Lamont, Stefanowski turn to small screen to shape images

Gov. Ned Lamont, who has said he was putting off politics to focus on governing, entered the campaign fray Tuesday with his first television ad.

The ad, which is airing across the state, highlights the first-term Democrat's background as a political outsider — a former telecommunications entrepreneur from Greenwich who has spent his time in office improving Connecticut's fiscal outlook.

“For years, politicians couldn't get it done — balance the budget, without raising taxes,” Lamont says at the start of the ad, appearing first on a sidewalk in a residential neighborhood then talking to a series of business owners. “As a businessman, I knew we could prove them wrong.”

Bob Stefanowski, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has been airing ads since late January driving home the message that Connecticut is not an affordable place to live. In one ad spot, Stefanowski is seated in a room surrounded by supporters who nod their head in agreement when he says he plans to “make it a little bit more affordable to drive your car to work, make it a little bit more affordable to buy groceries.”

As Connecticut's governor's race begins to take shape, Lamont and Stefanowski are using their initial TV campaigns to lay out their priorities, and to define themselves as they reach out to voters ahead of the November election.

For Lamont, that means focusing on how his strong management and fiscal discipline enabled him to turn the state's massive budget deficit into a $3 billion surplus while investing in schools, health care and public safety. The ad touts the governor's successful effort to instate a gas tax holiday through the end of June, and points to his plans for further relief, including lowering car taxes for most residents.

For Stefanowksi, who lost to Lamont by 44,000 votes, or 3 percentage points, in 2018, the TV campaign allows him to reintroduce himself to voters, spotlighting his journey as a self-made man who grew up middle-class and worked his way up the corporate ladder.

In one of the ads, Stefanowski, seated at a diner counter, says to those around him: “I grew up in New Haven. My parents worked hard. I know what it's like to start with nothing.”

His comments are a dig at Lamont, the great-grandson of Thomas Lamont, who was a chairman at J.P. Morgan. But Stefanowski is a wealthy executive who wrote himself a check for $10 million to kickstart his campaign.

The governor has eased into his reelection campaign, investing $210,000 of his own money and spending about half that amount, according to his latest campaign filing from January. Lamont spent about $15 million of his own money in the 2018 race and is believed to have access to resources well beyond that.

Both Lamont and Stefanowski are financing their campaigns themselves, potentially setting up a spending race that could play out on the airwaves and elsewhere. Stefanowski's initial TV buy was $1 million. Lamont has spent at least $60,000 on his ad campaign so far. A fuller picture of both candidates' spending will emerge once they file their next quarterly reports, which are due April 10.

In the initial TV ads, neither candidate is in attack mode. Instead, they're shown in conversation with supporters and touring businesses. Stefanowski began running ads on Facebook several weeks ago accusing the Lamont administration of being corrupt.

In one of his early TV spots, Stefanowski talks with a barber while seated in his chair getting a haircut, and stands with a group of men at a manufacturing facility where he says his first order of business would be to cut the state's sales tax.

Lamont speaks with a man who is filling up at the gas pump and then walks through a neighborhood with a family who is smiling and laughing.

Like Lamont, Stefanowski has cast himself as a political outsider — a corporate executive who focused on cutting business spending. In 2018, Stefanowski was singularly focused on eliminating the state's income tax, but his ads point to a broader agenda, including cutting the sales tax and rooting out government waste.

He has pointed to the state's overall debt and liabilities being at or near the highest in the nation, lagging job growth in Connecticut, and has claimed the state's strong fiscal position is largely due to onetime federal pandemic relief — issues that will likely shape future ads.

Lamont, who has the benefit of being an incumbent who was thrust even further into public view with near daily televised news conferences during much of the pandemic, is expected to continue to highlight the state's response to COVID-19 under his leadership and his record of balancing budgets while continuing to invest in education, health care, and other priorities.