(Updated) Ned Lamont, who took on U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman three years ago, has formed an “exploratory committee” for a challenge to Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2010. He plans to talk about Moody’s, not Moody.
Lamont made the announcement Wednesday, a day after the polls closed on the 2009 municipal elections and attention officially turns to the already crowded 2010 campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate.
Republican Gov. Rell is expected to announce this month whether she’ll run for reelection.
Lamont plans to strike his nascent campaign themes at an annual address he delivers Thursday at Central Connecticut State University, where he teaches. He plans to talk not about controversial top Rell aide Lisa Moody, but about a new report about state finances from Moody’s Investor Services.
The strategy, and the issues focus, promise to differ markedly from Lamont’s Senate campaign in 2006. (He’s pictured at the top of this story at a debate during that race.)
That year, Lamont ran as the “true” Democrat against conservative Democratic incumbent Joe Lieberman. Lamont was championed by anti-Iraq war, pro-public financing and pro-universal health care Democrats who have a disproportionate influence in primaries. And he indeed won the primary. (He lost the general election to Lieberman, who ran as a Republican White House-backed “independent.”)
This time, in the 2010 governor’s race, Lamont joins five other Democrats already “exploring” or actively mounting races. (Read about them here and here.) They include Secretary of The State Susan Bysiewicz and Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, who have strong party bonafides and ties to liberal constituencies (especially Bysiewicz). Because of Lamont’s personal wealth, he didn’t need to announce as early as the others in order to raise money. But his move Wednesday doesn’t come as a surprise: He’s been laying the groundwork for a run for months.
Malloy issued a statement within an hour of Lamont’s decision becoming public Wednesday.
“As I travel around the state exploring a run for governor, I’m getting an overwhelmingly positive response to the vision I offer and the track record I have
to back it up,” Malloy said in a release. “I’ve done what Gov. Rell has failed to do: I’ve created jobs, provided more health care, made my communities and neighborhoods safer, and helped lead the way on important issues like green technology and transportation. I’ve known Ned for many years and consider him a friend. I welcome him into the discussion about Connecticut’s future.”
State GOP Chairman Chris Healy said Wednesday that he’s not worried about a Lamont candidacy. “I’m not sold on him as a viable candidate,” Healy said. He said Lamont still has to demonstrate he knows what’s going on in this state.
Indeed, Lamont’s campaign faces different challenges this time from when the candidate was up against Lieberman. As a candidate for state government office, he doesn’t have a war to run against in this race. Some of his Democratic primary opponents this time share his support for health care reform and publicly financed campaigns. (Lamont said he plans again to refuse donations in this race from government contractors and political action committees, or PACs, if he runs. He was vague on whether he’d participate in the state’s new public-financing system; the future of the system pending an appeal of a federal court ruling striking it down.)
Lamont does have experience starting and running a business. He plans to talk about that, a lot.
Moody’s Blues
He’s positioning himself as the one successful businessman in the race, “the one guy who has started a business and met a payroll,” in a state that hasn’t created jobs since 1990. The state ranks last (below Michigan) in job creation.
“We don’t have a strategy. We have no idea why we’re losing those jobs and what to do about it,” Lamont said in an interview. “If you look around the rest of the country, some states are falling behind and some aren’t. It’s not because of natural advantages. Raleigh, N.C. could have given up and said, ‘History’s not on our side’ [when textile mills closed]. They created the Research Triangle.”
In his Thursday address and in subsequent public appearances, look for Lamont to talk about a certain “Moody.”
Lamont won’t be talking about Lisa Moody, the controversial top aide who runs the Rell Administration, and gets Jodi Rell in trouble, while the governor pops up at daily photo-ops.
Instead, Lamont wants to discuss Moody’s Investor Services. Specifically, he wants to call attention to an Oct. 26 report the ratings agency issued about Connecticut’s finances, and what that means for the future of the state.
Moody’s downgraded the “outlook” on the state’s general obligation bonds from “stable” to “negative.”
In an interview, Lamont called the Moody’s report a “powerful a warning shot across our bow.”
“It is a warning that our debt will be downgraded if we don’t get our act together,” he said. “A, they’re right. B, it’s a wake-up call. C, it makes our debt more expensive and the cost of government more expensive, especially as we continue to borrow. Borrowing gets to a be a bigger part of our budget,” and it drives up costs rather than other ways of paying bills.
The Moody’s report sharply criticized the governor’s and Democratic-led legislature’s budget decisions this year. It scored the state for closing last year’s budget and “balancing” the new biennial budget (it almost immediately went out of wack within weeks and continues unraveling) through heavy reliance on borrowing and one-time revenues. The state emptied its Budget Reserve Fund. It plans to issue new deficit bonds and securitize an as-yet unidentified $1.3 billion revenue stream. It’s counting on $411 million so far in one-time federal stimulus money and only a temporary increase in income taxes on the highest earners (individuals making $500,000 and households making $1 million). The state’s per capita debt is the highest in the nation, Moody’s noted.
All that spells trouble for future budgets.
Click here to read the Moody’s report, including a section that finds hope in the way Connecticut has bounced back from past downturns.
What would Lamont do differently if elected governor?
He pointed to a report he coauthored earlier this year with former state budget director Bill Cibes. He called it a “blueprint” for where he’d take the state. (Read it here.) He said the numbers are a bit out of date, because the state’s fiscal picture has worsened since February. At the time, he called for:
• At least a $700 million budget reduction, in part through outcome-based budgeting for state services; scrutinizing and reducing the use of outside consultants and vendors; leveraging investments in energy efficiency and renewal energy projects; emphasizing Medicaid home care for seniors who’d otherwise be in nursing homes; and switching non-violent offenders from jails to community programs. Rather than rely on early retirement programs, the plan called for negotiating with unions to cut health costs through prevention, finding cost-savings in government, and planning for “natural attrition.”
• Up to $700 million in new revenues, to avoid passing along cuts to cities and towns. Among the proposals: deposits on plastic water bottles; taxes on Internet sales; a crackdown on personal “use” taxes; a possible (“last resort”) “equitable” income-tax hike to fund property tax reform; taxes on junk food; and requiring out-of-state partners in LLCs, LLPS, and subchapter S corporations to register with the state, with an eye to finding people who are avoiding income taxes.
• Long-term strategic planning, including five-year capital plans; investments in innovation, promising new industries, and transportation and education; and spending now already-allocated bonding money.
Click here to watch excerpts from a speech Lamont made about the Obama administration at the New Haven Lawn Club, at a May gathering of Democrats For America.
Christine Stuart helped report this story.
I love it! I looks to me that the Rein of Rell will be coming to an end soon enough! Good luck to all that are running!