Staying awake through the barnstorming for governor

NEW CANAAN — I am ready for Tim Herbst to morph into an impression of Peter Lumaj. I know he has some latent method-acting skills.

In fact everyone running for governor this year in Connecticut, all eleventy of them, should be able to recite the 90second bites that their intra-party competitors have been spouting in this budding political spring.

We’re in the heart of affluent, overwhelmingly white Connecticut, on the stage at Saxe Middle School. It’s the final forum of GOP gubernatorial contenders before the convention next month — it can’t come too soon — that will winnow out at least half of these … hopefuls.

At this point, after four full, two-hour performances in the other congressional districts, it’s time for them to loosen up.

“I was born in slavery,” I want Herbst, the tightlywound former Trumbull first selectman, to speak into his microphone in a pseudo-Albanian accent, shooting his sleeves like Lumaj, an immigration lawyer from Fairfield who is the most-conservative in what is a huge field of nine, 10, 11 Republican contenders for the fall election.

At this point, these guys — New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart hasn’t yet been allowed into the public festivities because of her late entry into the field and correspondingly low fundraising — have lost their spontaneity.

It’s too much to hope for the fireworks of the previous forum in New Britain, when Lumaj took a swipe at Herbst’s former town fiscal program. Herbst then countered by calling Lumaj “ambassador,” in reference to Lumaj’s unproven claim that he was offered the diplomacy posting to his home country after the Trump victory.

I’m on the stage trying to keep the audience of 500 from snoozing.

To say the nine men — did I mention they’re all men? — know each others’ speeches is an understatement. I’m sure that Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton or Steve Obsitnik, the Navy vet/ tech exec from Westport, could step slowly to the center of the stage and speak quietly about how he “cleaned up Dan Malloy’s mess in Stamford,” which is the default line of Mike Handler, that city’s CFO, a town resident here who is the volunteer EMS director. Boughton and Obsitnik could maybe even explain how Malloy’s “mess” included a AAA bond rating, and whether Handler fixed the long-broken elevator at Smith House, the city’s old municipal nursing home, before he sold it off.

I’m sure David Stemerman — the Greenwich hedgefunder who in the finest traditions of people like Tom Foley is campaigning for his first elected position by starting at the top — could, at this point, do a passable version of Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, mansplaining how he’s kept taxes low by supporting businesses that bring in 25,000 out-of-town workers every day.

I would even bet that state Rep. Prasad Srinivasan, a Glastonbury physician whom you might remember helped Boughton during his dehydration-induced seizure last month, could perform a passable rendition of David Walker’s “fiscal ranger” routine, in which the former comptroller general saved the nation $380 billion as comptroller general of the US under Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

I have no doubt that Walker could do a noteperfect John Ratzenberger, the Bridgeport guy Walker claims as a friend. Ratzenberger played an endearing Boston mailman named Cliff in the

It’s hard to put yourself out there, offer 90-second solutions to decades-old state problems, and seek support from a public that’s only mildly interested.

old sitcom “Cheers.” It seems that everyone in the school auditorium knew his name but Walker, who called Ratz’s character “Norm.”

Such are the nuances for which we reporters have to stay alert during this volatile election season, on that vector for Nov. 6.

It’s so much more fun to concentrate on 25-yearold prime-time shows, than it is to, say, consider how every Republican wants to blow up the public-employee union contracts set to run until 2027, if they can win majorities in the House and Senate this fall.

It’s more amusing to consider this group as a bunch of close-knit barnstormers, touring the state together, than it is to think about how they would all work to end the public financing program that has taken a lot of the special-interest money from the political sumo wrestling ring.

But as the stage cleared at about 8:40 the other night and the candidates were safe to go back to phone-banking for delegate support, I was left with one important lesson, in this first phase of the “most important election, ever.”

Say what you want about these people — and I do — but it’s hard to put yourself out there, offer 90-second solutions to decades-old state problems, and seek support from a public that’s only mildly interested. They all get credit for wanting to do something.