New Haven Independent

posted by: Ben Davol on March 3, 2010  8:24am

Having run a few campaigns in my day I always like to say that how a candidate will run his/ her campaign is a good indication of how they will govern.

Eleven employees! Going up to 30 paid staffers? First field staff needs to be, ah, in the field. Two, what could 11 staffers be doing now?

The fact is back in the old days campaigns needed large amounts of staff to collate mailings, make phone calls and take on many mundane tasks to “get the message out”.

Today, and as a technological wizard Mr. Lamont would agree, you can run an entire state wide campaign with a PDA, a gas card, a car with good tires and a driver. The driver so the candidate can make calls going from here to there.

So many of the campaign efforts on communication are handled through internet use that many of the old school jobs are no longer needed.

The first sign a campaign is in trouble is when the campaign office is full of staff. Since campaigns are, in the end, about getting votes one can assume everyone at campaign HQ is for the candidate “staffers” need to be out getting more votes.

One place to begin might be to prepare Mr. Lamont for interviews. His performance, after already running statewide once before, on Face the State was very weak.

I wish the Lamont effort well. We need help and I believe Ned has the ability to make the tough decisions. But, please, take a look at what all that staff is really doing.

posted by: Threefifths on March 3, 2010  9:46am

You all better not get sick.Check your boss out.

Lamont Not Sold On Paid Sick Days For Small Businesses
by Christine Stuart | Feb 9, 2010 7:23pm

Ned Lamont, the Greenwich cable executive, who is exploring a run for governor recently said he would not support a bill that requires businesses to pay its employees sick time. The statement drew immediate criticism from labor unions and one of his Democratic opponents.

Former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy said Monday that Lamont, “doesn’t get it.”

“There are certain basic rights that should be afforded to any working person in Connecticut, and paid sick leave is certainly among them,” Malloy said. “It’s wrong that we would penalize workers – salaried or on hourly wage – for being ill.”

Kurt Westby state director of 32BJ SEIU, the union that represents 5,000 janitors and food service workers, said the reality is “Too many workers are forced to choose between going to work sick or losing a pay day.”

The end result is that “too many working men and women put off seeing a doctor or taking their kids to one because they can’t take off from work,“ Westby said Monday. “Not only is this situation bad for sick workers and their families, but it puts other workers and the public at risk of contracting infectious illnesses.”

But Lamont, who runs a small business with less than 50 employees, isn’t sold on the idea.

Joe Abbey, Lamont’s campaign manager, said Tuesday that his candidate is only opposed to the idea for businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

“It’s just so hard for them to compete,” Abbey said. “We should leave this to the free market.”

Abbey said Lamont is concerned a bill that requires paid sick leave would put Connecticut’s small businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

In a phone interview Tuesday evening Abbey said Lamont would make an exception for businesses involved in the public safety and public health fields. And if the federal government adopted U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s paid sick day legislation then that too changes the equation and creates a level playing field.

Lamont’s own company Lamont Digital Systems does offer paid sick leave to its employees, but Abbey didn’t know exactly how much paid leave is offered.

This year’s paid sick day bill raised by the legislature’s Labor Committee only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees.

Similar bills have been raised a couple years in a row now and each has received a fair amount of debate. Last year’s debate in the House lasted nine hours before it passed 88 to 58. The vote was not along party lines. Last year it died on the Senate calendar and the year before that it died on the House calendar. This year’s bill is a Senate bill.

Proponents of the bill often argue that employees would have to earn the sick time and that it just wouldn’t be given to them.