How do you run against America’s most popular governor? Ducking into the dark back room at Wall Street Pizza, Dan Malloy talked about her party, and his.
The ambiance was less bully pulpit, more Colonial Era tavern politics as Malloy pitched his campaign to the party faithful — with a nod to the formula that excited Democrats in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Malloy, who has an exploratory committee set up for a second gubernatorial run, made the New Haven stop Wednesday night. The event was organized by the Connecticut chapter of the left-leaning grouip Democracy for America (DFA). DFA recently held a similar event, in swankier digs, for another possible Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Ned Lamont.
Some 15 DFAers and other listeners Wednesday night raised their eyes to Malloy in the front of the room, flanked by thick wooden tables cluttered with skeletons of pizza crust and widowed sheets of notebook paper.
In a speech, Malloy focused less on the Republican governor he hopes to unseat — who just happens to have the highest popularity rating of any U.S. governor (her favorables “dropped” to 65 percent in the most recent Q poll) — and more on party.
Malloy highlighted Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s recent veto of a health care pooling bill. The bill would have expanded a state health plan to self-employed people, small businesses, nonprofits and municipalities.
“If we had a Democratic governor, we’d have a pooling bill. If we had a smart Republican governor, we’d have a discussion of the pooling bill,” said Malloy, who’s completing his final term as Stamford’s mayor. He claimed Rell didn’t even debate the issue. (In her veto message, Rell called the bill too costly.)
But Rell herself isn’t the issue, Malloy emphasized.
“Age, sex or who that governor is makes no difference,” he said. “The difference is that it’s a Republican governor.”
As in the 2008 national elections, Connecticut needs “change” from a Republican — led executive branch to turn around a state that ranks “dead last” in job growth, education and transportation; pays double the national average for electricity; and relies too much on the property tax, Malloy argued.
“We need real systematic change. We need to reinvent Connecticut,” Malloy said. “We can only do that with a Democratic governor.”
One attendee, Dianne McKenna, bought it.
“I’m not sure what [Jodi Rell] has done. There’s no list of issues she’s pushed for,” said McKenna, a real estate appraiser from Stratford. “[Dan Malloy] has got a lot of credentials, a lot of ideas.”
David Stevenson (pictured) of Bethel, who supported New Haven’s John DeStefano against Malloy in a 2006 party primary, said that Malloy has “done a lot of good things in Stamford. The models there will work well in the urban areas in Connecticut. … He’s very pragmatic, very nuts and bolts.
While Rell may be a 19th century visionary and stuck in the past, Malloy is not a progressive politician, just another careerist.
In Stamford he presided over the confiscation of property by using eminent domain to turn over land to private developers, hae had an escalating tax rate coupled with increased bonding of city debts, privatized some city services and basically turned any vision of the city over to developers.
He opposed a legislative initiative by the Board of Representatives to mandate a percentage of affordable housing in new construction, but when it passed, he campaigned by claiming it as his idea!
The perpetual traffic, combined with luxury real estate developments, has created a North American Brasilia and turned a town with distinct neighborhoods into a Manhattan wannabee.
Even as he claims to be "green", Malloy, who drives a gas-guzzler, presided over the destruction of the cherry trees donated by a Japanese-American along the Mill River.
People actually had to fight to retain the few trees sitting outside Government Center.
The police budget is bloated by overtime expenses as a way of pacifying whatever opposition occurred in the past.
His reputation for verbally abusing people in private who oppose him persists.
The DFA crowd had better re-adjust their BS detectors if they have any thought of supporting Malloy.