Rookie reflects on first Hartford season
Steve Meskers reasons Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei is trying to frame him.
After wrapping his opening session as the first Democrat to represent the town in the state House in a century, Meskers returned last week to find a new sidewalk in front of his Old Greenwich home. It goes well with the recently paved street.
“I’m gonna kill Peter Tesei ... I’ve had four friends torture me so far,” he says in mock outrage. “If this shows up on the (Republican Town Committee) website I’m going to scream.”
I suspect Tesei will hear about this for some time. Meskers is a rookie with a sense of history, and he doesn’t forget. But 35 years in banking seasoned his sense of humor.
We did not endorse Meskers last fall, opining that “we’d like to see Meskers appointed a seat in the next governor’s cabinet. He offers the outlook of an economist unmatched by any other candidate we’ve met this campaign season.”
“I was grinding my teeth when I got that,” Meskers recalls.
When I called him Thursday, he quickly referenced our “economic adviser” nomination.
“Don’t you think you would have done a good job?” I countered.
It was a bad connection, but I sensed a smile.
“I like the repartee,” he said.
This is why I avoid phone interviews. It denies the use of several senses. But Meskers helped by sending a link to a Facebook page. A diary of his time in office, it is punctuated with exclamation points, usually served in threes (“Will be voting on the state water plan!!!” ... “Fracking waste ban!!!” ... “Without a logical or rational reason this bill was left to die on the floor of the senate!!!).
I don’t like exclamation points. They’re the aluminum bats of expression. A special session or two should shave them to more tempered punctuation.
Meskers does fine without them. I reference his post that “We can either water the garden (be effective!) or water the driveway! I didn’t sign up for the latter.”
Exclamation points and explanation point (“be effective”) aside, it’s a solid line.
“I’m very good at analogies,” he responds.
He turns several phrases during our repartee.
The reasoning of third-party energy suppliers is “the kind of choice my gastroenterologist gives me every five years and it’s with or without anesthesia.”
The session’s abrupt end is “like driving at 80 and going to a dead stop. It’s jarring. I had my hand on business of the state, and now I can’t find the steering wheel.”
On Gov. Ned Lamont: “I spent 35 years in a shark pool on Wall Street and this man is hardly a rapacious predator. He is a man of integrity. All he cares about is the state.”
At one point he says, “I want to be handing out fishing poles, not fish,” and quickly clarifies it’s a line by “Aristotle or Plato of whoever the hell it is.”
I resist mentioning that the poles were added to author Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie’s phrase 130 years after she used it. And the editing was done by Trevor Noah, not Plato. But I appreciate the gist of Meskers’ intent to help his fellow man.
Meskers recognizes the urgent need to support cities such as New Haven and Bridgeport. Raising the minimum wage was essential for the Greenwich Democrat.
“I think it’s a useless economic policy to pay people low wages (and) support them with Section 8 housing and food stamps. It strips people of dignity.”
But one vote didn’t shift with the “D” next to the name of the Greenwich representative. Meskers voted “no” to Lamont’s budget, as did fellow freshman Alexandra Bergstein, the first Democrat elected to serve her Greenwich and Stamford Senate District since 1930.
“It was very painful for me,” Meskers admits. But items such as a new tax on home sales over $2.5 million seemed punishing to his constituents.
Another reason I dislike phone interviews is lines go dead. Meskers does his best to find a better signal, but some ideas arrive like this: “Zzzzzz ... lousy model ... zzzzzz ... conservative ... zzzzzz ... it’s not Nike vs. adidas.”
He might be talking about pension funding, or a rugby game. Guessing seems unwise.
When I ask him to repeat a thought, he summons precisely the same words. It’s another way Meskers doesn’t forget.
His passion, humor, memory and intelligence leave me confident he can revive opportunities that slip away during sessions. Atop his list is importing drugs from Canada.
The rookie is eager to seize the work ahead, even though it’s not easy.
“They gave me a badge but didn’t give me a magic wand when I got elected,” he concludes.
The metaphor is mixed, but at least I didn’t hear an exclamation point.