Anthony Quinn/WTNH Photos
Klarides: Playing for both August and November.
Leora Levy: Aiming for the new base.
Can a Republican with crossover appeal still win a statewide primary — without burning bipartisan and moderate bonafides needed to appeal to voters in a general election?
That question hovered unspoken beneath the back-and-forth among candidates in a debate held in New Haven Tuesday night.
The debate took place at WTNH studios on Elm Street.
Technically it was a three-person debate. In essence it was a two-person match between a veteran lawmaker and a national party official seeking her first term in office.
The debate pitted former state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, who has a moderate-to-conservative history of bipartisan lawmaking, against Leora Levy, a Republican National Committee member since 2015 who has flipped from a Romney-esque pro-choice moderate to hard-core pro-life backer of Donald Trump (who nominated her in 2019 as ambassador to Chile); and Peter Lumaj, an attorney who in the past has run for governor and secretary of the state. Both Levy and Lumaj immigrated from Communist nations, Levy from Cuba, Lumaj from Albania.
Anthony Quinn/WTNH Photo
Peter Lumaj: Also aiming right.
The three candidates are vying to win the Republican nomination to take on incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal in November.
In the debate, they jointly sounded the GOP general-election message: Joe Biden destroyed the U.S. economy, with Blumenthal supporting him all the way.
But at stake in the debate was which candidate could distinguish themselves from the others among Republican voters in the Aug. 9 primary. And: How to become the first Republican to win a statewide contest since 2010, or a Connecticut U.S. Senate seat since the last century (1982 to be precise).
From the start, the debate was essentially a two-person competition between Klarides and Levy. Levy played to the right-moving Republican base, while Klarides sought to navigate both the primary and general-election electorate.
Levy repeatedly referred to “my opponent.” That meant Klarides.
Klarides repeatedly referred to “my opponent.” That meant Levy.
Levy started early hammering Klarides as a closet Democrat who collaborated with Democrats in Hartford on tax increases and who supports abortion. (She said Gov. Ned Lamont wants to create “a sanctuary state for abortion, which my opponent supports.”)
In response, Klarides straddled a line between trumpeting bipartisan lawmaking — a strength in a general election in which the largest bloc of voters is unaffiliated — and trumpeting her conservative bonafides, critical to win a primary.
To that end, she spoke of negotiating the 2017 bipartisan state budget as the first female House minority leader, and in doing so winning fiscally conservative goals like a spending cap. (Click here to read about that budget deal.)
She also characterized her experience as an asset. “I’m the only candidate who has served in office,” she noted. “… I’ve won 11 elections, when my opponents have won no other elections. I have the best record to win an election in Connecticut, which is the goal here.”
Klarides straddled the same line when Levy attacked her on “critical race theory.”
Levy first claimed that the state has spent “1.1 trillion — no, billion — dollars” of pandemic-relief money “on teaching critical race theory.” (In a post-debate “spin room” session with reporters, Levy was asked to identify where exactly those $1.1 billion supported the teaching of critical race theory. She said her campaign would “get back” with details. See that exchange in the video below.)
Leora Levy in the post-debate spin room.
”My opponent,” Levy said — by whom she meant Klarides — “has actually tweeted that this country is systematically racist,” which Levy affirmed the U.S. is not.
Klarides responded that Levy was referring to a remark she made after the police killing of George Floyd “about how there is racism in this country. I believe there is racism in this country.”
Then she spoke about how she participated in crafting a bipartisan police accountability law that included “good solutions making policing safer.” She criticized Democrats for subsequently passing a new version of the law (that made it easier for individuals to sue cops who brutalize them). Klarides concluded by noting that the state police union have endorsed her.
She noted that fact twice in the first 20 minutes.
“I am the only law-and-order candidate in this race,” she said.
Abortion offered a clear, unvarnished difference between the candidates.
Levy portrayed herself as solidly pro-life. She said she would not vote to codify Roe v. Wade’s protection of abortion rights if elected.
“My life was at risk three times in one of my pregnancies. Thanks to God I had a good medical care. I am pro-life. I am pro-life. I am committed to life beginning at conception,” she said.
Klarides made no apologies for supporting legal abortion throughout her career. That was once a mainstream Republican position in Connecticut, before the party’s alliance with the religious right over the past 40 years. Now the national party is solidly pro-life.
Klarides said she would vote to codify Roe is elected.
“I have always supported a woman’s right to choose,” she said. She added that she does not support late-term abortions except when a mother’s life at risk; and that she supports a parental consent requirement for minors combined with a “judicial option for minors afraid to talk to their parents.”
According to the Secretary of the State’s Office, as of the end of June, Connecticut had 909,331 registered unaffiliated voters, 800,834 registered Democrats, and 453,144 registered Republicans (not to mention 30,712 registered Independent Party members, 3,334 Libertarians, 1,227 Greens, 309 Working Families Partiers, and 4 remaining registrants under the “A Connecticut Party” banner created by former Gov. Lowell Weicker).
Pressed in the post-debate one-on-one “spin room” sessions with the press, Klarides said Donald Trump should not run for president again. “I don’t think it is good for the country,” she said. Levy praised Trump’s tenure, absolved him of any responsibility for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and said she would vote for him for president again.
First they each need to get votes in Connecticut for their own campaigns, on Aug. 9.
Themis Klarides in the post-debate spin room.
Peter Lumaj in the post-debate spin room.
The full debate.
Thank you for sharing this debate. Klarides is probably most moderate of the 3. I don't support abortion but her exceptions make sense to avoid wholesale killing of the unborn.
However, This is not the only issue I will consider. I hope others will look beyond the things they do not agree with and see if there is more/enough that you do agree with before you vote.