Does Connecticut need a governor who is more than a nice guy?

By CHRIS POWELL

Polls have found that Governor Lamont is well liked, and it’s hard to recall any incident during his 6½ years as governor when he got really nasty in public. But a recent poll showed ambivalence about whether he should seek a third term next year. 

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Maybe that ambivalence indicates only the electorate’s openness to change after an officeholder’s two terms, not unhappiness with the governor. The state legislator challenging Lamont for renomination by the Democrats, Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden, admits that he means only to push the governor even more to the left.

Since Connecticut is a Democratic state, Lamont is the favorite in the next election. But recent developments hint that he might become vulnerable politically. At least those developments show that Connecticut is not a well-run state and is not improving, and that a strong argument might be made for political change.

The state’s economy isn’t terrible but it’s not strong either and hasn’t been strong for many years. Poverty is worsening, with more people complaining they are living paycheck to paycheck as prices keep rising for food, insurance, child care, and other necessities. Demand for more welfare is going up. Most rising prices are not state government’s fault, but state government could do much more to bring electricity and energy prices down.

Last week the federal court trial of former state Rep. Konstantinos Diamantis, who became Lamont’s deputy budget director, showed that corruption was embedded in the Lamont administration. Diamantis may be acquitted of extortion and taking bribes, but contractors already have pleaded guilty to paying him kickbacks for state construction work at schools.

Republican state legislators last week called attention to the millions of dollars of political patronage stuffed into recent state budgets by Democratic legislators who arranged grants for supposedly nonprofit organizations operated by their friends. The Republicans noted that it isn’t clear what some of the nonprofits do and that some can’t even be found.

Also last week Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers reported that the vice chairwoman of Bridgeport’s Democratic City Committee, Wanda Geter-Pataky, who became notorious a year ago in the city’s latest absentee ballot scandal, is still running what appears to be a marriage broker business at City Hall for foreigners wedding U.S. citizens they don’t even know, a racket to help the foreigners evade immigration law. The racket, in which the U.S. citizen parties are paid by the foreigners and immediately separate from them, was exposed a year ago but has prompted no corrective action from state government. For when the governor keeps saying he wants “everyone to feel safe in Connecticut,” he includes illegal immigrants, the clients of Geter-Pataky’s racket, and Geter-Pataky herself.

Last week it was also reported that state government’s medical insurance costs are exploding and going far over budget in large part because Connecticut has made many illegal immigrants eligible. 

Meanwhile the governor and other Democrats keep denying that Connecticut is a “sanctuary state.”              

Every other day lately brings news about the dire condition of the hospitals in Waterbury, Manchester, and Rockville, which state government allowed to fall into the hands of a predatory private equity investment company nine years ago. Having been looted by private equity, the three hospitals are now in bankruptcy and await sale to new owners. But under Lamont and the Democratic majority in the legislature, state government has yet to prohibit for-profit companies from acquiring and looting charitable hospitals.

Last month the governor’s chairwoman of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority got caught in a big lie to the legislature and the public and resigned abruptly. The former chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, pushed aside for abusing his expense account, is enjoying a year of severance pay worth a half-million dollars. Urban education remains in collapse, with Hartford’s school system giving high school diplomas to illiterates without reprimand by the state Education Department.

At some point people might start to think Connecticut could use a governor who is more than a nice guy.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)