Connecticut doesn’t have to be a one-party state

If you're one of the roughly 540,000 people who voted for Bob Stefanowski on Tuesday, it's worth wondering what this state has left for you, politically speaking.

Stefanowski lost badly to Ned Lamont. Every other statewide Republican lost, too. The only bright spot for Team Red was the Fifth District, where George Logan nearly pulled off his party's first congressional win since 2006. But before the party goes all in on “Let's be more like George Logan,” it's worth remembering Logan himself is fresh off another loss, this time in the state Senate, in 2020. Maybe you can build a party off two losses in three years, but probably not.

Right now, that's all the party has. It wasn't just the big-ticket races that went for Democrats. They further strengthened their position in Fairfield County, winning seats in the General Assembly that were only recently Republican strongholds. In Greenwich, which my colleague John Breunig has described in much greater detail, the right wing of the Republican Party got everything it wanted and then found itself almost completely rejected by the electorate.

There wasn't even the solace of a close governor's race. Stefanowski will at least find a warm welcome with Tom Foley and Linda McMahon in the TwoTime Losers Club.

Things can change quickly, but for now there's not a lot of competition for the state's big races. You can already pencil in Connecticut's seven electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2024, and there's no one on the horizon to challenge Chris Murphy. Even were such a contender to appear, that person would face danger in a Republican primary, as we saw this year.

What that means is that all the meaningful political debate in Connecticut, at least for the foreseeable future, is happening within the Democratic Party. But that, too, is problematic, because none of the primaries for seats on the Democratic ticket this year turned out to be competitive.

Erick Russell and Stephanie Thomas were something less than household names headed into primaries this summer for state treasurer and secretary of the state, respectively. Those offices, along with state comptroller, were vacant, and represent one of the best ways to advance to higher office. But the primaries weren't close at all, because voters supported the endorsed candidates by large margins.

That needs to change — not because there's anything wrong with Russell or Thomas, but because it shouldn't be enough to earn the party's endorsement to guarantee a primary win and then a rollover in the November election. That leaves all decisions in the hands of party insiders at the state convention.

The blame for the lack of competitive races on Election Day isn't hard to understand. National Republicans are dominated by Donald Trump, and Connecticut has spent more than a halfdecade making clear it has no interest in what he's offering.

It's funny, in a sad sort of way, to see party leaders in the wake of Tuesday's disappointment try to distance themselves from the 45th president, pinning all their hopes on Florida's governor to rescue their chances. But it doesn't work that easily. If you spend years building someone up as the cure to everything wrong with America, don't expect your voters to turn on him over something as minor as an electoral setback. Trump himself is likewise unwilling to go along with a movement to pretend his presidency never happened.

Connecticut Republicans, too, were full of recriminations in recent days, complaining that Democrats had misled voters about Stefanowski's positions, as if every campaign in history hadn't done something along those lines.

“I think the Democrats tried to scare people to the polls,” House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora said. “I would call it a form of election terrorism.”

Yes, a leader of a party that used crime as a cudgel throughout the race, trying mightily to convince Connecticut residents they were in danger of being murdered every time they walked out the front door, accused the other side of trying to “scare people to the polls.” Those poor Connecticut Republicans just couldn't catch a break.

There's a solution here. Republicans could give voters a choice. Recognize the state of the electorate, which is not interested in your conspiracy theories and whatever nonsense your national party is peddling, whether it's fear of transgender people or anti-vaccination campaigns. Going down that road might get you 42 percent of the vote, but it will never earn a majority here.

Making a break from the national party would require creative thinking and independence from state leaders. There's no indication they're willing to do that. Instead, they'll continue down the path to electoral oblivion until the day the national party reforms itself into something palatable to a majority of Connecticut voters.

It's been 16 years since Republicans won much of anything in the state. That could be just the beginning.