At ‘affordability’ rallies, GOP pushes inflation as major campaign theme

In a last push for their tax relief plan, Connecticut Republicans are gathering outside gas stations on busy thruways around the state this week, calling attention to high prices at the pump and spotlighting a major campaign theme in 2022: affordability.

Their message is simple: Democrats are to blame for the accelerating pace of inflation and for not doing more to address it.

“As we’re seeing inflation continue, and the affordability issue continue, I think Democrats know they have a problem,” House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, RNorth Branford, said this week at a GOP rally outside Forbes Premium Fuel in East Haven attended by about two dozen people.

A sign above him listed the day’s gas prices: $4.79 per gallon for regular gas and $5.69 per gallon for diesel.

In Connecticut and elsewhere, Republicans are hoping that voters’ pessimism about the economy under Democrats’ watch will produce wins for them in the November elections.

At the so-called affordability rallies, GOP lawmakers are pushing a plan to spend about $750 million more of the state’s budget surplus on tax relief — a proposal Democrats have called fiscally irresponsible and a nonstarter.

“Republicans don’t have the numbers in the legislature to effectuate change, and, at times, we do need to turn to the public to help make that change happen,” Candelora said, noting the rallies are similar to the protests Republicans waged against highway tolls several years ago.

News this week that the state’s diesel tax will increase by 9.1 cents per gallon on July 1 led Republicans to redouble their calls for suspending the state’s fuel taxes and reducing the sales tax and income tax.

Democrats responded by accusing their Republican colleagues of playing “political games” and pointed to their opposition to the $600 million in tax cuts and rebates approved by lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont during the 2022 legislative session.

“Purely partisan actions like this political game of one-upmanship will steer our state right back into the cycle of cuts and tax increases,” Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, and Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said in a joint statement this week.

Under the state budget, which was approved largely along party lines, most of the surplus will be spent on extra payments to the state’s underfunded pension funds, which will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the next 25 years. By contrast, the Republican plan would put Connecticut back into the cycle of cuts and tax increases, Democrats said.

“It’s all in the context of their 2022 campaign,” Looney said in a separate interview this week. “Knowing that inflation is a factor, they’re trying to say whatever we propose, they’ll do more without any regard to the destabilizing impact on the budget going forward,” Looney said.

While Republicans are focused on pocketbook issues affecting voters, Candelora said Democrats have chosen to concentrate on national political issues such as gun reform and abortion rights.

“We’re seeing them shift to the gun debate and abortion debate because they think they win on those issues,” Candelora said. “They’re trying to really move the needle away from the economy, and what people care about, and that is affordability.”

Connecticut is already seen as a leader on these issues, so there’s little room for further reform here, Candelora said. He noted the state’s ban on assault weapons and the right to abortion being codified in state law — both of which received Republican support.

“Democrats are trying to take the federal stuff and make it a Connecticut issue and I just don’t think it’s going to resonate because it’s already been done,” he said. “And Republicans voted for those things.”

Protesting a planned visit to Canton this week by Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts to stump for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski, which ended up getting canceled, Democrats highlighted Ricketts’ public stances in opposition to gun control and abortion rights. It was just the latest example of Democrats casting the GOP nominee for governor as too extreme for Connecticut.

“In many cases the Republican Party in Connecticut has tried to present themselves as more moderate than that, so I was surprised that they would want to associate themselves with someone with such extreme positions,” said Katie Kenney, the chair of the Democratic Town Committee in Canton who helped organize the protest.