GOP governors say Connecticut winning race to bottom with Malloy

At left, Greenwich Republican Linda Moshier, gets a hug from Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei durig the 39th annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner. At left, Greenwich Republican Linda Moshier, gets a hug from Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei durig the 39th annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner. Photo: Bob Luckey Jr. / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Bob Luckey Jr. / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 36 Caption Close GOP governors say Connecticut winning race to bottom with Malloy 1 / 36 Back to Gallery

STAMFORD — The Republican governors of New Hampshire and Kentucky said Tuesday night that Connecticut is a shell of its former self under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, but warned those in the GOP running for the state’s highest office that simply bashing the Democrat won’t bring them victory in next year’s election.

Chris Sununu and Matt Bevin said Republicans must offer bold ideas for returning the state to prosperity and run on their records of accomplishment if they have designs of replacing the outgoing incumbent in 2018. The pair headlined the Prescott Bush Awards Dinner, the marquee fundraising event of the Connecticut GOP.

“I can’t stand the guy,” New Hampshire’s Sununu told 475 Republicans at the Hilton Stamford. “Dan Malloy is not running. Now, the Democrats will run in his shadow, and you have to take advantage of that.”

The timing of the banquet, named for the late Bush family patriarch and U.S. senator from Greenwich, turned out to be serendipitous for the Republican minority. It follows a stunning legislative feat for the GOP, which siphoned off enough votes from moderate Democrats in the General Assembly to pass its $40.7 billion budget package last week.

Suddenly, a party that hasn’t won a statewide election since 2006 is eying the governor’s office and control of the Legislature, where Democrats hold a slim majority in the House and the tie-breaker of the lieutenant governor in the Senate.

“You are on the cusp of turning the tide here,” said Kentucky’s Bevin, who is president of Bevin Bells, a sixth-generation bell-making foundry based in Connecticut since 1832. “It has saddened me to see what has happened to the state of Connecticut.”

During a question-and-answer session moderated by state GOP Chairman J.R. Romano, Bevin avoided a direct personal attack on Malloy when asked his opinion of Connecticut’s governor. There’s a likely backstory to that. In 2012, Bevin’s company, the last U.S.-based bell manufacturer, received a $100,000 matching grant from Malloy’s administration to rebuild after a lightning strike and fire destroyed its factory.

“So how about those Patriots?” Bevin said. “I’m not gonna sit up here and bash the guy. It doesn’t serve any purpose.”

State Democratic Party spokesman Leigh Appleby said the GOP’s plans at the state and national level are disastrous.

“Connecticut Republicans have no business celebrating tonight,” Appleby said. “Their GOP colleagues in Washington are currently scrambling to strip health coverage from hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents. At the same time, Republicans in Hartford just passed a disastrous budget that reduces our state's competitiveness while increasing our long-term deficit, despite breaking their 'no tax increase budget' promise and raising taxes on working families.

The top two Republicans in the Legislature used the spotlight of the event to try to shame Malloy into signing the budget, ending a nearly four-month stalemate with Democrats that threatens to leave Connecticut as the last state without a budget. Themis Klarides and Len Fasano, the GOP leaders of the House and Senate, tried to drum up support for the two-year fiscal plan.

“He is a non-collaborative governor,” said Klarides, who is from Derby. “I have other names that for him that I can’t use tonight.”

Malloy has vowed to veto the GOP budget package, saying it would threaten the financial solvency of the higher education system, including the University of Connecticut, and the state’s capital city, Hartford.

“Governor Malloy has consistently demonstrated a willingness to compromise and negotiate. And he has been consistently driven by doing what is right by the people of this state — in both the short term and the long term,” Malloy spokeswoman Kelly Donnelly said. “That means he won’t support steep raises in tuition for thousands of students pursuing a higher education degree. He will not agree to repeating past practices of underfunding pension payments and thereby adding to our future unfunded liability. He will continue to support sound policies that will grow jobs and the economy and will continue to make smart investments that will help ensure that all our children — regardless of zip code — is provided the opportunity of a quality public education.”

The clock is running out on both parties to reach a compromise, with an austerity executive order signed by Malloy set to go into effect Oct. 1 that would eliminate education cost sharing funds for 85 municipalities and reduce them for 54 to keep state government running. Then Republicans would be able to point to how they passed a budget and Democrats didn’t.

Republicans are outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 by Democrats in Connecticut, with unaffiliated voters making the up the largest bloc of the electorate. They traditionally hold their annual fundraising dinner in May or June, but scheduling conflicts with potential headliners and summer vacation forced the GOP to wait until late September. Privately, some party stalwarts grumbled about the delay, with some attributing it to the unavailability of national GOP surrogates of the Trump administration.

But with national handicappers putting next year’s gubernatorial contest into the toss-up column, the choice of Sununu and Bevin was seen by party insiders as a safer, more pragmatic move to focus at the state level. Malloy, whose job approval numbers have been dragged down the loss of anchor corporate headquarters such as General Electric, Aetna and Alexion, is not seeking a third term.

A record number of Republicans have formed candidate or exploratory committees for the state’s highest office such as Mark Boughton, the longtime Danbury mayor who underwent successful brain surgery last month to remove a non-cancerous tumor.

“I wasn’t sure I would get back on my feet,” a grateful Boughton said as he was greeted by Republicans. “I wasn’t sure I would be alive.”

The group includes Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst; Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti; Dave Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general; Peter Lumaj, a Fairfield immigration lawyer and 2014 secretary of the state candidate; Prasad Srinivasan, a state representative from Glastonbury; Westport businessman Steve Obsitnik; Wilton state Sen. Toni Boucher; Michael Handler, the city of Stamford’s chief financial officer; hedge fund manager David Stemerman; and Bob Stefanowski, a Madison businessman and former UBS executive.

One of the top Republicans to pass on the race, Fasano, of North Haven, received the state party’s top honor, named for Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush and father of George H.W. Bush.

Fasano called on lawmakers to override Malloy’s veto and said that Oct. 1 is not a hard and fast deadline for the draconian cuts imposed by the governor’s executive order to go into effect.

“Friday was a historic moment for us,” Fasano said.

Linda Moshier, a GOP stalwart from Greenwich and organizer of the annual Republican clambake, honored with the Fenton “Pat” Futtner Award, while Bridgeport GOP Registrar Linda Grace was presented with the Pat Longo Award, both for service to the party.

“Working on Republican campaigns has been the joy of my life,” Moshier said.

Republicans are outnumbered 10 to 1 in Bridgeport.

“Bridgeport is a challenge, yes,” Grace said.

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