that general point, that there are, in fact, unmet needs in this state.
WSHU: Okay, now let's talk about the opposition the way it's lining up right now. Let's start with the Republican side. Who do we have opposing Lamont, and what are their arguments?
MP: Well, they're not making any arguments yet, but there are two of them there. One is a declared candidate, and that is state senator Ryan Fazio. He's 35 years old. He represents Greenwich. He is considered a rising star in the party. And then the other one is Erin Stewart, the mayor of New Britain, who's been an interesting politician, given that she is a Republican who has done quite well in a democratic city of New Britain. She created an exploratory committee in January, and she has raised about $350,000. The significance of that is to qualify for Connecticut's system of public financing of campaigns. That $350,000 is a very important number that you have to raise through small-dollar contributions to qualify for public grants. And she is expected to become a declared candidate sometime after the municipal elections next month. And the two of them, you know, there is at this point a generational contrast with the governor, the governor is 71, he would be the oldest governor to seek re-election since Wilbur Cross in 1938. But beyond that, their campaigns really have not developed yet, which is not surprising. They are in the early stages of really putting together the infrastructure of a campaign to challenge an incumbent whose approval ratings have been pretty good. There's a little bit of softness on the question of a third term. You know, people generally think two terms are plenty, but in the end, it'll come down to a binary choice.
WSHU: Talking about challenges, he’s also got some challenges coming from his left flank. His fellow Democrat, progressive Democrat Josh Elliot, has declared that he's running. What is that shaping up to be?
MP: Representative Elliot really had trouble gaining support for his campaign as measured by his fundraising. And he told me the other day that when they file later this week, he'll show that he's raised about $45,000. His argument is, and his reason for being, I think, is twofold. One, there's dissatisfaction among liberals in the Democratic Party with the governor's fiscal conservatism. There has been a push to get him to be more willing to spend money for things like Medicaid reimbursement rates, you know, which are still pretty low in Connecticut, and that can impact the ability of people to get health care at times. There are some people who would like to see him far more aggressive in dealing with President Trump and immigration policies.
And then there's the matter of the governor's veto of the most significant housing bill to be sent to his desk since he's been elected governor, and he really did side with suburban opponents and Republicans who said that the bill as written was too much of an intrusion into local zoning, and that, you know, again, that is a source of significant conflict with the governor.
WSHU: Do you think he'll be able to solve it before he's likely to formally declare after the November municipal elections, from what you've been able to discern, right?
MP: He has been negotiating a revised version. He has been expressing optimism, House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, a key sponsor of that bill, also has been expressing optimism about having a version that perhaps the General Assembly could adopt in special session by the end of the month, we'll see. You know, these are two men who tend to offer an optimistic view of how things are going, but that is something that they hope to get done, and that would potentially ease some of the tensions with the left. But at the end of the day, if there's no realistic alternative to Ned Lamont, you know, some of those folks generally come home. As it were, we've seen that with labor in the past. You had a lot of anger at Governor Dannel Malloy over his budgets. But in the end, when you have a choice, a binary choice, between a Democrat and a Republican, you know, labor generally comes home. The question is, do you lose some of the enthusiasm that you want to see in generating voter turnout?
WSHU: However, I like the way you ended your article with the quote from Lamont saying, I like where we are.
MP: That's a contrast with the federal government and President Trump. And that is the other factor here. Our governor, let's be honest, he's not the most exciting politician we've ever seen, but that is part of, I think, the appeal that he will be making, you know, “I am Mr. Steady. I am Mr. Stable,” at a time where there's some value in that. So we'll see
