nothin New Haven Independent | In Branford, Malloy, Blumie Kick Off State…

In Branford, Malloy, Blumie Kick Off State Races

Marcia Chambers Photo

Governor Dannel P. Malloy and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal came to Branford Sunday to personally endorse and formally kick off the 2012 election campaigns of State Reps. Pat Widlitz and Lonnie Reed and State Sen. Ed Meyer. 

Speaking at a fundraiser on the porch of a private home on Linden Avenue, Malloy said of Meyer and Widlitz and Reed that in the senator and these two reps you have fantastic people representing you in the legislature, the senate and house. Each one is unique, so very smart, and so very influential in different ways that I appreciate working with them every single day.”

Meyer Faces Tough Race

Meyer, 77, who is now seeking his fifth term in office, told the audience this was the tightest race he had experienced since he entered politics in 1970 in New York.

He is facing Cindy Cartier of Guilford, a selectwoman and a top attorney for Nationwide Insurance Co., who has been campaigning vigorously in the 12th senate district. Meyer said he has as well. The district has six towns: Branford, Durham, Guilford, Killingworth, Madison and North Branford. Meyer lost all but Branford and Guilford in the last election. 

Meyer said There is honest speculation in Hartford that (Republican U.S. Senate candidate) Linda McMahon, a wrestling executive, is going to plow $100,000 into five senate districts in Connecticut,” he said, presumably including his own 12th district. So far she has spent about $10 million on her 2012 campaign. Money, he said, has become a very decisive factor in the race. This is going to be a tight race. I have been in elective races since 1970 and this is the most serious that I have encountered.” 

Meyer said the main reason he is running is that the governor is giving us a chance to have an absolutely new day in Connecticut, a spirit of driving a new economy.” Businesses in his district, he said, are flourishing. We are on the edge of a turnaround. ” 

Meyer, chair of the senate environmental committee, introduced State Rep. Widlitz, the chair of the powerful finance, revenue, and bonding committee on the house side. He praised her skills and her wisdom. She is seeking her 10th term in office.

Widlitz On New Projects

Widlitz, also a member of the State Bond Commission and a member of the Public Health and Banks committees, was instrumental in the passage of legislation authorizing Connecticut’s $291 million investment over 10 years for the Jackson Laboratory, a leader in the field of bioscience. More than 7,000 jobs are expected to evolve. 

Widlitz told the crowd she was excited to be running again. I made the decision to run again, and I discussed it with the governor. She noted a new energy set forth by the governor and Mrs. Wyman, adding the governor is taking people a little outside our comfort level and challenging all of us. I think he forgets sometimes that we are a part-time legislature but he works all the time. We are bonding water projects, affordable housing projects, businesses, all kinds of exciting initiatives. I am thrilled to part of it and to work with this administration and the team we have here for Branford.”

Widlitz introduced State Rep. Reed, who is seeking a third term in office. Reed, the vice-chair of the energy and technology committee, represents the 102nd district of Branford. Widlitz, who represents the 98th district in Guilford, also represents Stony Creek and Pine Orchard in Branford. 

Reed, Widlitz and Meyer have been environmental leaders on the shoreline. All three were given perfect scores on their environmental voting record in 2012 by the League of Conservation Voters. 

Widlitz’s Republican opponent, Jonathan Trotta, who lives in Guilford, is a member of Guilford’s Board of Finance. Reed’s opponent is Lori Nicholson, a former democrat, who ran on the republican ticket for Board of Education in 2010 and lost. Neither has held elected local or state office.

The Party Divide

Blumenthal, who left Washington, D.C. for Connecticut last week after Congress took a summer break, told the 75 supporters on the porch that he was still thinking about the fact that a dysfunctional Congress left without managing to agree on two urgent issues: how to help livestock producers across the nation who are suffering from widespread drought and how to protect essential industries from cyber-attacks.

The Associated Press reported that federal lawmakers headed home without tackling major unfinished business and they will face much voter dissatisfaction. A poll last month by CBS News and the New York Times found Congress with a 79% disapproval score and a 12% approval rating. The GOP controls the gridlocked House and the Democrats control the Senate. 

Marcia Chambers Photo

There has never been a time that I can remember when there has been a bigger divide, a bigger difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Blumenthal told about 75 people gathered on the porch. Republicans are standing against progress that can kind of turn back the clock on things like health care that makes a difference for millions of people. They are trying to go back to the day when insurance companies made the rules and ran the show. ”

Blumenthal, the state’ s former long serving attorney general, observed that the Republicans in the House of Representatives “ have stopped the farm bill that would deal with the most serious drought in history. They stopped the cyber security bill. They have stood in the way of the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which has worked for 17 years to protect women against domestic violence, and they are continuing a war on women’s health which is among the most pernicious political campaigns of recent history.” These actions, he said, run contrary to democratic beliefs, he said. We should feel proud to be Democrats, ” he said to applause.

Governor Malloy noted DTC chair Victor Casella’s opening remarks, that it is new for a DTC chair to have the opportunity to introduce its own governor.

Marcia Chambers Photo

True, we haven’t had a Democrat for quite a while. And what a mess the Republicans made of our state. But I have to tell you working with these two representatives and state senator; we have made a lot of progress in a very short period of time. Lots of stuff is difficult and hard. I didn’t create a 3.6 billion deficit; the republican governors did and they did by spending all the rainy day funds by making commitments they couldn’t honor by entering into agreements they actually weren’t paying for and in just 19 months we have put the state on a much better footing and a much better trajectory and that would not have been accomplished without these individuals. So I am very grateful.”

The Connecticut Republican party doesn’t have the same view. Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola, Jr. had no kind words for the governor when in June a projected budget deficit of $218 million was announced.

The shell game Governor Malloy has been playing with Connecticut taxpayers for the last year has given us a state budget deficit of $218 million — just one year after Malloy pushed through the largest tax hike in our state’s long and illustrious history,” Labriola said in a prepared statement at the time.

Malloy and the Democrats continue to concoct a variety of formulas for creating red ink, but the ingredients always stay the same: massive government spending, jaw-dropping borrowing, failure to pay off bond obligations and their insatiable appetite for new revenues that take the forms of taxes, fees, business permits, licenses and anything else that helps them dip their hand into our taxpayers’ pockets.”

Marcia Chambers Photo

DaRos told the members of the Democratic Town Committee that he would like to echo what the senator said about the political divide. You know it is one thing to be divided on the national government and even to an extent on the state government. But I am going to tell you something — it has worked its way down to the towns.”

At the town level, he said, it becomes more and more difficult to put good people on boards and commissions,” he said. 

Reed On The Divide

Reed later returned to the earlier theme of the vast divide, saying the current Republican Party does not resemble the Republican Party she remembered growing up in Woodbridge.

My dad was a Republican. He was a fair person. My dad believed in the common good. When Barry Goldwater (known as Mr. Conservative) was running in 1964, he said he wasn’t going to vote for him and so he wrote in Gov. Scranton of Pa.” Then, she said, her parents went to a party where everyone in town knew each other and someone says some damn fool wrote in the Gov. of Pa.’ My dad said: I think I’ll have a scotch.” The room erupted in laughter.

She said that Branford had many Republicans in the community, but she observed that Republicans like her father have retreated from the scene. It is not an anti-Republican thing; I call it gangsta politics.”

Reed said it was critical to bring back a sense of working together for the greater good, a sense of positivity. I don’t think we should be cock-eyed optimists, but nothing really ever gets done without intelligent optimism.”

She said there are a number of areas, especially in the environmental area, where the parties seem able to work together, including the legislature’s recently formed shoreline preservation task force

In an interview with the Eagle afterwards, Governor Malloy agreed with Reed.

On education we worked together and on the jobs bill in our state. But so many other things in CT are getting caught up in the national politics. And the national politics is just disgraceful, just disgraceful. I mean. Republicans blocked the jobs bill, blocked a highway bill, so they finally determined that enough Americans had actually realized they were doing that and they backed off. But not to pass a farm bill with 65 percent farmland in the United States is being affected by drought is reckless. And women’s rights are a big issue.”

Marcia Chambers Photo

As for the Nov. 6 election, Malloy said he believes Chris Murphy will win the U.S. Senate race and that President Obama will win the state. I think we will do well in the [state] house and in the senate. I think it is going to be a good year.” 

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