Paul Bass Photo
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley made a rare public appearance in New Haven Sunday, vowing to fight for votes Tuesday on the urban battlefield where Democrat Dannel P. Malloy has staked his reelection hopes.
After Foley participatied in a debate with Malloy in WTNH’s downtown New Haven studio, his campaign bus pulled onto West Rock Avenue from Whalley Avenue around 9:40 a.m. so the candidate could mingle with the patrons at the popular Westville brunch spot, Manjares.
Foley alighted along with two New Haven supporters, former state consumer protection chief Mark Shiffrin (at left in photo) and Edgewood activist Eli Greer (at right). Malloy has been in New Haven practically daily for months hoping to build on his astounding 18,606 — vote victory margin in the 2010 election, a feat he declared he needs to pull off again to win. Foley has publicly campaigned elsewhere. But he said as he got off the bus that he very much is contesting New Haven. While Foley volutneers have not been visible around town for the most part, his mailers have started flying into mailboxes at a rate comparable to Malloy’s in recent days. “We have an operation here. We have an operation in Bridgeport an operation in Hartford,” he said. Asked how many vote-pullers he’ll have working in New Haven, he replied: “I don’t’ know because I’m not directly involved in the get-out-the-vote effort.” But his campaign definitely will have boots on the ground here, he said.
Then, with daughter Grace in his arms, he schmoozed the Manare’s crowd.
He was helped by his father-in-law, former Republican National Chairman Fahrenkopf (in above video). Fahrenkopf headed the RNC from 1983 – 9. He now teaches at Harvard — where, he said, he is exploring how to restore “comity” in national politics. (The Malloy-Foley race has been dubbed the most negative gubernatorial contest in the country this year.)
“They are so nasty,” Fahrenkopf said of modern campaigns. “I think that’s what really turns off the American public. It used to be you could disagree with your opponent. You didn’t question their motives … Today what happens if you disagree, you attack the motives of the other person. The person is somehow either evil or bad. That’s really distasteful.”
“We have to get back to the point where members of Congress know each other” in order to build trust, he said.
Click here for an article about how Democrats and Republicans have stopped lunching together in the U.S. Senate.
“I jokingly say the most dangerous place in Washington D.C. is Ronald Reagan Airport on a Thursday night. If you’re not careful you’ll be stampeded by the members of the Hosue and Senate running for the airplanes to fly home. They don’t come back til Monday night. The point would be to get them to do things together, to get know each other. Then you can trust each other.”
The reality is that American elections are nastier, more negative, and more expensive than ever before. There is a bipartisan agreement that nothing is off limits. Even more troubling, negative ads WORK.
What seems to be missing from Fahrenkopf's account of the decline of comity is the key role that Newt Gingrich played in dismantling the most basic sense of courtesy during his time as Speaker of the House. From intentionally breaking House protocol to ridicule members of the opposing party on the floor to admonishing Republicans for sitting with members across the aisle at State of the Union addresses. It should come as no surprise then that erasing institutional support for collegiality has permanently changed the tone of party behavior.