In campaign-style speech, Lamont channels his inner Ted Lasso
ROCKY HILL — Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday channeled his inner Ted Lasso in a reelection-style speech to the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce that portrayed his first three years in office as a successful effort to bring together a dysfunctional state that was rocked by the COVID pandemic, but is rebounding under his leadership.
In informal, 12-minute remarks before about 300 people at the annual end-of-the-year breakfast of the Middlesex group, Lamont likened his first term to the lovable, flawed TV show, in which a football coach from a Midwestern university is brought to London to coach a Premiere League soccer team in decline — and wins over the owner and players alike.
“Ted Lasso is my guy,” Lamont quipped to a ripple of laughter, then applause among the business officials, lawmakers and educators during the breakfast, a traditional date on the Connecticut political calendar.
“Ted Lasso, they send him over to Britain,” Lamont said. “He’s supposed to fail, and his infectious optimism, his goofy optimism, he takes a bunch of these young players who are a little bit dysfunctional, all thinking about themselves, they have no idea what team means, and he makes them believe.”
He looked over at Jim Mora, UConn’s new football coach, who shared the head table with him along with UConn President Andrew Agwunobi, Larry McHugh, former longtime chairman of the UConn board (and himself a celebrated former football coach), and Joseph Nolan, the president and CEO of Massachusettsbased
Eversource Energy.
Lamont, who later said he hadn’t yet seen the second season, in which Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, suffers a panic attack and flees the field in the middle of a big game, noted that in the locker room of the team, there is a sign above the door that reads “Believe.”
“Coach, that’s what you’re going to do with the football team and I try and do that with the state of Connecticut,” Lamont said. “We were a little down on ourselves a few years ago. A little grumpy, you know. ‘Oh we’re at the bottom of this list and the bottom of that list and we’re in a chronic state of fiscal crisis and GE left; last one out turn out the lights.’ I say hogwash. I think it’s the most-amazing state. I do think you’ve got to believe. Viruses are infectious, but so’s optimism.”
Earlier in the speech, Lamont said that the COVID pandemic is responsible for a lot of stress, particularly among younger state residents, as well as a proliferation of violence with firearms. “We’re going to get through this together,” he predicted, then recalled the fiscal problems state government experienced when he took office in 2019.
“When we took over, it was a little bit of a mess,” he said. “We worked hard to sort of change the tone in Hartford. It had been a little bit poisonous, I think over the previous decade or so. We took a $3.7-billion deficit. We got that balanced without raising taxes.” He said that $1.8 billion has been invested into the state’s massively underfunded pension programs.
“Look there’s no hanging out the ‘mission accomplished’ banner. We’ve got a long way to go, but for the first time in a long time we’re made incredible progress there,” Lamont said. One of his immediate goals is to speed up train schedules.
Although it was held in Hartford County this year after the closure of a hotel in Cromwell where the event had been held for many years, the Middlesex Chamber breakfast continued its tradition of a news-making event. In 2003, John G. Rowland, the governor who was under scrutiny in the news media for work done on a summer home, encouraged his wife to read a poem attacking reporters.
By the following July, he had resigned in disgrace and in December 2004 pleaded guilty to federal felony charges.
A few minutes after Lamont’s appearance, outside the back entrance of the Sheraton Hartford South Hotel, Lamont downplayed the potential for the event becoming an election moment. “I’m trying to put that off as long as I can,” Lamont said. “I was talking with business leaders who believe in this state and reminding them that being optimistic about the state is one of the greatest assets we’ve got.”
He admitted to drawing “an awkward analogy” about the TV show, adding that he hadn’t yet seen the second season when various characters deal with a variety of crises, including Lasso’s panic attack, which leads to therapy sessions with the club psychiatrist.
“Hold it, I haven’t seen the second season yet and you’re already telling me what’s happened,” he replied to a reporter. “C’mon. Spoiler alert.”