The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dave Walker strives to build support for GOP gubernatorial nod
It’s a Tuesday night and Dave Walker is about to run the table at the Fairfield Republican Town Committee, winning their unanimous endorsement in the statewide dogfight for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.
He is standing outside the second-floor meeting room of the town Board of Education, wearing a USA windbreaker over an open-collared shirt, talking with a pair of heavy-hitting developers enlisted to help counter the efforts of Tim Herbst, the former Trumbull first selectman. Walker, in the vestigial drawl of his youth in Alabama, chats with town committee members as they squeeze past.
Walker and Herbst are trying to distinguish themselves in the dozen-member field of GOP candidates jockeying for the party’s nod. Time’s running out before the May 12 voting at the state convention in Foxwoods. Every delegate counts.
Downstairs, Herbst is shaking the hand of anyone who comes through the doors of the office building on Kings Highway East. But when the meeting starts and the 62 committee members in attendance start voting in a first-round run-off, Herbst is off to Southington.
Walker, 66, the nation’s former chief accountability officer, paces the periphery of the crowd, stopping, quietly schmoozing, accepting good wishes from GOP wallflowers, occasionally eyeing the podium where RTC Chairman James Millington apologizes for the drawn-out process of the winner-take-all balloting.
The first round of voting is good news for Walker, who lives a couple miles away, across Ash Creek, in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport. He’s been developing relationships with RTC members here for years, most notably as running mate to John McKinney, the former state Senate minority leader, who lost the 2014 primary to Tom Foley of Greenwich. McKinney is supporting Herbst this year and sent a letter to the RTC asking for members to back Herbst as well, creating a backdrop of potential drama for the evening.
Once called for higher taxes
But many people in the room know Walker was comptroller general of the U.S. between 1998 and 2008.
They’ve seen the 2007 segment on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” where he warned that the nation’s deficit-spending would saddle millennials with crippling debts to pay the retirement entitlements of Baby Boomers.
They understand that Walker, a CPA with executive experience in the private sector, had 3,000 employees and a half-billiondollar budget at the Government Accountability Office, under congressional control.
They remember the Wall Street Journal at the time called him a “Chicken Little,” who called for higher taxes and a reduction in benefits.
Walker still wants Connecticut’s public unions to submit to benefit cuts. But higher taxes in 2018? Not so much. The Republican mantra this year is to cut spending across the board, for starters, then somehow reduce the tax burden.
Christina Polizzi, communications director for state Democrats, said she’s not surprised by Walker’s walking back his tax stance 11 years later.
“We have consistently seen this in the Republican party, both nationally and on the state level, of priorities that change moment to moment, depending on who they want to please and who they want to push back against,” she said.
A crowded field
Walker is relatively new to elective politics. So while he may be competitive among the 1,200 delegates in the upcoming convention, it remains to be seen how he’ll manage in a huge field that includes veterans like Herbst, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton and Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti.
In the Fairfield RTC vote, Walker ends up taking 38 votes to Herbst’s 11 and grabs the committee’s 15 delegates, as well as the likely support of four so-called super delegates.
“I know it’s late,” he says from a portable podium set up in the Board of Education meeting room. “Let me just say I am pleased and honored, honored to have your endorsement. I live in Black Rock, which used to be part of Fairfield, and I would like it to be part of Fairfield again. My property value would probably be double. My taxes would be half.”
With 10 other GOP Republican gubernatorial wannabes — not including Bob Stefanowski, the Madison millionaire who is skipping the convention — stalking the convention floor, Walker will need every vote.
“The first thing you have to get through is the inside-baseball convention,” Walker said. “By the time I go to the convention, I will have been to 160-plus Republican events. I’ve had fundraisers that cross party boundaries because I have a lot of support from Democrats and independents as well, who love the state, who know it’s in trouble, who want someone who can solve the problem.”
Property with a pedigree
Putting 4,000 miles a month on his Audi over the last nine months, Walker, a grandfather who lives with his wife Mary, in the house once owned by former longtime U.S. Rep. Chris Shays has learned a lot during this campaign.
Shays, who now lives in Maryland, recalled working with Walker when he headed the GAO and Shays was the senior member on the House Government Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“David is without a doubt the greatest comptroller general, in my judgment that the country has ever had,” Shays said. “He reduced the number of staff and increased their output tremendously. He will do what needs to happen. He is not a politician with some of those experiences they have.”
A pending complaint by Herbst’s campaign manager to the State Elections Enforcement Commission charges that Walker declared his intentions to run for governor while in the exploratory-committee phase, then missed a deadline to dissolve that committee. Walker describes the case as frivolous.
“He’s incredibly competent and he is focused on the area that no one else is focusing on,” said Shays, who lost the U.S. Senate primary in 2012 to Linda McMahon. “It’s not just the state, but many of the large cities and the outrageousness that the governor and the Legislature have basically protected for 10 years public employees from any layoffs, and from any renegotiation of contracts.”
Walker says he doesn’t really like politics.
But first, he has to get through the convention, survive the mid-August primary and buck an anticipated anti-Trump headwind in November. A couple days after Walker won the Fairfield delegates, Hersbt won the 16 votes of the Stamford GOP Town Committee.