Prodigal Son skips the pizza and whining

GREENWICH — Well, it wasn’t exactly a fatted calf. But it’s not like I, the Prodigal Son, was expected back in my old hometown on that night. Or ever again.

In fact, the pizza looked barely edible; kind of that fluffy, under-baked stuff that steams in the box on the way from the not-quitehot-enough baker’s oven to the party, where the race is on between limp/lukewarm and its eventual, assured transition to cold, coagulated cardboard.

But it’s not as if the folks who had popped out from behind the cacophonous ca-chings of their hedge funds for a night of Republican solidarity and dogma would know the difference between world-class New Haven “apeetz” and this stuff, with the plops of simulated cheese and the undone crust.

It made a suitable binding for the plastic glasses of cheap red and white wine they were swilling.

But what the heck, it was mid-week and there were 100 Republicans in the first-floor Town Hall meeting Room, laughing, networking and fretting about November.

Since I remember a time when Republicans set a convivial political standard — as recently as the 2004 GOP convention in New York, when I literally closed a couple bars with various highprofile Connecticut pols — it was nice to see alcohol in an actual public building. It helps when your guy, Peter Tesei, is in his eleventh year as first selectman and gets to book the room, casting the Democrats upstairs on this important night.

Elsewhere, throughout the state, other town committees, Republican and Democrat, were going through the same ceremonies, selecting new local leaders, naming delegates to the important May conventions, and listening to candidates for statewide office hone their promisefilled drones.

I figured this was as good a bunch to watch as any other in the state, with the election calendar dictating that delegates must be registered with state officials by April 4. Plus, if questioned, I could trot out my Greenwich birthright, having arrived in this world when my parents lived in a downtown attic and my father taught at Cos Cob School.

I rarely betray this information, except under duress, like the time I used it to mock-accuse Tom Foley (see two-time losing millionaires deterred from their first elective offices) of being an arriviste, a Johnny-come-lately, while I am — and for the time being shall remain — a Greenwich native.

Foley didn’t make the scene for the pizza and wine that night. It would have been a apt occasion to bury the hatchet, with a roomful of witnesses, if he were to recall the stories I wrote about his unionbusting activities in his former Southern textile factories, followed by yet another Election Night collapse to the inimitable Dan Malloy.

But instead, I sat among the suits and stylish dresses, trying not to kick over anyone’s wine glass, and listened to the public fears among the GOP of a reinvigorated Democratic Party in town and the potential for big problems this fall, thanks to He Who Must Not Be Named in Washington.

So what did the Prodigal Son learn?

That the gubernatorial candidates there, led by Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton; Dave Walker, the former comptroller general of the United States from Bridgeport; and Tim Herbst, the former Trumbull first selectman, had to cool their heels for an hour, leaning up against

I sat among the suits and stylish dresses, trying not to kick over anyone’s wine glass, and listened to the public fears among the GOP of a reinvigorated Democratic Party in town and the potential for big problems this fall, thanks to He Who Must Not Be Named in Washington.

the back wall while the committee did their business.

Such is the glamorous life of a gubernatorial hopeful. But the candidates needs the committee — and the 20 delegates — more than the committee needed to hear the gubernatorial hopefuls.

Boughton, under doctors’ assurances that he won’t have a seizure and scare the bejesus out of people in public again, had the water bottle in hand most of the night. He promised yet again that he would eliminate the pension system for new state employees; phase out the income tax over 10 years; and save $3.5 billion a year by growing revenue.

Walker, a CPA with big-time CEO experience, claimed to save taxpayers $380 billion during three terms in federal service. He wants to reform the welfare system; push through tax cuts while restructuring government and eliminated unfunded state mandates that cost towns and cities millions of bucks.

Herbst, who is affable offstage, appearing only slight miffed as he hammered away on $71 billion in unfunded pensions, “55 people a day leaving the state” and the wealth “leaving our state.” It was almost a relief, when he didn’t start frothing about restoring the death penalty.

But the real news might have been that here, in the belly of the GOP beast, the home of investment billionaires, the town committee has a whopping $3,000 in the treasury. It’s barely enough to rent a Russian bot, let alone hire a crane to sling lousy pizza into the maw of that 400-pound computer hacker holed up in his mom’s basement.