The tide is turning against the Democrats

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The tide is turning against the Democrats in Hartford. You can feel it. We can debate why this is happening but I don’t think we can debate that it is happening. Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, is monumentally unpopular. The only one in the country who makes him look good is New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie. The state Senate is evenly divided. The House is controlled by the Democrats, but only by a hair — and 2018 threatens to change that.

The mood is Hartford is toxic. The state faces a $5 billion shortfall over the next two years, and that crisis comes at the tail end of previous crises that seem to go on and on. The fiscal year ends Friday. There is no budget thus far. Malloy is rebuffing Republicans as well as Democrats. Everyone is posturing. Again, the reasons for this concatenation of crises is debatable, but we can’t debate the toll they are taking on voters. A lot of them have had enough.

Making the atmosphere more toxic is booze. WNPR’s Colin McEnroe told listeners Wednesday the Capitol is awash in alcohol. “You’d be surprised by how much drinking goes on,” he said on “The Wheelhouse.” That tends to encumber horse trading among non-professional horse traders. Another reason to be frustrated.

Some are saying the conditions are right for a Donald Trump-like figure to enter the governor’s race and break the log jam. That’s Dominic Rapini’s thinking, though he’s not running for governor. He’s planning to run as a Republican against US Senator Chris Murphy. He told the Register: “When I saw Trump made it, I said if a business person can do this, maybe I can get in here and make a difference. This is something my instincts tell me that I need to do.”

Tim Herbst is the closest, I think, that Connecticut has come to a Trump. As Trumbull’s First Selectman, he’s not wealthy or a businessman. But he is a bomb thrower. There is no Democratic policy he will not savage. Being from Fairfield County gives him the vibe of an outsider, too. As a Republican candidate for governor, he regularly thrills audiences when he rails against “Hartford insiders unwilling to lead by example and pursue real reform.”

I’d say Herbst’s chances were slim if he were not Trumbull’s chief executive. Experience matters in Connecticut. You can’t just say the magic words and expect to be elected. For evidence consider the failed candidacies of Linda McMahon and Ned Lamont. Both are fabulously rich and both famously outside government’s normal spheres of influence. But neither could best cagey insiders (though Lamont, to be fair, beat Joe Lieberman before later losing to him).

But does experience matter as much as it once did? I’m not sure. You can’t get more insidery than a political dynasty. Yet, that’s not enough for Branford’s Ted Kennedy Jr. The two-term state senator and son of US Sen. Ted Kennedy announced Monday that he would not seek the governorship after months of speculation that he would. Some say the GOP would have tarred him as a tax-and-spend liberal, but I don’t think that explains his decision, nor do I think Connecticut’s intractable problems explain it. I suspect voters are angry, too angry to listen to anyone whose message is not rage.

If anyone can prove I’m wrong, it’s Joe Ganim. The Democratic mayor of Bridgeport is truly an outsider. He wanted to be governor long before he was convicted and imprisoned for corruption while mayor in the 1990s. A decade later, he mounted an amazing comeback to defeat incumbent mayor Bill Finch, a Democrat.

His message was simple: give me a second chance. That resonated with the Park City’s minority voters, and he won. Will that work statewide? Maybe. When asked what he thought of a convicted felon running as a Democrat in seeking to be Connecticut’s next governor, Malloy said, with enormous understatement: “It’s different.”

The governor is unpopular, so it’s hard to say how much influence he has even on members of his own party. But one thing’s for sure. The tide is turning against the Democrats in Hartford.

You can feel it.