STRIVING FOR UNITY
Gov.-Elect Ned Lamont: We’re All In This Together
In his first public comments as Connecticut’s next governor, Democrat Ned Lamont made a pitch for unity and pledged to reach across the aisle to solve the state’s immense fiscal problems.
“Labor and business, Republicans and Democrats, we’re all in this together as a state,” Lamont said Wednesday at a press conference at Dunkin’ Donuts Park in Hartford, where he was joined by his running mate Susan Bysiewicz as well as supporters and campaign staffers after a long night of vote counting. “I need everybody rowing in the same direction.”
Lamont faces an immediate projected state deficit of $2 billion after a campaign where high taxes, residents leaving, and the lack of economic opportunity were top issues.
Building on a coalition of urban and suburban voters and benefiting from a Democratic wave that rolled across the state, Lamont notched a narrow victory over Republican Bob Stefanowski in a midterm election that was notable for its high turnout. According to unofficial and still incomplete results from the secretary of the state’s office, Lamont received 663,193 votes while Stefanowski received 644,663 votes. Independent candidate Oz Griebel received 54,204 votes. About 95 percent of the votes have been counted in an election where an estimated 66 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
“We all expected there to be somewhat of a larger turnout but this was really stunning,’’ said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, the state’s top
election official. “It surpassed recent memory in terms of a midterm election.’’
The election’s high participation rate caused long lines and a few problems at scattered polling places across the state, Merrill said, “but by and large it was a tremendous day for Connecticut.”
Lamont said he was buoyed by the strong turnout. “I’m proud that we gave folks something to vote for,’’ he said.
Lamont, who comes from a business background, acknowledged the closeness of the race and said he will work to bridge the sharp division among the state’s voters, as shown by Tuesday’s close results.
Lamont, who was making his third run for statewide office after unsuccessful bids for U.S. Senate in 2006 and governor in 2010, said he spent his campaign for governor reaching out to state residents. “I [told] them I’m a different type of leader, I tell them I did not come up out of the political process.”
That effort began early Wednesday when Lamont received a “gracious” call from his former rival.
“We both said we are getting together,’’ Lamont said. “He’s going to do everything he can to help us. Thank you, Bob.”
Later, asked by a reporter how closely he plans to work Stefanowski, Lamont said the question was premature. “He suggested we get a beer,’’ Lamont said, adding that he told Stefanowski that he would get back to him.
Stefanowski conceded the race for governor after overnight returns from the state’s cities pushed Lamont over the top.
In conceding, Stefanowski concluded that “the margin was big enough” to hand victory to Lamont and problems with same-day voter registration were not significant enough to change the race.
“I got the most votes of any Republican in Connecticut history, but they really got out the vote,” he added. Voting turnout outpaced 2014 and 2010 participation.
Jonathan Wharton, a professor of political science at Southern Connecticut State University and a Republican State Central Committee member, said unaffiliated and young voters likely gave Lamont an edge.
“Unaffiliated voters were key,’’ Wharton said. “You can’t get a pulse on them because they’re not party loyalists and they’re scattered ... we can’t measure or understand them.”
Merrill said 300,000 new voters joined the rolls since 2016 — and 90,000 of those new voters are between 18 and 24 years old.
Lamont also performed well in suburban areas, communities where the Republican Party has been bruised by President Donald Trump. That’s especially true in Fairfield County, long the bastion of a reserved brand of Republicanism embodied by moderates such as Stewart B. McKinney and George H.W. Bush. Lamont racked up big pluralities in the L-shaped corridor from Danbury to Westport.
He was also able to neutralize the GOP’s most potent attack: that his candidacy signified a third term for the current governor, unpopular Democrat Dannel P. Malloy.
Painting Lamont as a Malloy clone looked like a winning strategy for the GOP. A Quinnipiac University poll released in early October showed that nearly seven in 10 voters disapprove of the job Malloy is doing, compared with 59 percent who disapprove of Trump. But ultimately, “Ned Malloy” was not potent enough to sink Lamont.
Lamont said he intends to have lunch with Malloy in coming days. But as he prepares his transition team and shifts from campaign mode to governing, his focus will be on his own administration, not Malloy’s.
“Despite all the negativity and the pessimism and those TV ads, people are really optimistic in this state and, I think, in this country,’’ he said. “They’re optimistic because they know every four years you get a fresh start and this is a fresh start and I think they’re going to give a governor a real opportunity to make the difference ... going forward.”