Hartford gets bailout, Bronin bails in
E veryone knows Luke Bronin is a guy with lofty political ambitions. That is why in 2015, as he ran for mayor of Hartford, Bronin felt it necessary to pledge to serve out his fouryear term. He would face re-election in 2019. Now, however, Bronin, 38, is readying a bid governor, filing papers Thursday to form an exploratory committee.
By mid-afternoon, the “Bronin for Connecticut Committee” had blasted out an email seeking donations under the heading “LUKEFORCT.”
Exploratory may prove a technicality. It certainly looks like Bronin is running.
Connecticut taxpayers, who just saw their state lawmakers commit $40 million in state aid to help Bronin save his city from bankruptcy, have to be second guessing the mayor’s commitment to the job. And Hartford voters, who bought into Bronin’s promise to get their community turned around, might be feeling today like a collective speed bump on Luke’s road to higher office.
To his credit, Bronin has taken significant steps to try to return the state’s capital city to some semblance of fiscal solvency after predecessors, through corruption and incompetence, left it a fiscal train wreck.
By Bronin’s own admission, however, the job is only started. It would take at least another term for the mayor to get Hartford truly turned in the right direction. If he could do that, Bronin would have a genuine platform from which to make a case for higher office.
Technically, Bronin can continue running the city at the same time he is running for governor. If he lost, he could opt to run for re-election as mayor in 2019. But the problems confronting Hartford are too serious and it is at too critical a point in time to be led by a mayor distracted by the demands of running for governor in 2018.
In launching this bid for governor, Bronin has opened himself to the charge of being a political opportunist.
Opportunity is what he sees. In forming an exploratory committee, Bronin is calculating that a weak field for the Democratic nomination was reason enough to expedite his plans for higher office. A couple of weeks ago Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman announced she would not run to succeed Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. A couple of months before that, Comptroller Kevin J. Lembo made the surprising announcement he would not run for governor, after previously indicating otherwise. Instead he will seek re-election.
Among Democrats, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, who was able to return to office despite spending seven years in prison for corruption the last time he was mayor of that city, has the greatest name recognition in the race for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.
Bronin is a Greenwich native, Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School graduate and military veteran — as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve he was deployed to Afghanistan — and many political observers saw his decision to run for Hartford mayor, after having moved his family to the city, as a stepping stone.
Bronin quickly recognized that the city’s fiscal problems were so severe that without state help it would confront bankruptcy. In approving a bipartisan state budget four months into the current fiscal year, the legislature agreed to provide $40 million for Hartford over the next two years — $20 million to help Hartford meet and restructure its debt obligations and $20 million channeled through the Municipal Accountability Review Board. Malloy created the board to work with municipalities confronting insolvency.
The mayor acknowledged a state bailout did not solve the problem. It only provided an opportunity.
“No matter what’s in the state budget this year, any truly sustainable solution is going to require the participation of all our stakeholders — including labor and bond holders. That means we’re going to have a lot of tough, important work to do,” Bronin told Bloomberg News after word of the state help to avoid bankruptcy.
Most people facing “a lot of tough, important work to do” don’t take on a second job, which running for governor certainly amounts to, and then some. Given that Democrats running for governor generally need the support of labor, Bronin’s decision also raises questions how hard he will push to get the city labor concessions, a necessary component to fixing Hartford’s money problems.
It’s hard to see how this move is in the best interest of the capital city or of the state, which is trying to shore it up. It remains to be seen whether it proves to be in the best interests of Luke Bronin.