Can Malloy Break The Curse?

Dan Malloy looked out at a roomful of people younger than 24. ​“You were not alive the last time we elected a Democratic governor in Connecticut — in one of the most Democratic states in the nation,” he told them. Then he asked them to help him overcome the curse.

Malloy made the remark to 80 Yalies crammed into Blue State Coffee on Wall Street Tuesday night.

As the post-Labor Day general election season kicked into gear this week, Malloy, the Democratic candidate for governor, found himself taking on two opponents: Tom Foley, the Republican candidate; and a jinx that seems to have kept the state’s dominant party from winning the governor’s mansion.

No Democrat has won a gubernatorial election in Connecticut since 1986. That’s despite the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans almost two to one in the state. And it’s despite Democrats controlling both houses of the state legislature, all constitutional offices below lieutenant governor, and all five U.S. House of Representatives seats.

Malloy addressed members of the Yale College Democrats at the Tuesday event. It was the first of a series of events the group plans at Blue State with Democratic gubernatorial and Congressional candidates this fall. The group has 150 members and many more it taps each election cycle to phone bank, canvass, and help with election day turnout, according to its president, Ben Stango. By showing up, candidates like Malloy aim to energize a hard-working volunteer base.

Not having a Democratic governor the past two decades has prevented Connecticut from more seriously addressing highest-in-the-nation electric rates, an over-reliance on the local property tax for municipal budgets and public schools, barriers to health care access, an aging population, and the lack of generally accepted accounting principles in state government, Malloy argued.

“We’re going to take our state back and make it more successful than any Republican governor has allowed it to be for 20 years,” Malloy proclaimed.

Why have the Democrats lost the governor’s mansion for so long?

Malloy and his supporters offered different theories, all of which were spun to argue that 2010 is the year the curse will lift.

Malloy’s running mate, lieutenant governor candidate Nancy Wyman (pictured at Tuesday evening’s event), argued that internecine fighting has hamstrung the Demcorats in elections past. ​“We eat our own,” she said. She said the party never united after a 2006 gubernatorial primary between Malloy and the eventual nominee, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano.

But this year? ​“Now you’re going to see a united Democratic Party, which we haven’t seen in a long time,” Wyman said.

Neither DeStefano nor any of his supporters, who worked against Malloy in this year’s gubernatorial primary, were on hand at Blue State Tuesday night. Malloy is scheduled to appear before the city’s Democratic Town Committee next week.

Malloy’s most visible and prominent New Haven supporter has been State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield. After introducing the ticket at Blue State, Holder-Winfield offered his own take on the curse: Democratic gubernatorial candidates have sounded too much like him. Until now.

“We’ve got to win,” Holder-Winfield said. ​“I’m as left as you’re going to get. But the presentation of the candidates has been too far left” to win Connecticut’s dominant voting block, moderate independents. He argued that Malloy comes across as more fiscally conservative, even while embracing core Democratic positions.

That delicate dance was on display during a question-and-answer segment with the Yalies, who tended to be affiliated with liberal activist groups. Will you sign a death penalty abolition law? they asked him. (Yes, Malloy responded. Holder-Winfield got such a law passed, but the current governor vetoed it.) Will you spend more state money on the homeless? On eliminating Connecticut’s carbon footprint? On increasing mass transit?

Malloy responded by embracing the goals and promising to study them. He added wonkish details to show he’s studied up on them and crafted sympathetic policies as Stamford’s mayor. He promised not to balance the budget on the backs of those ​“most dependent on state government.”

Then junior Marina Keegan asked him how he plans to pay for all that — when he’d enter office facing, as he noted, a $3.4 billion deficit.

“We’re not going to be able to start everything we want to start in year one or even year four,” he said. He vowed to move toward the goals, and to find savings by cutting ​“waste” and ​“duplication,” including cutting executive branch departments by a third and challenging the judicial and legislative branches to follow suit.

Circumstantial?

In recent interviews, both Malloy and 2006 candidate DeStefano offered a different theory for the curse: coincidence.

Since 1986, a Democrat hasn’t had a one-on-one race against a Republican for an open governor’s seat, they noted.

In 1990, three major candidates ran — and a popular Republican-turned-independent, Lowell P. Weicker, won the moderates and even liberals, and won the office. In 1994, four major candidates ran, splitting the vote in unpredictable ways. Since then, popular and moderate incumbent Republicans have run, John Rowland and M. Jodi Rell (“a very nice lady in personality,” Malloy noted).

“It’s just the circumstances of each race,” DeStefano argued. This year offers voters the first clear choice between a Democrat and a Republican with no major third-party challengers, he said.

Malloy agreed. ​“This is an open office. I believe we’re going to win it,” he said.

Republican candidate Foley, obviously, isn’t buying. His theory: Voters elected Republican and independent-Republican governors … because they wanted to elect them. They didn’t want to elect Democrats.

He noted the Democrats control the state legislature.

“I think people in Connecticut are smart, and they want some adult supervision in Hartford,” Foley said.

He also disagreed Mallloy’s assertion that a Democratic governor would have enacted better policy with a Democratic legislature all these years.

“The idea that a Democrat would be better able to negotiate with the legislature than a Republican is … Sure — for very liberal policies, for continuing the tax, borrow and spend policies that have gotten us where we are. To change direction? No way,” Foley said during a campaign stop at University of New Haven Wednesday.

Foley’s take was echoed by Tom D’Amore Jr., a former state Republican chairman who became chief of staff for Independent Gov. Weicker.

“People may understand divided government. They may be smarter than we think. They think it’s a good thing to have someone of a different party from the legislature. They see it as a way to balance,” D’Amore said. That’s particularly true of independent voters, he argued.

D’Amore also argued that Republicans tend to ​“act more like executives” and do better with voters here when running for executive rather than legislative positions.

Malloy took a moment at Blue State Tuesday night to sign a copy of Yale senior Christopher Magoon’s copy of the U.S. Constitution. Magoon has already gotten President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to sign his copy. He was pleased to add Malloy’s.

Does that mean he plans to try to help Dan Malloy beat the curse in November?

“Sort of,” Magoon said.

Melissa Bailey contributed reporting.