Griebel changes the plot
During an interview with Oz Griebel Tuesday, I jotted a question in the margin of my notes.
“Who does he look like?” “Spencer Tracy’s hair,” I scrawled. “Which character actor?” I pondered in ink.
After his hour-long endorsement session with the Hearst Connecticut Editorial Board, I walked into the newsroom.
A colleague greeted me with “Oz always reminds me of someone, and I can’t figure out who it is.”
We concurred it was likely a character actor. The following day, I brought the issue up with two former journalists who covered Griebel when he was chairman of the state’s Transportation Strategy Board (TSB).
They, and others, lobbed names that usually scroll by in the credits of flicks on Turner Classic Movies: Brian Dennehy, Tommy Lee Jones, Denver Pyle (“without the beard”), George Kennedy, Barton MacLane (“the guy who played the general on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ ”).
“A tough guy — not DeNiro, but the type that would be in an old movie,” one former journalist said. “He does always seem like the grown-up in the room.”
No one mentions Ozzie Nelson, the radio and TV sitcom star whose nickname was adopted by Richard Nelson Griebel. Or, for that matter, Frank Morgan, who porElection trayed a certain wizard. Of course, this Oz would put tolls on the Yellow Brick Road.
We never came up with a satisfying answer (my choice was Robert Forster), but there was a shared sense that Griebel looks like he just walked off the silver screen of a blackand-white film.
These days he’s auditioning to be Connecticut’s leading man. His script is pretty good. He’s a former Republican who has teamed with longtime Democrat Monte Frank to try to heal the rift between the parties as Independent candidates. All Griebel must do is defeat two guys whose red and blue lines are vivid: Republican Bob Stefanowski and Democrat Ned Lamont.
For good measure, he’s doing it without public financing, which is why you haven’t seen much of him on the small screen.
His campaign is so low-key that he showed up for our meeting an hour early, when we were about to interview U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who is a Democrat. When they crossed paths, he told Murphy he was looking forward to working with him after Day.
After an hour in Starbucks, Griebel, 69, sounded like an over-caffeinated millennial as he outlined his platform. If words counted as votes, Griebel would win in a landslide. Stefanowski responds to questions like he’s being asked to surrender his wallet. Lamont reliably pauses, considering each question before sauntering into a reply.
Griebel speaks so rapidly that it can be easy to overlook that he navigates through some issues without locating the subject.
He is no novelty act (though a rap song supporting his candidacy is making the rounds). He boasts experience in the evergreen fields of business, education and transportation, as former head of the MetroHartford Alliance, as an ex-teacher, and as the voice of the TSB. None of these three candidates has held elected office in Hartford, but Griebel has deep relationships with many members of the General Assembly.
Griebel got a boost in recent days as the latest Quinnipiac Poll cited a rise in his support to 11 percent. It’s not insignificant. Republicans — and Democrats — haven’t forgotten that Malloy beat Tom Foley by about 6,400 votes in 2010, when longtime Republican Tom Marsh picked up 18,000 votes as an Independent.
The plot twist is that you can’t predict which candidate is most likely to lose votes to Griebel, who once identified himself as a liberal Republican. The safe bet would be Stefanowski, who tried to deflect the association in a debate Thursday (“Ned and Oz are one in the same” he said afterward).
During an interview Thursday, Lamont circled the reason some voters could lean toward Griebel: “He’s sane.” “I like Oz,” Lamont said. He seemed to sense that could sound like an endorsement before he continued.
“He’s a serious guy and I’m delighted he’s at the debates. My problem is his solution to take money from the Rainy Day Fund.”
In other words, they are no longer dismissing Griebel as a bit player.
I asked Griebel who he’s been told he resembles.
“Once in a blue moon, someone will say that I remind them of Tom Brokaw,” he replied Friday.
“Everyone else was naming character actors. You’re the only person who cited a journalist,” I responded.
“It’s certainly a far nobler calling,” he wrote back.
Now he sounds like a politician.