With the latest Quinnipiac University poll on Connecticut’s election for governor showing Republican Tom Foley 6 percent ahead of Governor Malloy even as petitioning candidate and gun enthusiast Joe Visconti draws 7 percent, the candidates may be expected to respond in particular ways.
Foley may see the poll as vindication of his campaign premise — that he will win by virtue of the governor’s unpopularity alone, insofar as 62 percent of Foley’s supporters in the poll said they were voting against the governor, a Democrat, more than they were voting Republican. Having said hardly anything specific about public policy, Foley may decide to play it safer still and say even less.
As for the governor and the Democrats, they may double down rather than see the poll as evidence that their strategy, character assassination, is failing, mainly giving the impression that they can’t defend their four years in power. After all, 23 percent of the poll’s respondents said they have not heard enough about Foley.
That is, the Democrats may contrive still more commercials attacking the Republican. They haven’t yet gotten into his first marriage and his grades at Harvard. The Democrats also may push their organizations in the “sanctuary cities” of Hartford and New Haven as well as Bridgeport to register more illegal aliens to vote.
The poll also suggests that the Democrats’ emphasis on gun control — the governor’s support of the law passed in response to the Newtown school massacre and Foley’s willingness to repeal it — isn’t accomplishing any more than their character assassination. On the gun issue respondents favored Malloy over Foley by only 46 to 41 percent, and the people for whom the gun issue is most likely to be decisive are opponents of the law, not supporters.
Visconti’s substantial showing in the poll, drawing equally from Democrats and Republicans, likely signifies disgust with the political class as much as it signifies enthusiasm for guns. But Visconti’s campaign video, in which he and friends happily brandish guns, makes it look as if he has been nominated by some Middle Eastern terrorist movement. Visconti may be lucky he doesn’t have the money to put the video on TV as a commercial. Even fervent supporters of the Second Amendment might be appalled.n
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
