By Chris Powell
What are the qualifications of Erick Russell, the Democratic state convention’s nominee for state treasurer in next week’s primary election?
Russell’s record in public life is slim. His campaign’s internet site says he is a lawyer with a “prestigious” firm in New Haven, where he has done legal work for the treasurer’s office. That’s something even if it provides little to evaluate him by.
But a few days ago Russell’s campaign publicist solicited news organizations to interview the candidate for another reason: “Not only would Erick make LGBTQ history in Connecticut; he would make national LGBTQ history as the first Black LGBTQ statewide elected official in U.S. history!”
That is, people should vote for Russell because of his sexual orientation and race.
Should those characteristics really be such a big deal? After all, until his resignation for health reasons last December a gay man had been Connecticut’s state comptroller for 10 years and was generally considered as conscientious, competent, and decent as any elected state official. Nobody seemed to care about his sexual orientation. But he was white. Should anyone care more about Russell’s sexual orientation because he is Black?
Since it is promoting Russell’s sexual orientation and race, his campaign seems to think that they are a political [ITALICS] advantage [END ITALICS] — that far from expressing prejudice, voters want to show their good nature by elevating members of sexual as well as members of racial minorities. But this promotion implicitly admits that, at least in Connecticut, being the first member of one minority or another in any office isn’t really much of an accomplishment at all.
Russell seems to have gotten the Democratic convention’s endorsement for treasurer as an elaboration on the party’s tradition of ethnic ticket balancing, whereby the treasurer nomination has been reserved for a Black candidate. Now the convention’s treasurer candidate is Black and gay. With luck he also may turn out to be left-handed.
But Russell’s silly appeal for votes may not be as much of a stretch as that of a rival in the Democratic primary for treasurer, Dita Bhargava, an investment fund manager. In her television commercials Bhargava pledges to refuse to invest state pension funds in companies that don’t sufficiently support abortion and aren’t accountable enough, criteria she conveniently fails to define.
In her commercial about corporate accountability Bhargava blames Stamford-based Purdue Pharma for the death of her son from a fentanyl overdose. But Purdue Pharma doesn’t make fentanyl. Instead it has been denounced for making the painkiller OxyContin, which is blamed for being addictive and causing users to turn to street drugs like fentanyl when their prescriptions run out. In the name of benefiting victims of opioid addiction, the company is being liquidated in bankruptcy.
Purdue Pharma’s responsibility here is actually secondary. For the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin for public use in 1995 and thousands of doctors have prescribed it since and [ITALICS] still do. [END ITALICS] For the FDA has not revoked its approval. Indeed, the World Health Organization classifies the generic version of OxyContin as an essential medicine.
So while primary responsibility for the trouble with OxyContin lies with the FDA and the prescribing doctors, Bhargava seems to understand that it would be too hard to demand accountability from them even as it is always easy to demagogue against a drug company, since few people want to take any responsibility for their addictions.
* * *
MONKEY BUSINESS: Hooray! A new example of racism supposedly has been discovered. It’s the name of a viral disease that causes fever, headache, and a blistering rash and is spreading around the world: monkeypox. Fortunately monkeypox usually resolves in a month and causes few fatalities.
But the disease appears to be highly associated with homosexuality and “monkey” has been not just a disparaging term generally but one used against Black people particularly. So public health officials want to sanitize the disease by renaming it.
That would be fine, but then “chicken” long has been a term of disparagement too, so what is to be done about chickenpox?
Maybe the whole medical lexicon needs an urgent review for political correctness. Or maybe public health authorities just need to lighten up.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
-END-
Chris Powell column 