Hayes, Sullivan offer visions for CT
The two enduring stories of 2020 – the coronavirus crisis and protests for police reform – may not have replaced the economy as the top election issue in Connecticut’s 5th District, but the stories have overshadowed voters’ views of the American dream.
U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a rising star in the Democratic party, and GOP challenger David X. Sullivan, a retired federal prosecutor from New Fairfield who’s running on a law-andorder platform, each say families here are tired of being stifled by the COVID-19 crisis, and tired of police being scapegoated in the name of social justice.
As such, the candidates say, voters want the security they enjoyed before the coronavirus turned Connecticut upside down, and before protests over the public slaying of a Black man in police custody and calls for police reform turned into a zero-sum debate.
“Obviously (the priority) is the safety and welfare of our citizens and reopening the economy along with our schools and bringing us back to a state of normality,” Sullivan told Hearst Connecticut Media last week, when asked what he would do first about the coronavirus crisis if elected on Nov. 3.
Hayes agreed that there are multiple priorities, but one imperative.
“We need to get people healthy,” Hayes said. “A lot of things have happened as a result of COVID that we need to attend to, but none of those things matter if we are not testing and tracing and getting a vaccine ready to distribute.”
Hayes, who made the cover of Rolling Stone one month after she was sworn in as the first Black woman to represent Connecticut in Congress, is favored by leading forecasters to win a second two-year term in what is considered the state’s only competitive race for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Sullivan, who has raised one-fifth of Hayes’ contributions, and has 38,000 fewer registered Republicans in his district than Democrats, hopes to bridge the gap early next month, when the first of four virtual debates kicks off on Oct. 5 from Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.
A minor party candidate who is not raising money or campaigning conventionally, has been given a seat at three of the four debates. Newtown’s Bruce Walczak, a relocation consultant who was elected to a term on Newtown’s Police Commission, is running on the Independent Party line because twoparty politics has polarized Washington, D.C., and divided America.
“You’re not going to find me taking the traditional position, ‘Here is my position on this issue and I have my feet dug in and I won’t compromise,’” Walczak said. “Rather, I believe we ought to be looking all the alternatives.” At stake for Republicans is a chance to break into Connecticut’s all-Democratic congressional delegation and take back a seat the GOP lost in 2006 to now-Sen. Chris Murphy. Republicans thought they had that chance in the 2018 midterm elections, when a scandal over a botched harassment complaint forced three-term Democrat Elizabeth Esty to give up re-election.
But out of Waterbury came Hayes, the 2016 national Teacher of the Year, who increasingly got on donors’ radar after trouncing an establishment Democrat in the primary. Hayes went on to take 60 percent of the vote in November.
“This is about working with people and saying, ‘Help me understand what you’re saying, and I will make sure that informs my decision-making,’” Hayes said last week. “I have stepped out of my comfort zone and I have been intentional about doing that (because) you can’t have a conversation with only a small group people and hope to serve a district as diverse Connecticut Five.”
Sullivan, an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut for 30 years before his retirement last summer, said voters he’s talked to in the 41 cities and towns of the 5th District still want the same things from lawmakers – a strong economy, a safe community and good schools. But they will vote for the candidate who can deliver them from the trials of 2020.
“They’re going to vote for the person who can lead us out of this pandemic and bring us an economy that is flourishing again,” Sullivan said.
Coronavirus divide
Fifth District voters are fed up with the coronavirus crisis, in large part because the country is divided about how to fight it, the candidates agree.
“Our first priority right now – not waiting until November – is aligning ourselves on the science, on the need to wear masks, and on practicing social distancing to contain the spread of virus until we are able to have a vaccine and return to normal,” Hayes said. “Relief for the economy, support for business, and everything else that we need has to start today (because) the economists tell us if we wait, it will be more catastrophic in the long run.”
Sullivan agrees on the need for immediacy, but balks at the $3.4 trillion cost of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pandemic relief bill, which has stalled in the Senate.
“We can’t wait for programs to expire – we need to be sure we are sustaining people – but we have to be mindful also … that we can’t throw money around without a method and a plan,” Sullivan said. “We need the right leadership so that Congress comes together and gets something done.”
Across greater Danbury and the four-county region of west-central Connecticut, people in the 5th District are complying with COVID-19 guidelines but they are increasingly vexed by what doesn’t make sense, candidates said.
Walczak, the Independent Party candidate, said the problem stems from a disjointed national response.
“I would listen to the science and encourage the scientific community … to convey the proper procedures and policy on the virus,” Walczak said. “If ever there was a crisis for everyone coming together and being unified as to how to battle it and how to win, it would be this virus.”
Police and justice
There is little debate between the candidates that Black lives matter, that police reform is required, or that school resource officers are essential and should remain in force in both suburban and urban schools.
With good reason, the candidates say.
Voters in the 5th District want to keep school resource officers, and voters support police reform as the right approach to end the disparate treatment of people of color by police.
“Just about every one of the towns in my district held some type of demonstration or a rally or a protest, from towns that are majority white to towns that are majority minority. People are saying, ‘Where can we do better? Where can we go from here?’” Hayes said. “People are also saying ‘We want police in our community.’ I have never supported the conversation about defunding police or limiting the capacity of police to do their job.”
Hayes, whose husband is a police detective, cosponsored with 130 other lawmakers, the Justice in Policing Act, which calls for new training standards, more scrutiny when police use force, and less choke holds, among other measures.
Sullivan supports President Trump’s Executive Order on Safe Policing, which creates a database to track excessive use-offorce complaints, and gives incentives to police to dispatch social workers on nonviolent calls for people in crisis.
Sullivan also supports a bill by South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott to “rebuild lost trust between communities of color and law enforcement” by ending chokeholds, increasing body camera use, and giving police more money for training.
“People want to feel safe and secure in their communities and in their home (and) they want their children to have a law enforcement presence in the schools,” Sullivan said. “We are fortunate in many cases to have good working relationships between local police and our communities.”
The candidates’ differences come in how they characterize the protests, civil disobedience and criminal unrest on American streets. Confrontations between protesters and police in cities such as Portland, Ore., have made prime time news all summer.
“We would have more clarity of what the concerns are if we could stop the violence, and we can do that, but law enforcement needs to be able to enforce the rule of law,” said Sullivan, who released a political ad on Sept. 1 accusing Hayes of being soft on rioting. “I have been a rule of law candidate since I joined this race in June of 2019.”
Hayes agrees with her opponent in spirit.
“My opponent and I both agree the goal should be law and order, but how that law and order is applied is the question,” Hayes said. “Police have a hard job to do and that has to be respected, but and black and brown people want to feel safe, and we have to understand that sometimes they don’t trust most police. We have to first acknowledge that these disparities exist.”
The Independent Party candidate agreed, saying he also supports both protesters and police.
“On the Police Commission, I was involved in hiring police officers - and it is a very vigorous examination process that takes over six months before they serve,” Walczak said. “But I believe the fundamental philosophy of our criminal justice system is backward. We pour all our money and energy into catching someone doing something wrong … instead of investing more in funding activity that gets to the root causes of crime.”