Legislators planning ahead to grab seat of power

HARTFORD — There could be three years and two elections before the Connecticut Legislature selects a new House majority leader. But that’s not stopping state Representatives Robyn Porter and Jason Rojas from starting their campaigns now.

The two Democrats have spent the summer helping other candidates door knock around the state. Rojas of East Hartford launched a PAC to fund raise for Democrats in July. Porter of New Haven followed suit in late August. They’ve also been calling other House Democrats asking them for their support.

All this is in the hopes of being chosen House majority leader in 2020 — the year that House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, has said he will leave his leadership post, and the current Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, would seek to replace him.

But that timeline could move up if Aresimowicz, who is being challenged this year by Republican Steve Baleshiski, a 21-year-old college student, is not reelected in 2018.

“If Joe doesn’t win his race, then what started out as an early position actually turns into late,” said Porter in an interview Tuesday.

In Connecticut, the House majority leader assists the speaker in deciding which bills the House will debate and vote upon, keeping order in the House chamber and counting votes in the caucus, said Ritter. The majority leader is one of only two legislators who can legally coordinate with the campaigns of other candidates and spend party money to benefit them.

This combination gives the majority leader significant powers to influence law and politics.

“It’s a little inside baseball at times,” said Ritter. “I don’t think most people walking down the street know who those people are, but what they should know is it is a powerful position and you need people to do it to make the chambers work.”

Either Porter or Rojas would be the state’s first person of color to be majority leader, they said. Both candidates said that was not the reason they are seeking the office, but a side bonus.

Rojas, who has served 10 years in the Legislature, was previously deputy majority leader and helped Aresimowicz screen bills before they were voted on by the House.

“A number of people over the years have encouraged me to think about running for majority leader,” said Rojas, who works as chief of staff to the president of Trinity College. “I know what it takes to do the job.”

Porter was elected in 2014 and chairs the legislature’s Labor and Public Employees Committee. A longtime communications union employee and a survivor of domestic violence, Porter argued her experience inside and outside the Capitol suited her to the job.

“I think it would be beneficial for the state as a whole,” she said.

Both Porter and Rojas would need to win reelection in November before being selected House Majority Leader in either 2018 or 2020. And Democrats would need to keep a majority in the House which they’ve held since 1984. They now outnumber Republicans 80 to 71.

Pat O’Neil, a spokesman for House Republicans, said GOP lawmakers are not yet thinking ahead to who would fill the majority leader spot if Republicans won a majority and Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, ran for speaker.

Whether the Rojas and Porter campaigns are needlessly early or prudently so, depends on who you talk to. State Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, said in his 30 years in the Legislature, he has never received calls from house majority leader candidates this early.

“This is just totally weird,” he said. “They think Joe Aresimowicz is going to lose the election. I don’t.”

But early campaigns are not without precedent. The son of a former House speaker, Ritter started his campaign for majority leader in 2015, he said. At the time, he thought he was readying to assume the position in 2018.

But when former House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, unexpectedly announced in 2016 he would not seek reelection, the battle for majority leader came sooner than expected, Ritter said. That year Ritter topped Rep. Toni Walker of New Haven, who started her campaigning later.

His “early work had paid off,” Ritter said, but “there’s no right or wrong way to do it.”