The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Drew outlines vision for state
He says making decisions that affect the most people is attitude needed in state’s highest office
MIDDLETOWN » Citing positive conditions in his home city, Mayor Dan Drew Wednesday called upon the people of Connecticut to join him as “one people united in common purpose” as he announced he is running for governor in 2018.
Under his administration, Middletown has been transformed, the three-term incumbent Democrat told supporters at the Mattabesett Canoe Club.
Drew announced Friday that he had raised more than $170,000 in campaign contributions for his gubernatorial exploratory committee.
“We’re a safe city,” a city that invests in its police and schools,
“a prosperous city,” a city that “respects and values all its people,” Drew said.
But what’s happened in Middletown “is the exception rather than the rule,” Drew said. “The lie that what’s best for the rich is best for (everyone)” has fostered a nation so divided that “it’s hard to recognize the country we revere,” he said.
“Acceptance of trickledown economics is a tacit way of conceding that the needs of working families will always come after the needs of the rich,” Drew said. “It’s a way of saying that things will only be good for all of us if they’re better for a small number of people.”
Gov. Dannel Malloy announced early on that he would not seek re-election to a third term.
However, Drew has said Malloy’s decision was “never a factor” in determining whether the threeterm mayor would pursue the party’s nomination.
Standing on a section of the second-story porch of the club that fronts the Connecticut River, Drew took exception to that narrow view. “When I was elected mayor, I made a promise to the people of Middletown to only do what would benefit the greatest number of people,” Drew said.
Again and again, he said, those who benefit at the expense of others have relied on fear to divide — and to cow — residents.
He drew upon his own background to emphasize his point.
As an 11-year-old child, Drew said, he watched in terror as his biological father menaced Drew’s mother and her new husband with a baseball bat. It was the first time he dialled 911, Drew said, and he and his brothers hid in the attic as they waited for the muted sirens of police officers to grow louder as they responded to his home.
For years after that evening, Drew said he longed to feel “normal.”
It was years before he came to understand “that abnormality I felt was a sense of vulnerability,” Drew said.
But once he learned that lesson, Drew said he also learned “when that fear is gone, so is their power.”
Drew said he wants to transform Connecticut, calling for single-payer health care for all, property tax reform, free public higher education and legalized recreational marijuana.
He urged his immediate audience, and, by extension, residents across the state not to run away from those ideas, but to “embrace them.
“I’m asking you to believe, not just in me, but in us, in where we’ll go and who we’ll be when we get there. I am asking you to believe in Connecticut again,” Drew said.
State Sen. Paul Doyle, DWethersfield, said he thinks Drew “will make a great candidate for governor,” adding, “I’m looking forward to an exciting — and interesting — race.”
“I think he makes his case very well,” state Rep. Joseph Serra, D-Middletown, said after Drew finished his address. “But the issue is, how are you going to pay for it?” Serra said.
Drew was just where he wanted to be — in the middle of a surging crowd of jubilant supporters.
His decision to run for the gubernatorial nomination was hardly a surprise. The only question was when Drew would formally announce his candidacy.
In some ways, Drew is an unconventional candidate. He announced he was establishing his committee not amid the vestiges of power or influence, but on WPLR 99.1’s Chaz and AJ show in mid-January.
By waiting, he let other would-be candidates test the waters before, as in the case of state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., choose not to make the run.
However, there is still plethora of would-be candidates among both Democrats and Republicans.