By CHRIS POWELL
What’s the point of former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District?
Of course Bronin’s immediate objective is to defeat the incumbent Democrat he is challenging in a primary, U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, who has represented the district since 1999. But why must Larson be replaced when the 1st District will elect a Democrat again no matter who wins the party’s nomination?
Can Elliott make waste and fraud an issue in primary for governor?
Poll finds strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Lamont
Will Connecticut have a campaign or just Lamont’s commercials?
Bronin doesn’t say Larson is wrong on any issue important to Democrats. The two agree on nearly everything, the more so every day as they pander to the extreme liberals expected to constitute the most voters in the primary.
The problem with Larson, Bronin says, is that, at 77, he is old and tired, though Larson has been campaigning furiously after being shocked by Bronin’s challenge. President Trump “is out of control,” Bronin says, but Democrats “keep doing the same thing. We need to bring a whole new kind of energy to this fight.”
But what exactly should Democrats do differently? Bronin doesn’t say. He implies that it would be enough just to elect him and thereby discard Larson’s great seniority in Congress on the eve of regaining a Democratic majority in the House.
Bronin is well-connected to wealthy Democrats around the country, probably will raise more campaign money than Larson by primary day, and is doing a lot of advertising emphasizing what he sees as his successes as mayor of Hartford from 2016 to 2024. Hartford has had worse mayors but the claim of some of Bronin’s advertising — particularly the claim that he “straightened out a bankrupt city” — is ridiculous.
A $500 million bailout from state government, not Bronin’s adept administration, is what kept Hartford out of the bankruptcy that might have been the best way to straighten out the city. Even as Bronin’s television commercial with the “straightened out” claim was airing last week, Hartford was making the same old distressing news.
A story in Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers was headlined: “About 50 gunshots fired in Hartford early on Fourth of July, police say.”
The Connecticut Mirror had this headline: “Police escort former Hartford treasurer off city property.” She had resigned abruptly amid suspicion of scandal.
With wonderful irony Bronin’s “straightened out” commercial was inserted into a report on the internet site of WTNH-TV8 in New Haven that was headlined: “2 dead, teen injured in stabbing, shooting in Hartford.”
Of course Hartford hasn’t been “straightened out” any more than Connecticut’s other cities have been. They are still, by design, poverty factories with little capacity for self-government. It’s a problem of demographics, the concentration and perpetuation of poverty by welfare and education policies.
Bronin and the other mayors aren’t to blame for that problem. But only Bronin is pretending to have solved it, and only he has used his mayoralty mainly to advance himself politically.
Doing “something different” for the Democrats would start with regaining the House majority. So why should the party be spending millions to determine a nomination in a district sure to elect a Democrat again anyway? Why not spend the money in competitive districts where the next majority will be decided?
Is Bronin’s ambition more important than that?
* * *
Democratic campaigns in Connecticut and throughout the country are tedious for their clichéd calls to make “the rich” pay their “fair share” of taxes. Governor Lamont and his challenger in the Democratic primary for governor, Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott, are working this cliché very hard.
But exactly who are “the rich,” exactly what is the “fair share,” and how is it to be calculated?
Everyone agrees that “billionaires” constitute some of “the rich,” but candidates are seldom clear about who else might make that infamous cut. No one explains the criteria for calculating a “fair share.”
That’s because as a practical matter “fair share” is just the Democrats’ euphemism for “more,” and a proper calculation is impossible, because if “fair” was ever achieved, higher taxation would be foreclosed as unfair.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 
“Fair share” in the is context has always meant “to ensure that the government has all it needs to keep funding itself.” I seem to recall from the history books that there was some radical group who threw a party in the Boston Harbor to protest, among other things, unfair “taxation without representation” foisted upon the citizenry by the king of England. Since true history and civics classes have been essentially removed from public school curricula, no one learns or comes to expect that government spending should be controlled.
LikeLike