Two Young Republicans

First a disclaimer: Nothing in this piece should be taken as a formal endorsement of the candidates mentioned below. In more than thirty years of column writing, the author has never made a formal endorsement, and it would be a pity to ruin a perfect record.

That said, it’s almost impossible to avoid noticing that the Republican Party in Connecticut has been crowded lately with young blood, not to mention the women upon whom Republicans are supposed to have declared war. This is partly the result of the Republican Party’s years in the wilderness.

Once a politician wins an election, he becomes the incumbent, and incumbents have insuperable advantages over challengers.

Except in times of extreme stress, most people vote on auto-pilot. It is well known that Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state by a ratio of two to one. Unaffiliateds outnumber both Republicans and Democrats. It is therefore no surprise that Democrats enjoy a majority in the General Assembly. All the state’s Constitutional offices are held by Democrats. Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation is uniformly Democratic, and with the election of Dannel Malloy as governor, Democrats now command the heights.  So then, most incumbents in Connecticut’s new one-party state during the next few elections will be Democrats, a great advantage for the party of stasis.

 It is the Republican Party that, at least in Connecticut, is the party of change.

Change comes hard. No great struggle is needed to float with the current.  As G. K. Chesterton once said, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” The political current in Connecticut has a decided Democratic undertow. Still, it is much more invigorating to go against the current, a struggle that often appeals to the dauntless young.

It is possible that Republican challengers are young because the incumbent herd – both Republicans and Democrats – has grown old in office. Time thins old herds. A stressful time also thins the incumbent herd, and we are living, as the Chinese philosopher says, in interesting times, “interesting” being the opposite of placid and peaceful, a period in our state in which voting on auto-pilot may be fatal for Mother Connecticut. The expression “May you live in interesting times” is thought to be a Chinese curse.

I’ve listed below only two young Republicans, both of whom I met recently at an event, the first annual “Women on Fire” awards dinner, which featured as keynote speaker Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, who delivered an alarmingly apposite address. During the event, awards were presented to Pat Longo, the energetic Republican National Committeewoman, and Crystal Wright, a glorious black conservative explosion. The “Woman on Fire” event was organized by Regina Roundtree, a young Republican who also wants watching. Ms. Roundtree is the head of Connecticut Black Republicans and Conservatives (CTBrac).

Penny Bacchiochi has represented the 52^nd House District, Somers and Stafford, in the General Assembly since 2002.  Energetic, very bright, well prepared politically, Ms. Bacchiochi this year is running for Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket. She is firmly grounded in education and social work and has held the Republican Caucus Chair position since 2009. Ms. Bacchiochi does effortlessly what so many other politicians do ineptly: She translates her own varied experience into pragmatic political programs. Experience is, after all, the wisest teacher. Ms. Bacchiochi believes in a politics of limits and has more than a nodding acquaintance with constitutional prescriptions. She will fight in the trenches with a bayonet in her teeth for an enduring principle. So did Cardinal John Henry Newman, but Newman also said, “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Tim Herbst, now running for State Treasurer, is made of the same mettle. These are not young people who, having wandered into the woods to find themselves, have gotten hopelessly lost in briars and tangles. Mr. Herbst knows his own mind, has more than a functional understanding of politics, is fully capable of charting a course that will steer Connecticut away from its present treacherous path and, much to his credit, has never contributed a single penny in campaign contributions to the author of Dodd Frank, a mischievous entanglement that will pull Connecticut and the rest of the nation into the weeds and frustrate the free flow of information and creativity that lies at the center of wealth creation.

Immediately upon taking office as First Selectman of Trumbull, Mr. Herbst took ownership of his town’s problems. Coming into office, Mr. Herbst knew full well he could expect little help from either the federal government, deeply in debt and far removed from Trumbull’s needs, or state government, which had simply passed onto the towns costs associated with unfunded mandates and a highly politicized administration. In the meantime, inflation, contractual obligations, bonded indebtedness and maintenance and operational costs all were banging on Trumbull’s doors.

Right from the get-go, Mr. Herbst said, “I learned an important lesson: We can depend on no one but ourselves, and we must empower ourselves to take action.”

Mr. Herbst took action. He fulfilled a campaign pledge by identifying $1 million in operational savings during his first 100 days in office, turned a budget deficit into a surplus, decreased property taxes 3.5 percent, raised pension funding to adequate levels and negotiated labor agreements that reduced the number of pension eligible town employees. As a result of his exertions, Fitch, Moody and S&P, the nation’s principal rating services, all lauded Trumbull’s improved financial position.

Most recently, Fitch lowered to “AA -- Outlook Negative ”Connecticut GO Bonds, those bonds to which the full faith and credit of the state are pledged for payment of principal and interest.

More than thoughtful political behavior, entropy seems to decide the direction of states. Republicans were in the majority in Connecticut’s state senate for only two of the last twenty years; and, during the same time period, Democrats were in the majority in the state House for all twenty years. One cannot expect beneficial change to arise from a party so entrenched, and it is by no means certain that voters in Connecticut will be turned any time soon from their enabling entropy by anything less crippling than a disabling crisis.

Republicans On The Run

The state Democratic Party, much wealthier than the state Republican Party, is now spending some of its dollars on imported gunslingers such as James Hallinan, a political hessian hired by party central to throw mud at Republican candidates for governor, a certain sign that the election season is upon us.  Democrats in Connecticut hold all the state’s constitutional offices, have veto proof majorities in the General Assembly, and presently have in their campaign coffers 14 times more cash than Republicans.

Some of the mudslinging has backfired. Even a few liberal commentators have winced at the slops that regularly cross their news desks but, as Cardinal John Henry Newman once said, “Throw enough mud and some will stick – stick but not stain.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s low rating in the polls, some commentators have noted, may give Republicans an opportunity to win back the governorship, last held by Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy’s polar opposite. Mr. Malloy is a pro-union, left of center politician; Mrs. Rell, a creature of the legislature, was a moderate Republican of a kind that once held office in most of New England, the land that conservatism forgot. Barry Goldwater, the Will Rogers of the modern conservative movement, used to say, “If you cut off New England and California, you’ve got a pretty good country.”

For reasons not yet explored by any of New England’s major research institutions, the moderate Republican in New England has become something of a vanishing species. In Connecticut, the species is as extinct as the Dodo bird. All the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation are left of center progressives, some more brash than others. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy shouts his progressivism from the rooftops, but then he is likely to moderate his tone when he next faces voters in three years. U.S. Representative Jim Himes is more discreet; he travels among progressives with his ideology tucked into the breast pocket of his expensive looking suit. Hip U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro is fearless, as anyone would be in a district that has not elected a Republican to the U.S. House in more than 30 years; ditto U.S. Representative John Larson of the gerrymandered 1st District, last held by a Republican nearly 60 years ago.

Whatever may be ailing the Republican Party in Connecticut, its losses cannot be attributed to conservative incumbents. There are none, though there is little doubt that Democrats running for office in 2014 will be banging the drums loudly against fictitious conservative threats and Tea Party “extremists,” northern Republicans clinging desperately to their guns, their wallets and their bibles – that sort of thing. The 2014 Democratic campaign script, however fantastic its claims, has already been written, much of it in Washington D.C. and Chicago, where President Barack Obama’s former campaign script writers hold court. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States, and the Democratic Party War Room in Washington D.C. is party central for propaganda that will be picked up by state parties.

Political reality in Connecticut is quite different than in other parts of the country. Here in the land of steady progressive habits, the Democratic Party has almost completely routed Republicans, especially in large, one-party cities such as New Haven, which this year had the distinction of electing as mayor a Democratic Party fixture whose husband, now diseased, was the top tax scofflaw in the city over which his wife, Toni Harp, now presides.

Speeding her plow in a Democratic primary were the usual notables: Governor Dannel Malloy, author of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years a crusading Attorney General who, in his former position, used to scowl fiercely at folk who avoided paying their fair share of taxes, and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, the National Rifle Association’s bête noir.

In one party states, politicians working the media get to choose not only their friends but their enemies as well – and never mind that the “enemy” is largely a Potemkin Village fiction. The Tea Party in Connecticut presents a greater threat to RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) than to progressive Democrats. And for this reason, they can be safely attacked by incumbent Democrats who never met a constitutional bulwark they could not leap over. Economic conservatives among Republican campaigners become poorer than Democrats in direct proportion to their defense of rational budgets, spending cuts and appeals to the self-interests of entrepreneurial wealth producers. This is an arc that has been visible over skies in Connecticut for more than 50 years.

Is it not a wonder that only a handful of reporters, editors and commentators in the state have noticed the debt pots at each end of the progressive rainbow? When, at the end of the downward plunge, Connecticut inevitably becomes the Venezuela of New England – Crumbling Venezuela was once considered the Paris of Latin America, but not even Paris is Paris anymore – those rooted in the rubble may well ask the tribunes of the people, “Why did you not warn us of the impending disaster?”

Murphy And Friends

Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was violently attacked by the media of his day and responded with a more than adequate self defense, the “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” used to say, “Throw enough dirt and some will stick – stick but not stain.” But Newman could not have been familiar with modern modes of politicking: UTube videos, blogs written by furious partisans, offshore political operations that are little more than "non-partisan" campaign finance producing operations in disguise, and sleepy eyed journalists, themselves partisan, who are willing to overlook their mud splattered political opponents.

But a bright warning line ought to be drawn somewhere.

An ad approved by embattled U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy that craftily connects Sam Caliguiri with former Waterbury Mayor Phil Giordano throws a bucket of mud on Caliguri’s reputation. Mr. Murphy’s challenger is, after all, a politician and ought not to expect to remain unbloodied in a hotly contested political campaign. Even so, the Murphy ad sets a new floor and ceiling to shameless political advertising.

Mr. Giordano is the odious mayor who was sent to prison for having had sexual relations with the daughters of a prostitute in Waterbury. The object of the Murphy ad is to hitch Caliguri to the Giordano stench, hoping that some of the odor will radiate outward to voters who may be persuaded by it to vote for the more fragrant Mr. Murphy.

The ad, “Caligiuri And Friends”  -- already denounced, but not ardently or often enough, by some reputable papers --  charges, “When Waterbury Mayor Phil Giordano went to jail for unspeakable crimes, many called for his impeachment. Instead, his Number Two man, Sam Caligiuri, negotiated a deal to allow the mayor to keep his salary and title while in prison.”

Not disclosed in the ad: 1) The negotiated settlement put Mr. Giordano in jail; 2) it spared the city, more furious with Mr. Giordano even than the slander-mongers who wrote the Murphy ad and signed off on it, the ordeal of a protracted impeachment which, while staining the city’s reputation, never-the-less would have been a political boon to Democrats; 3) most convictions for political offenses are negotiated rather than prosecuted. Such was the case with former Gov. John Rowland, former mayor of Bridgeport Joe Ganim and former Bridgeport state Rep. Ernie Newton, now out of prison and vowing to campaign for prominent Democrats in Murphy’s district; 4) Caligiuri turned Waterbury around during a trying period for the city, retiring from his position as acting mayor when his term had been fulfilled; 5 if you throw enough dirt, some will stick – stick but not stain.

Ads such as these offend the good conscience. They seek to take a strength -- Caliguiri led Waterbury through the wilderness -- and turn it into a moral deficit, at the expense of what everyone but committed partisans know to be the truth. People who endorse this junk-thought have lost all sight of the only bearing that matters. We should willingly submit to the dignity of truth, which is independent of us, and not use it as a tool of the moment to gratify our own ambitions. When truth wrapped in chains follows ambition, an honest conscience should recoil at the sight.


And it will. There are indications that people are bone weary with these fact-based truths. They want authenticity. They want the whole truth, not the half lie politicians dangle before them to purchase their votes.

The Murphy ad cannot be linked. According to a message attached to the ad on a newspaper site, it has been privatized. “This is a private video,” the message reads, “If you have been sent this video, please be sure you accept the sender’s friend request.”

Who would wish to befriend such mud slingers? As an alternative, voters who find ads such as these morally repugnant will have the opportunity to cast the sender and his friends into political oblivion on November 2.