“Revolutionary” Targets Looney, ​“RINOs”

Attention all Dems, Dinos, and RINOs: Steve Orosco is heading your way, with plans to take no prisoners.

The Republican Morris Cove mixed-martial-arts impresario has launched his second run for office, this time for the seat occupied by Democratic State Senate President Martin Looney.

In the process, he said, he’s looking to take down not only entrenched Democrats he accuses of presiding over New Haven’s decline, but ​“dinosaurs” and Republicans in Name Only (that would be the ​“RINOs”) he accuses of driving needed people of all different backgrounds to build a credible alternative. Not to mention pundits who try to put politicos in ideological boxes.

“[I’m] a young, hungry, energetic, take-no-shit conservative who truly believes in family values, parental rights, higher education, elevating the inner city, motiving and inspiring them, and making real change,” said Orosco, 41, who owns the Smash HQ gym in Milford and runs the California-based MMA Smash Global league.

He made that pitch in his most recent weekly driver-seat Instagram campaign video (watch it here or above), in which the medium is part of the message: That Republicans need to master modern communication tools as well as an updated message.

“It’s time. Get these Democrats out. Get the RINOS out. Get the dinosaurs out. Come together as one and make a difference.”

Orosco tried to unseat incumbent Democratic Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola in last November’s municipal elections. He received the endorsement last week of the Hamden Republican Town Committee (RTC) for his new quest to unseat Looney in the 11th State Senate District. (The district includes portions of both Hamden and New Haven.) New Haven’s RTC doesn’t make a formal endorsement until May. But the party issued a release announcing and supporting Orosco’s campaign, calling him ​“driven” and ​“intelligent.”

Orosco said he’s taking on Looney this year in part because of the need for change: Looney was first elected to the state legislature the year Orosco was born. Orosco called for term limits that prevent state legislators from serving more than eight years.

“We already have term limits: They are called elections,” held every two years, Looney responded. The senator said he ​“look[s] forward to a full airing of issues” with the Republican nominee ​“in a debate in the fall.” Click here and here to read interviews with Looney about his accomplishments last legislative session (including shepherding an increase in state municipal aid and the earned-income tax credit along with legalization of recreational cannabis and sports gambling) and his goals for the current session, with mental health at the top of the agenda.

At first blush, Orosco’s Instagram pitch at points echoed the nationwide GOP messaging this year: ​“family values” targeting transgender kids and LGBT rights as well as school-based discussion of ​“critical race theory.”

“Our generation really cares about family values. We really believe in freedom. We believe in all things that are brought to us by the constitution,” Orosco declared.

A closer look, and follow up discussion, reveals a nuanced set of positions that fit neatly into neither’s party’s playbook.

For instance: He does, like Republican governors and attorneys general and state legislators who have taken on the issue, call for a minimum wage and ​“extensive psychological assessments” for any young people contemplating sexual reassignment surgery. However, he told the Independent, he disagrees with Texas’s government’s policy of seeking to arrest parents of teens undergoing surgery. ​“You have kids committing suicide who have transitioned too early as well as kids who commit suicide because they aren’t happy in their own bodies,” Orosco said.

Moreover, his definition of family values includes LGBT-led households.

“I do support gay and lesbian rights, and your sexual preference should not mandate you from having children. I have gay members in my family and I couldn’t imagine them not having the right,” he said.

Similarly, on the race-in-schools issue, he agreed with Republicans who argued that ​“critical race theory” shouldn’t be taught in public schools. In general, he told the Independent, ​“I’m against the whole argument over white privilege and making white people out to be bad.”

But he also said he rccognizes that that is a specific academic theory that is in fact not taught in the schools. He disagreed with efforts by the ban-CRT movement that seek to limit the teaching of the full story of slavery in the public schools.

He pointed to his own experience growing up in Newport, R.I.: Until he saw the Amistad movie his senior year in high school, he had received a whitewashed version of history that left out the true horrors of slavery.

“I was so taken aback. I still remember when the slaves were chained up on the boat, and they let the chains go off into to the ocean. It shows them going one by one and drowning. That’s the first time I saw slavery in that light. They don’t teach the atrocities that happened.”

“I’m half black and half white. My father is from Trinidad,” he said.

Which leads to a larger point he hammers in his video: The Republican Party needs to welcome, not repel, both nonwhite voters and LGBT voters to have a chance at governing in a community like New Haven, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 14 – 1. 

“The Republican Party keeps failing because they don’t evolve with the times. We have dinosaurs and RINOs that are completely failing our party. It’s time for a new generation of conservatives like myself to come in and completely revolutionize the party,” he stated in the Instagram video. ​“We are a very diverse nation.”