By CHRIS POWELL
Most political observers believe that Governor Lamont will win re-election easily, if the leftist faction of the Democratic Party doesn’t dump him in the primary for renomination in favor of Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott.
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The governor is believed to be popular. He has great inherited wealth and can spend virtually infinite amounts on his campaign. President Trump is unpopular in Connecticut and though he is not on the ballot this year he is still expected to taint the entire Republican ticket. That ticket is undistinguished and its leader, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, either is not yet making himself heard or else has little to say.
But while it received little notice, the most recent Nutmeg State poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center with 946 respondents, implied contrary possibilities.
On a general election ballot the poll gave the governor a solid lead over Fazio, 49% to 36%. But the governor’s job performance was approved by only 49% and disapproved by 44%. Only 21% strongly approved the governor’s performance.
More telling, poll respondents were evenly divided at 44% on whether Connecticut is heading in the right or wrong direction. Predictably, “right direction” drew 74% of Democrats while 87% of Republicans said “wrong direction.” But remarkably unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly responded “wrong direction,” 61% to 25% — and uaffiliated voters are the largest voter group in the state at 42%, 35% of voters being Democrats and just 22% being Republicans.
If the poll is valid, the state has a substantial constituency believing that, despite the many commercials already being broadcast by the governor’s campaign, happy days are not here again, a substantial constituency that might be receptive to alternative policies and personalities.
If Republicans ever tried to address this constituency the governor might have more to worry about than Elliott and his lefties.
Recent news reports have raised the questions of why political parties in Connecticut don’t have more primary elections and why the primaries we do have are “closed,” limited to party members, rather than “open,” primaries in which anyone can vote regardless of party affiliation.
The answer to the first question is terrible. The state’s political party organizations — municipal party committees — want to keep the nominating power close to themselves. They tend to resent what they see as interference by ordinary party members. That is, they resent democracy.
So any candidate for a party nomination who is not favored by party committees can qualify for a primary only by winning 15% of the votes at a nominating convention or by collecting the signatures of party members on petitions and submitting them to municipal clerks or the secretary of the state. For any important nomination the number of signatures needed to qualify may be in the thousands. This process is usually tedious and expensive, so there aren’t many primaries.
There is one halfway valid reason for this undemocratic system: the danger that extremist candidates could win primaries by mobilizing a small minority of party members to vote while the great majority of party members aren’t paying attention and neglect to vote. The danger is real, but only because Connecticut has no habit of holding primaries. People aren’t used to them. Primaries are not a regular part of the electoral process every year.
That problem could be solved by making primaries automatic — by having them prior to every election, even if there is no formal competition for a nomination — while easing requirements for getting on the ballot. But this would entail the expense of a whole second election every year, and there may not be enough civic engagement left in the state to justify it.
As for “closed” primaries instead of “open” ones, primaries in which people who are not party members can vote facilitate political sabotage and indeed may make it impossible for any party to define itself. Since joining a party is so easy, just as leaving a party is, demanding only simple enlistment or resignation, “closed” primaries are no impediment to democracy.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 
If the progressives nominate a fiscal lemming, Connecticut Democrats will all vote for him just to spite Trump, and over the financial cliff we will go. At this point we have a better chance of being saved by entropy than by Fazio.
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