New Britain mayor wise to bide time before running for governor again
New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart made a smart decision this month. The four-term Republican will not run for governor next year. Stewart will seek a fifth two-year term in the heavily Democratic city, where she has proved remarkably durable.
Stewart has struggled to find a higher elective office. She ran an ill-judged campaign for the 2018 Republican nomination for governor. Raising $250,000 in small contributions to qualify for the state’s generous public financing program, and finding a couple of hundred committed delegates proved too much. Stewart jettisoned her running mate, then Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei, and announced on the eve of the party’s nominating convention that she would seek the lieutenant governor spot.
Stewart placed a distant second in the three-way primary race for lieutenant governor, losing to Southington neighbor Joseph Markley. None of it did Stewart harm at home. She won a thumping reelection bid and carried her Republican common council candidates to victory. Stewart has tried to set herself apart from the dominant Trump wing of the Republican party, emphasizing fiscal prudence as mayor and social liberalism as young woman. Her most effective line is pointing out she improved the city’s finances without the sort of massive state bailout that Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, also a 2018 losing gubernatorial hopeful, wants taxpayers to forget.
The political calendar works against Stewart. New Britain elects a mayor in every odd number year. This year’s mayoral campaign overlaps next year’s for governor. Stewart would be in the risky position of campaigning for reelection in New Britain for a job she hoped to abandon to become governor. That sort of obvious political ambition casts doubt on claims to want to serve local residents as mayor.
Stewart, whose father also served as mayor before being defeated in 2011, has been able to exploit the many weaknesses in
the New Britain Democratic organization to pile up victories. The New Britain Democrats are the great mystery of local politics in Connecticut. They have managed to make their city the center ground of Republican upsets.
The iron law of odds suggests this will not go on forever. State Rep. Bobby Sanchez formed an exploratory committee for a run for mayor in January. Sanchez has won six consecutive terms in the legislature and served on New Britain’s board of education. He will not be the typical Stewart challenger. The Republican bench in Connecticut is so thin that it may not matter if Stewart wins or loses in November. Time is her great ally. She is 33 years old, half the age of Gov. Ned Lamont. If she became governor at about the same age that Lamont did, it would be in the year 2050.
Stewart is the only woman in the sea of white men who are mayors of Connecticut’s cities.
Her decision not to run for governor in this round reveals she understands the state of Connecticut politics today. Lamont is popular for his calm leadership during the excruciating year of a pandemic. That may eventually change, but the glow should last into next year.
One decisive advantage that will not fade is Lamont’s vast wealth and his willingness to use it to fund a campaign. He spent $50 million of his fortune in three bids for statewide office. He’s unlikely to become parsimonious in one more campaign to hold on to what cost him so much to win.
Democrats reserve their objections to wealthy candidates spending their own money to win elections for Connecticut Republicans. Lamont is the sort of rich that through the ages revolutionaries have used as an example to inflame the masses. That won’t happen here. Instead, the governor will spend millions on a reelection campaign as the party he leads continues to chase jobs out of Connecticut. There are 400,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Connecticut — and the margin continues to grow. That advantage is being felt everywhere in the state. The last two legislative elections revealed growing hostility to Republican candidates. In 2018, when the choice was between a wealthy Republican and a wealthier Democrat for governor, voters chose the Democrat.
State residents may eventually see advantages in more competitive politics. Republicans will need to do more than shake their fists at the sky to spark change. No wonder Stewart decided to wait.