Gov. Ned Lamont’s summer favored events that put a gloss on nearly seven years in office that have defined the one-time darling of the left — the anti-Iraq war candidate who drove Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party in 2006 — as a save-for-a-rainy day Democrat who sees salvation in stability.
The countdown to the launch of a campaign for a third term routed Lamont to a child care center at Trinity College in Hartford, a Swedish aerospace manufacturer in Newington, a building trades convention in Uncasville and a sunny plaza outside a bioscience office in New Haven.
All are places that provided an opportunity for Lamont to tell a story about something that is working in Connecticut, all building blocks to eventually click together in a campaign. The intent is to contrast his steady, if even stolid, brand of pragmatism with the deliberate drama and disruptions of President Donald Trump.
To that end, the federal government shutdown has been a gift.
“We’re the opposite of the federal government, trying to give people some certainty and stability that, despite the ups and downs out of Washington, D.C., we can manage — at least we can manage for the near term,” Lamont said from behind his desk Wednesday, exactly 11 hours after the shutdown.
A recent upgrade of Connecticut’s bond rating already had afforded him a chance to once again explain how depositing huge surpluses in a rainy day fund and the state’s neglected pension funds is paying dividends, a hedge against a fraying safety net as Trump shrinks the federal government and limits access to health care.
In July, a preschool playscape shaded by a towering grove of trees at Trinity was a venue to highlight his one major initiative in 2025: an off-budget, early childhood endowment denounced by Republicans as undermining the state’s belt-and-suspenders approach to spending caps.
It promises to create 1,000 child care slots through next June, then provide free or subsidized care pegged to income, beginning in 2027. An opportunity to rebut complaints that he does little that is progressive, the governor briefly ratcheted his rhetoric up a notch: “This is a revolutionary investment in the future of Connecticut.”
What next?
But missing are hints of what else Edward Miner Lamont Jr. wants to accomplish if reelected in 2026 to a third term as the 89th governor of Connecticut, one of only 13 states allowing a governor to seek more than two consecutive terms. It’s a question he acknowledges that must be answered.
“You can’t sit around and talk about the past,” he said. “That’s for damn sure.”
Polling consistently shows voters with a positive opinion of Lamont’s performance, but there is evidence of fatigue. Surveys by the University of New Hampshire in May and September found a closely divided electorate on the question of a third term for him.
Lamont no longer is coy about a desire for one final term. When asked why he hasn’t announced, there is no talk of indecision, only timing. He seems on path for a formal announcement after next month’s municipal elections, the same timetable he followed four years ago.
“I keep hoping I can put the politics off a little bit longer,” Lamont said.
Of the other Democratic governors elected with him in 2018, two also are seeking third terms: Tim Walz, 61, of Minnesota declared on Sept. 16; JB Pritzker, 60, of Illinois on June 26. A third, Janet Mills of Maine, is term-limited and considering a run for U.S. Senate at age 77.
The age question
Lamont, 71, would be the first Connecticut governor to seek a third term since Republican John G. Rowland in 2002 and the oldest to seek reelection since the 76-year-old Wilbur Cross, a Democrat, lost a bid for a fifth term in 1938, when gubernatorial terms were two years.
A third term would begin Jan. 6, 2027, three days after Lamont’s 73rd birthday, and conclude after his 77th. His favorite governor, Lowell P. Weicker Jr., left office at 63, the same age as Lamont’s predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy. M. Jodi Rell was 65. (Rowland, whose exit was induced by an impeachment threat, was 47.)
The two contenders for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, state Sen. Ryan Fazio, 35, of Greenwich and Mayor Erin Stewart, 38, of New Britain, are trying to make liabilities of Lamont’s age, experience and ability to do things in a third term he did not in a first or second.
“Elections are about the future and what you can do to lead the people who you’re running to serve,” Fazio said last week. “And I think that residents across Connecticut want leadership that will make the state more affordable and that will create an economy that works for everybody.”
Stewart, who has been unavailable for an interview in recent weeks as she nears her own expected kickoff in November, opened an exploratory committee in January with a promise to “usher in a new generation of leadership to the state of Connecticut.”
Both are declared supporters of Trump, who lost Connecticut by double-digit percentage points in all three of his runs for president. They are certain to be regularly pressed about how their views and policies mesh with a president who dominates nearly every news cycle.
Lamont, an early supporter of Joe Biden’s run for president in 2020 and one of the Democrats who told the White House in 2024 it was time for the faltering Biden to step aside, said age was not a concern.
“That doesn’t factor in at all. I’m going strong. I feel like I’m more knowledgeable today than I was seven years ago,” Lamont said. Then he smiled and added, as though sharing a secret, “And Annie’s going strong.”
His wife, Annie H. Lamont, is a successful venture capitalist with no immediate plans to retire. While the governor lives during the week in the Executive Residence in Hartford, the first lady stays at their home in Greenwich, not far from her office and the oldest of the couple’s three children, who is married and the mother of the Lamonts’ only grandchild.
As emails previously reported by the Connecticut Mirror confirm, Annie Lamont is a close observer of policies and politics, unafraid to nudge her husband or his staff. More than once, she expressed concern that opponents to an omnibus housing bill were taking control of the narrative.
Lamont ultimately vetoed the bill, which was a priority of the Democratic majority legislative leadership, and sided with a Republican minority that called the measure an intrusion into local zoning. It is a source of friction with liberals, as is his opposition to spending more freely.
A revised version could come to a vote in a special session by month’s end, one of several potential complications before kicking off his campaign. His administration also is at an impasse in state employee contract negotiations, and he has yet to agree on how much more money should be set aside to cope with the federal shutdown or federal cuts imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Challenges
Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden is challenging Lamont for the Democratic nomination from the left, but fundraising has been difficult. He says the finance report due next week will show him raising $45,000 in his first three months as a candidate.
Qualifying for the state’s voluntary public campaign financing program requires raising $350,000 in small-dollar contributions. The gubernatorial grants in 2026 will be $3.2 million for a primary and $15.4 million for the general election.
Fundraising is no concern to Lamont. He spent $17 million of his own funds to challenge Lieberman, $9.1 million on a gubernatorial primary won by Malloy in 2010; and $15.1 million and $25.7 million on victorious gubernatorial campaigns in 2018 and 2022.
I think that our governor doesn’t recognize the severity of what’s actually happening right now.
— Rep. Josh Elliott, gubernatorial candidate
Elliott persists in trying to convince Democrats that being affable and unflappable are insufficient in coping with Trump and that Connecticut must aggressively spend to offset federal spending cuts.
“I think that our governor doesn’t recognize the severity of what’s actually happening right now,” Elliott said. “These are not normal times, and being nice is not going to get us through these turbulent times.”
Lamont makes no apologies for his fiscal restraint.
“I talk to other governors,” he said. “They don’t have a rainy day fund. They don’t have any reserves like we have here.”
Connecticut has $4.1 billion in budget reserves, the maximum under a law that allows the administration to bank no more than 18% of the general fund budget. Lamont says that means a recession would not force tax increases or cuts in state aid for education.
“I’m glad I’ve got $4 billion to make sure I won’t have to jack up your taxes or cut your education funds. That gives mayors, and that gives a lot of families, a little bit of confidence,” Lamont said.
A volatility cap adopted in 2017, a recognition that the state’s tax revenues are sensitive to the swings of Wall Street, has limited spending growth during an extraordinary string of annual budget surpluses.
Once the budget reserves reach the maximum, the volatility cap mandates that other surplus funds go to pay down the state’s pension debt. During Lamont’s tenure, that has meant an extra $8.6 billion in contributions to the pension funds, including nearly $1 billion in the previous fiscal year.
Lamont has opposed changes in the volatility payments to the pension funds, with limited exceptions. He signed off on a $300 million deposit to the early childhood endowment, and he is in talks with legislative leaders over setting aside other funds as a contingency against federal cuts.
A month ago, Treasurer Erick Russell joined Lamont in announcing that the stabilization of Connecticut’s pension funds has lowered annual fixed costs, namely the actuarially required contributions to pensions, by about $700 million. The message was clear: The state should stay the course favored by Lamont.
The state’s pension funds now have $63 billion in assets managed by the treasurer, up from about $30 billion a decade ago, Russell said.
The unfunded pension liability, plus the chronic fiscal crises that plagued Connecticut for the decade after the 2008 recession, were among the factors cited in a dire account published by The Atlantic in 2017: “What on Earth is Wrong with Connecticut?”
It described a collapse of manufacturing, shrinking population and stagnant economic growth. All three metrics have since rebounded to varying degrees.
For Lamont, the article is a touchstone (even if he tends to wrongly attribute it to the Wall Street Journal, not The Atlantic). It is a point of comparison justifying his approach to economic growth and budgeting.
“That’s not where we are today,” Lamont said at the press conference with the treasurer. “And we’ve made incredible progress in terms of economic growth. We’re making incredible progress in terms of dealing with our unfunded pension liabilities.
Lamont and his commissioner of economic development, Dan O’Keefe, happily reported to a manufacturing convention two weeks ago that federal statistics released that morning showed Connecticut’s GDP grew by in the second quarter by an annualized rate of 4.6%, making the state ninth for the fastest growth.
The governor says, “I like where we are.”