The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dems eager to see Trump era end
Sleep-deprived Connecticut Democrats welcomed the news that arrived three days after the election: Joe Biden surpassed President Donald Trump during the steady counting of mail-in ballots, apparently clearing his path Friday to become the next president of the United States.
Equally fatigued Republicans said the president is entitled to allege irregularities if he sees them, muting Democrats’ relief with the specter of legal challenges lingering for weeks.
“It looks like Biden’s gonna get the nod by the end of the day, I think,” Gov. Ned Lamont said during an early afternoon interview at the Governor’s Residence in Hartford.
Lamont was waiting for a phone call from Biden, an old friend, with news that the former vice president would soon claim the victory. Lamont said a new Democratic administration is crucial for the state, which desperately needs another infusion of federal coronavirus relief money.
“I was a fan of the guy from the very beginning,” said the governor, who ran for U.S. Senate in 2006. “I thought he fights for the middle class, represents our values well. Doesn’t burn bridges. Works well with the other side of the aisle.”
Signs of victory for Biden came first in the Georgia predawn, then in Pennsylvania during the morning rush hour. The inevitability of a one-term Trump presidency grew more likely amid Trump’s
unsubstantiated charges of massive fraud and claims he’s the rightful winner as his supporters in Pennsylvania and Arizona protested ballot counts.
“Let’s hope we’ve turned the page on this sorry four years of our history,” Lamont said. “COVID aside, it was tough for us to make real plans going forward because you had no idea what Washington was going to do from one week to the next. ‘I want a really super-big bill. I want nothing at all.’”
“I’m so pleased that former Vice President Biden will become President Biden,” said state Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven in a Friday interview, with no declaration that Biden had won the requisite 270 electoral votes, hours before Biden was scheduled to give a prime-time address.
“He will become a healing force for a country that needs it. He understands that the democratic system in America that has been a light for the world, but which has been greatly dimmed because of President Trump over the last four years, needs to be rekindled.”
A victory for Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., would shatter a glass ceiling for women and minorities across the country: America's first female vice president, first Black vice president and first person of Indian descent to take the office.
“The Democratic Party, both nationally and on the state level supports merit and talent wherever it can be found,” Looney said.
The steady chipping away of the president’s
lead in crucial battleground states made some elected leaders suggest that his claims of voter fraud were a possible face-saving fiction.
Shortly after 11 a.m. at the State Capitol, US Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy joined Secretary of the State Denise Merrill in condemning the president’s misinformation tactics. They predicted Biden would proclaim his win later in the day.
“The president’s remarks last night were beyond dangerous and damaging,” Blumenthal said. “They were pathetic and sad. But what struck me most was how insidious and insulting they were to those countless men and women who are making democracy work. And in fact, democracy is working. The votes are being counted despite every effort by the president and the right-wing fringe to subvert and stop that count. By the end of today, Joe Biden will be president-elect of the United States.”
“He’s making up a set of facts out of thin air,” Murphy said of the president. “It’s clearly going to be Joe Biden’s decision when he declares victory, but he is going to declare
victory.”
Merrill, Connecticut’s top elections official, said the balloting here was trouble-free, overall.
“The importance of this election is that every single voter gets to speak,” she said, standing with Blumenthal and Murphy in the Capitol parking lot. “And you’re seeing that play out around the country. The story of the election here in Connecticut is that every vote was counted. We did it accurately. We did it as slowly as we needed to. We had a record number of people coming out to vote and registering to vote.”
She called for federal guidance and financial support, noting that the Connecticut tabulation machines are now 20 years old.
“I think we’re all muchmore attuned to election process now,” she said, pointing to the protracted counting processes in many states. “There’s going to be some reckoning after this, in this country, because we all have to do better. When I hear our elections being impugned by President Trump, you have to remember that he’s not only impugning what he sees as a process that’s flawed, he’s impugning the integrity of every single one of those hundreds of thousands of volunteers that are stepping up to help with this election.”
Stalwart Trump supporter J.R. Romano, the state Republican chairman, said it’s only natural for the president to want to challenge any irregularities that he sees. “It is what it is and we’ll see what happens, but I’ve said all along that this race would be close and wouldn’t be decided for 72 hours,” Romano said in a phone interview “There are so many questions out there and so many flaws that can be exploited.”
Romano, criticizing voting procedures in Connecticut, said people are not asked to present proof of citizenship when they register to vote. “That makes me agitated,” he said. He pointed out years of voting irregularities in Bridgeport and decried the lack of audits of absentee ballots.
State Rep. Themis Klarides, R-Derby, who did not seek reelection and is expected to seek higher state office, defended the laborious ballot-counting process but measured her criticism of the president in a written statement.
“Election workers here in Connecticut and around the country have worked tirelessly, even putting themselves at risk to make sure our elections for everything from president to local offices are safe and secure in these unprecedented circumstances,” said Klarides, who was replaced as House minority leader on Thursday. “In America we believe the vote is sacred, and it’s why every vote should and will be counted according to the law. Efforts to undermine our elections process will not be tolerated.”