Griebel is Lamont without the (D)

Good for Nelson “Oz” Griebel, the former Hartford business association leader, for qualifying by petition to get himself and his running mate, Monte Frank, on the ballot for governor and lieutenant governor in November. Voters always can use a few choices.

Now all Griebel needs are some compelling reasons for running.

Griebel is a substantial guy and more familiar with state government than the gubernatorial nominees of the major parties, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski. But Griebel has gone completely establishment now and it is hard to distinguish his positions from Lamont’s. They both support raising taxes again to avoid offending influential interest groups that deserve offending. They argue that economic growth is what Connecticut needs most, though the state will never have it as long as those interest groups keep first claim on state government’s revenue.

As for Frank, his only renown is as an advocate of gun control, as if gun crime is caused mainly by guns rather than the social disintegration wreaked on Connecticut by welfare policy.

Having made the ballot, Griebel described his platform this way: “The two-party system is broken and only an independent executive can create the partnerships among the legislature, municipalities, and leaders in our education, financial services, health care, labor, manufacturing, and not-for-profit service sectors that are necessary to grow the jobs we need.”

But Connecticut elected an unaffiliated governor in 1990 — Lowell P. Weicker Jr. — and after imposing the income tax he was so unpopular that he could not seek re-election, even as he had governed cordially with a Democratic majority in the General Assembly. Indeed, the two Republican governors who followed Weicker also governed just as cordially with the Democratic majority. That cordiality is the basis for the observation often made these days by Griebel and others that state government’s financial disaster is bipartisan. So bipartisanship offers little hope.

The main rationale for voting for Griebel seems to be that he would bring more expertise than Lamont to implementation of Democratic policies. Yet Griebel’s drawing votes from Lamont will facilitate election of the Republican, Stefanowski, whose simplistic platform — eliminating the state income tax — contradicts Democratic policy.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters appalled by Stefanowski’s ignorance may seek an alternative in Griebel but may have to be persuaded that he is more than Lamont without the Democratic label.

In the first Quinnipiac University poll of the campaign Griebel registered support of just 4 percent. Since he has little campaign money, his only chance of becoming a serious contender would seem to be the collapse of the credibility of both major-party candidates. That is easy to imagine with Stefanowski but not with Lamont, who has the majority party behind him.

So Griebel’s most likely impact on the campaign may be just to deprive the winner of a majority and a mandate — to demonstrate as the Republican primary for governor just did that Connecticut needs to provide for runoff elections.

While Griebel was qualifying for the ballot, Stefanowski was delaying his first debate with Lamont by a week, from Sept. 5 to 12. It may be hoped that Stefanowski will use the extra time to take a crash course in the history and public policy of the state whose governor he aspires to become after not even voting for 16 years.