On his first day as a formally declared candidate for reelection to a third term, Gov. Ned Lamont has events planned Friday in each of Connecticut’s five congressional districts, all in the service of defining himself as central to continuing a fiscal recovery brought to life on his watch.
“I think we’ve earned the right to actually do some bold initiatives. You know, eight years ago — $2 billion deficits, and everybody leaving the state. Then you had COVID, now you got Trump,” he said Thursday. “We’ve had a lot of stuff thrown at us over the last seven years, but we’ve also righted the ship, got our fiscal house in order.”
He begins the campaign with the advantages of wealth, incumbency and a home in a Democratic Party that dominates Connecticut politics, even if it struggles for a unifying message — or a consensus about a governor who scores well in the polls while frustrating progressives over his frugal habits.
“Yeah, the progressive wing in the legislature is obviously much more inclined to compromise on the guardrails and spend more than me or the general population,” he said. “I am in a position to point out that when I got here, state employees hadn’t gotten a raise in three years. They gotten seven in a row. The not-for-profits hadn’t seen a raise in three years. We’ve been able to keep up.”
Expect Lamont to self-fund his reelection and opt out of the state’s voluntary Citizens’ Election Program, which imposes spending limits in return for public financing: $3.2 million for a primary and $15.4 million for the general election. Lamont spent $15.1 million on his 2018 campaign and $25.7 million on his 2022 reelection.
“I just find there’s so much outside money pouring in all these races,” Lamont said. “I’m not looking outspend anybody. I’m looking to compete, but I want to make sure I’m able to compete.”
Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich and former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, the two Republicans competing for the GOP nomination, are expected to seek public financing.
The run-up to the campaign has focused on promoting his record of the past seven years, most notably the state’s fiscal stability, as well as an early childhood trust fund that is perhaps his biggest deviation from a credo of avoiding major new expenses. The fund began with a deposit of $300 million and will bring down the costs of day care, raise salaries for providers and increase the number of available slots.
Lamont said a desire to see the fund thrive is one of the reasons he’s seeking a third term.
“I want to bring that to fruition. I don’t want that to get derailed,” he said.
On Thursday morning, he and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz announced the state was adding up to 1,000 new spaces in January. At the press conference, Lamont said, “People do a lot of promising in this business. I also like to deliver.”
But when asked later to say what about Lamont and his record would best inform voters about what to expect in a third term, he pointed to an attitude, not an accomplishment.
“I think optimism, making people believe in this state again,” he said. “You know, we were down on ourselves. Nobody believed in the state. And that’s infectious. I’d like to think optimism is infectious as well. I think you see that reflected in people believing in the state. More people wanting to be in the state, more businesses starting in the state. And if I could say the one thing I’m proudest of — it’s a little amorphous. I can tell you about balanced budgets — but I think people believe in the state. I think people say, ‘God, there’s a real reason for me to be here in Connecticut.’”
Lamont, 71, is 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.
Lamont and Bysiewicz will begin their campaign in Bridgeport with a roundtable talk on workforce development, followed by a walking tour of downtown New Haven with Mayor Justin Elicker and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District.
In Groton, they will talk about energy policy and fighting the White House over its suspension of an off-shore wind project. Then they go to Hartford for an event on rising healthcare costs, finishing the day with a campaign launch party at a brewery in Waterbury.
The campaign’s launch comes the day after a two-day special session of the General Assembly that addressed two sources of friction with some in his party: His unexpected veto in June of an omnibus housing bill and his defense of the so-called guardrails that direct a gusher of surplus dollars into a rainy day fund and an underfunded pension fund.
A revised version of the housing bill is headed to his desk, this time assured of his signature. And he agreed to at least temporarily relax the guardrails, diverting $500 million that had been bound for the pension fund into the budget reserve — a hedge against further federal shutdowns and cuts coming from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
No one says the special session resolves all those tensions, and it’s not hard to find Democratic lawmakers who question whether he ever will use what essentially is a Trump contingency fund.
“We’re empowering the governor. We’re giving him the resources to respond to [Trump’s bill] and all of the artificial crises the federal government has created,” said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown. “What he chooses to do with those resources, I think we still have a lot of questions.”
In an interview with the Connecticut Mirror, Lamont acknowledged, “Look, I’m not racing to spend $500 million.”
But he noted his willingness to spend state dollars to maintain the availability of food and heating assistance when the shutdown interrupted federal funding of SNAP and WIC food assistance and LIHEAP heating aid.
“I was ready to step up and do SNAP and WIC and LIHEAP and all the things related to the shutdown. I was ready to do that because people were desperate and they needed some security that I was going to be there, even if Donald Trump was changing his mind every two days,” Lamont said. “I am more careful when people say, ‘Let’s use these one time funds for long term expenses.’ And that will probably be a debate.”
Those “long-term expenses” are references to the possible end of tax credits that subsidize health care premiums for policies purchased on the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. In Connecticut alone, replacing those subsidies would be an annual cost of $350 million.
“I’ve tried to lead the conversation by saying I’m going to protect the most vulnerable,” Lamont said. “You can count upon that, and you and I may have a different definition, whether how big a commitment we’re making, but I think as a governor, that’s my obligation to make sure the most vulnerable are protected. That’s not just shut down, but that’s going forward.”
Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, who counts himself among the Democrats who wish Lamont was more aggressive in his use of surplus funds, said any tensions that Democratic lawmakers have with Lamont speak well of the party and the governor.
“I think that tension is what makes us have to negotiate and put out a better product. So I would be upset if there were no tensions,” Winfield said.
It is a contrast, he said, to the congressional Republicans in Washington who are intimidated by the president.
Lamont said he shares the anger of his party’s liberals over Trump forcing spending cuts to the federal safety net to partly finance tax cuts for some of the nation’s highest earners.
“If I was in Washington, D.C., I never would have given a tax cut to that Mar-a-Lago crowd and pay for it by cutting the hell out of health care, SNAP benefits,” he said. But he resists imposing higher taxes on the wealthy in Connecticut, saying it would make the state less competitive.
Lamont said he is sensitive to the vast inequality in wealth in Connecticut and the U.S.
“It’s exacerbated now, because the rich are getting richer, and the middle class is not keeping up. You have a debate in our party about that, which is ‘take from the rich and give to the poor,’ and it’s all a matter how you divvy up the pie,” Lamont said. “For me, I’m always emphasizing opportunity, chance to start your own business, chance to get a raise because you get more skills, chance to own your own home. Nothing builds wealth like owning your own home, cutting taxes for the middle class, not the big shot. So, two different ways of trying to go in the same direction.”
