By CHRIS POWELL
Connecticut’s system of “public” financing of election campaigns, the Citizens Election Program, established in 2005 under Gov. Jodi Rell, still sounds good in principle. Candidates for state office who restrict themselves to small donations and raise a threshold amount qualify for fairly substantial grants of campaign money from state government.
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The idea was to encourage more people of ordinary means to seek public office and to discourage candidates from selling themselves for special-interest campaign money. It was hoped that the system would increase diversity among elected officials, especially state legislators, who had come disproportionately from the ranks of lawyers, bankers, business executives, and retired people, and increase political competition.
The system does seem to have increased the diversity of legislators a bit. But it has not made state politics more competitive, state government more effective, or legislators less susceptible to special-interest influence.
Indeed, Rell, who left office in January 2011, was Connecticut’s last Republican governor, and since the Citizens Election Program started Democrats have steadily controlled both the governor’s office and both houses of the General Assembly, with one slight exception, in 2017-18, when the Senate was evenly divided at 18. Then the two parties agreed to share Senate patronage, and the lieutenant governor was a Democrat who, as presiding officer, could decide ties in the party’s favor.
Just as disappointing, the legislature seems as submissive to special interests as ever, especially to the government employee unions, the Democratic Party’s army. State employee union support helps negate the small-d democratic aim of the Citizens Election Program, since union members provide campaign assistance that is often more useful than financial donations — the donation of personal time by union members to work in Democratic campaigns. State government employees receive huge amounts of discretionary paid time off, and when they use it to help Democratic campaigns, it’s both a kickback and a hidden and one-sided form of government campaign financing.
But people in Connecticut don’t seem as thrilled with Democratic administration as the party’s overwhelming control of state government suggests. Poverty long has been worsening and state government’s response has been only to put more people on welfare. Even ordinary Democrats are complaining about the state’s ever-increasing cost of living. (Housing costs cause many complaints, even as many complainers oppose housing construction anywhere near them.)
Connecticut’s Republican opposition is weak but largely because it has had little of substance to say. The cost of its employees is state government’s biggest expense and state employment is full of excesses that might offend voters if politicians highlighted them. But most Republicans are as scared of the unions as Democrats are subservient to them.
Maybe nothing will make any difference. But what would be the harm if a candidate for state office campaigned simply with 60-second television and radio commercials in which he made presentations about government policy and the choices necessary to improve Connecticut? No fancy graphics, happy or sinister sound effects, and no pandering, just an attempt to be thoughtful and candid and to discern and appeal to the public interest.
It sure would be different anyway.
MORE ON CHILD FATALITY: A few weeks ago this column complained that the state Department of Children and Families and the Manchester Police Department had offered no account of their investigation into the death of a 3-year-old girl, Akari Cortes, who was struck and killed by a car as she crossed a street unaccompanied just before dawn on June 10. But DCF Commissioner Susan I. Hamilton made a statement last week:
“At the time of the incident, the department was investigating two reports alleging lack of supervision. During those investigations the family installed additional door locks to prevent Akari from leaving the home without adult supervision. However, there was continued lack of supervision resulting in this fatality, and the parents have been substantiated for physical neglect. The case remains open, and the other children are safely placed with a relative.”
So while journalism may have forgotten the little girl, at least DCF hasn’t.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 