By CHRIS POWELL
With the federal government having become more corrupt and incompetent than ever, the new Democratic majorities in Congress elected this week will have much fun investigating and publicizing it, even as President Trump, with vetoes and the Republican minorities in Congress, will be able to block legislation they find objectionable.
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Things could be worse. With luck the president’s increasingly frightening megalomania will be checked somewhat as well.
But with its own election this week Connecticut may have made itself the worst one-party state in the country — not just because the Democrats held on to the governorship with Ned Lamont and kept all statewide offices and the congressional delegation, which was expected, but also because the Republican minority in the General Assembly, already small, was nearly wiped out.
It seems as if 32 or 33 of the 36 seats in the state Senate will be held by Democrats, leaving the Republican minority there with just three or four members.
The legislature has only 28 standing committees, not enough to give each Democratic senator a chairmanship, as is customary. So maybe a few more committees will be created. Indeed, the larger Democratic majorities in the legislature likely foreshadow a big expansion of state government, at least in form if not in substance, even as Connecticut needs the opposite, needs what the federal government needs: a big expansion of investigation and auditing for effectiveness.
For the Lamont administration has been full of scandals of corruption and incompetence — as in the state Office of Policy and Management, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, the Social Services Department, the state police, and the administration of state financial grants. Though it might not have made much difference in the election amid the public’s disgust with Trump and its resolve to punish all Republicans, the party’s candidate for governor, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, made little of this. Now Connecticut has passed it by.
Decent as he is, Lamont is no administrator and has been badly served by some people he trusted and failed to monitor. Apart from that, poverty in the state has increased steadily during his administration and has been addressed only with more welfare, not with any inquiry as to its causes, which preceded Trump. The president isn’t why Connecticut is so highly taxed, so short of housing while so full of illegal immigrants, and producing so many uneducated high school graduates capable only of menial work even as the state’s manufacturers lack qualified applicants for 80,000 well-paid jobs.
While the state’s election results may be almost entirely a repudiation of Trump, they will be construed by the strengthened Democratic regime as vindication and approval of Connecticut’s circumstances. After all, while many people always claim to be dissatisfied with those circumstances and considering leaving the state for less expensive places, they just voted for more of the same in the name of punishing Trump, who couldn’t care less about one-party Connecticut.
The collapse of political competition here will thrust on journalism more of the burden of protecting the state against exploitation and stupidity, even as journalism, reflecting the public’s declining literacy and interest in government and politics, is ever-less equipped to carry that burden. Indeed, in many towns during this election campaign it was impossible to find even basic journalism about legislative candidates and their positions on issues. Such journalism used to be standard.
This decline may unleash in Connecticut more of the worst instincts of public life, like those in Louisiana under Gov. Huey Long a century ago. Supposedly he said that people who supported him before the nominating convention would get highway contracts, people who supported him before the primary would get government jobs, the lawyers who had kept him out of jail would get judgeships, and everyone else would get “good gummint.”
A lot more “good gummint” may be on the way to Connecticut.
As for the Republicans left in Washington, at least they can enjoy the renovated Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial to which the president delusionally called attention on Election Eve.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
