Trump to return to Conn. for Fairfield rally

FAIRFIELD — The road to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. goes through Connecticut.

Within 48 hours of each other, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will swing through a state that has traditionally been relegated to the role of presidential ATM.

But not this year.

Trump will visit Fairfield Saturday night for a rally at Sacred Heart University. Tickets, which are available for free through Trump’s campaign website, are required for the 7:30 p.m. event. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

Clinton is bound for a private fundraising dinner Monday night in Greenwich, where the minimum price of admission is $33,400 per plate .

Trump’s detour from the bellwethers of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida to a state that hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush in 1988, has many national political handicappers scratching their heads.

Controversial statements

The visit comes during a time of turmoil and a polling slump for Trump, whose public spat with the Gold Star parents of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq has opened the real estate mogul up to rebukes from the left and right.

“He’s such an unconventional candidate and he’s certainly unconventional for the Republican Party, and he, despite the recent gaffes, has put a lot of blue states in play,” said Carl Higbie, a retired Navy SEAL from Greenwich and spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America super PAC.

Higbie said Trump learned his lesson from his public feud with the parents of Humayun Khan, who assailed the GOP presidential nominee during a prime-time appearance at last month’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia for his proposal to stop Muslims from entering the U.S.

“I wouldn’t have gone out and attacked the Khan family,” Higbie said. “But if I was the Khans, I wouldn’t have gone out on a political platform and criticized the Republican nominee and not expect to get hit back.”

This week, Trump became embroiled in a new controversy when he said that gun owners might be able to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court Justices who would abolish the Second Amendment. Trump has denied that he was trying to incite violence, but his critics have termed his comments as a veiled inference to Clinton’s assassination.

“Every time that man opens his mouth, he shows how unfit he is to be in civilized company, much less to be president,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a top Clinton fundraiser. “The very fact that he’s taking time to come to Connecticut where he doesn’t stand a prayer — I don’t know who’s advising him and what they’re thinking.”

‘Worth his time’

Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is from New Britain. Both he and Trump have said on multiple occasions that Connecticut — stuck in an economic rut and losing corporations such as Fairfield-based General Electric — could buck the trend in November.

“Obviously, he’s showing up in Fairfield, a stone’s throw from GE’s headquarters, which is closing down,” Jamie Millington, the town’s GOP chairman, said of the company’s decision to move its headquarters to Boston. “I think it’s worth his time to spend some time in Connecticut.”

Trump and Clinton last visited Connecticut in April, making appearances in Bridgeport on consecutive days before they went on to win the state’s Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.

The statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight gives Clinton a 93 percent chance of winning Connecticut and its seven electoral votes in November. With only seven electoral votes, Connecticut holds a greater symbolic value to Trump than a mathematical one, his supporters in the state say.

“If people see states like Connecticut turning purple or red — even though people in the state of California have backyards bigger than the state of Connecticut — that can change minds,” Higbie said.

Saturday’s rally will be held in the William H. Pitt Center at Sacred Heart University, which can hold up to 4,500 people for the event. This is the second presidential visit this year at the Catholic institution, which hosted Ohio Gov. John Kasich in April before he dropped out of the GOP race against Trump.

“It’s not an alien place for him,” Gary Rose, chairman of the university’s government and politics department, said of Trump’s stop in Connecticut.

“I know a number of people have written off Connecticut as being in the Democratic column, which it may well be,” Rose said. “(But) I think that the economy is such in Connecticut with GE leaving and problems with manufacturing jobs leaving the state, I think Trump’s message could resonate with a share of voters that might be a little larger than people are predicting.”