Ned Lamont set the door price low — and the expectations higher — as he brought his nascent gubernatorial quest to New Haven’s BAR.
Around 100 people paid $5 apiece Thursday night to get into the Crown Street hotspot’s backroom and hear Lamont pitch them on joining the 2010 version of a campaign that sold like hotcakes, or brick-oven pizza, in New Haven four years ago.
The admission price had something to do with the sell, as did Lamont’s remarks to the crowd.
Lamont took New Haven when he ran an insurgent campaign against then-hometown U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in a 2006 Democratic primary. He rode a wave of discontent with the Iraq war, among other issues. Lamont got worldwide attention for winning the primary. He lost the general election for senator (when Lieberman ran as an independent) but helped change the national political climate.
This time around, Lamont, who last month launched an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2010, needs to spark the same kind of excitement among the grassroots and left-leaning primary activists. But he has to do it without a war to run against, or a Democratic Party villain. Several other Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls, such as Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz and former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy (as well as possible candidate Juan Figueroa) agree with Lamont’s universal health care position. They have similar ties to progressive groups that have a disproportionate influence in party primaries.
Lamont does enjoy residual loyalty from liberal voters for taking on Lieberman. So the trick for him this year is to tap into that gratitude while avoiding appearing to be running for the wrong office. As the crowd devoured trays of BAR’s popular brick-oven pies Thursday night, the candidate sought to connect the spirit of his current gubernatorial quest to that last crusade, while also introducing the new toppings.
He climbed the metal stairs at the back of the room to address the crowd.
“A few years ago it was about the war,” he said of the 2006 Senate campaign. He added that even that campaign was about more than the war, too. It was “about a country that was kicking the can down the road when it came to the big decisions” on energy policy, job creation, and health care. He called in that campaign for more investment in alternative energy sources and a greater state focus on job creation.
Connecticut’s government in 2009/2010 has been punting on those same big decisions the way the Bush administration did when Lamont ran for Senate, he argued.
“We’re still not doing it,” he said. “We spend a lot of money” in “stupid” ways. For instance, the state prison population has grown fourfold since the 1980s, he said. The state is spending more on jails than higher education. Meanwhile, job creation has remained flat since 1991, the state an “economic dead zone.”
Better schools will help revive the economy, he argued. He called a “shout-out” to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who made an appearance Thursday night at BAR (pictured), and who ran for governor four years ago. (DeStefano’s running New Haven instead this time around.) As he did during his first speech as an “exploratory” governor candidate, Lamont praised DeStefano’s new school-reform plan as a model for the rest of the state.
A $375 Ceiling
So far Lamont has also stood out from his opponents in an unwelcome way: They’ve made an issue of his decision not to declare yet whether he’ll make use of the state’s voluntary public-financing system, an idea he has always backed in concept. Opponents argue that Lamont’s personal wealth gives him an unfair advantage.
A wealthy businessman, Lamont bankrolled much of his last campaign with $16 million of his own money. He said he plans to announce later whether he’ll participate in the public-financing system instead this time. In any case, as in in his Senate race, he’s refusing contributions from state contractors, lobbyists, and political action committees, he said.
In a series of public events across the state this week, including BAR, he laid the groundwork to participate in the public system if he so chooses. That means limiting the size of donations. When candidates are seeking to meet thresholds to qualify for matching public money, they have to raise contributions of no larger than $375.
(That’s if they’re running “exploratory” campaigns. The limit drops to $100 for officially declared candidates. A New Haven candidate for a different statewide office, Gerry Garcia, Thursday called on candidates to eschew the “exploratory” label in order to run more honest campaigns; click here for Mary O’Leary’s report on that in the Register.)
So in addition to low-admission public sessions like the $5 BAR event, Lamont has been setting a $375 ceiling on contributions at his smaller get-togethers, which are targeted to larger donors. He has one such event scheduled Sunday in New Haven at the home of Yale professor Douglas Rae, cosponsored by longtime Democratic fundraiser Carl Feen (pictured with DeStefano above).
The price was set low at venues like BAR also in recognition of hard economic times, claimed Jared Kupiec, Lamont’s 26-year-old campaign manager (at right in photo). Kupiec is leaving his job Jan. 1 as clerk of the state legislature’s Government, Administration and Elections Committee to work full-time on the Lamont campaign.
The biggest point of these early events is to get Lamont’s message out, and get people excited, not to raise the maximum amount of money, Kupiec said. “People need to be a part of the process.”
It's going to be a long campaign...