Here we go again — another round of televised defamation of the candidates for governor. It couldn’t be more off point.
Republican Tom Foley’s campaign is broadcasting a commercial accusing Democrat Dan Malloy of having been a horrible mayor of Stamford, raising taxes and debt and running the city into the ground economically. Is this any more plausible than Ned Lamont’s commercials attacking Malloy during the Democratic primary campaign?
Any mayor’s record can be questioned but Stamford is Connecticut’s healthiest city — really, its only healthy city — and if Malloy was such a bad mayor, why did Stamford elect him to seven terms and why did he leave the post unbeaten?
In response Malloy’s campaign is broadcasting a commercial accusing Foley of being one of the greedy corporate executives who have ruined the country. The ad repeats complaints that Foley wrecked a Georgia textile company after purchasing it 25 years ago. In fact, Foley sold the company before it closed and it probably would have failed anyway as nearly the whole U.S. textile industry did at the same time.
In any case, the most rapacious entity in Connecticut has nothing to do with greedy corporate executives; it’s state government itself, which has consumed billions over the last three decades in the name of elevating education and the poor and protecting neglected children only to have worsened things in every respect. State government has been giving the store away so long without regard to results that one of those supposedly rapacious corporate executives in the governor’s office would be an improvement.
Connecticut needs much rethinking of the faulty premises of its policies, and much change. Defamation won’t accomplish that — and it might lose its effect on voters if they were offered enough specifics about the change that is necessary. Even if taxes are raised, the state’s finances have collapsed so much that there won’t be any money for the program initiatives candidates like to talk about.
There is nothing to do but economize. If there are still a few more taxpayers than tax consumers in Connecticut, the candidate for governor who got the most specific about economizing might be believed more than the defamatory commercials and could win.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
