Democrats have treasurer problem

On July 7, 1962, Connecticut Democrats nominated Gerald Lamb, a Waterbury politician and manager of a dental laboratory, as state treasurer.

Republicans had nominated a Black lawyer from Hartford to run for the post. Not to be outdone, John M. Bailey, the powerful, liberal chairman of both the state and national Democratic committees, who lorded over political tickets, anointed Lamb.

Lamb won the election, making history as the first Black treasurer of any state since Reconstruction in the 19th century. He earned reelection in 1966, later holding other state and federal roles.

And Democrats have never looked back. Lamb was the first of an unbroken string of African American Democrats nominated for state treasurer, a string that continues to this day.

That's 60 years of exclusively Black candidates on the November ballots as Democrats for treasurer, most of whom won. The total number of Black Democrats nominated for other statewide offices in that same 60 years: Zero.

The record stands as both a badge of honor and a badge of shame for Connecticut's dominant political party. It's a problem, in the sense that the string of Black Connecticut treasurers has taken on a life of its own as an awkward cornerstone of state politics.

But it's a problem that many Democrats, and many Black leaders, see no reason to fix. The string is as likely as not to continue in 2022, following the surprise announcement by first-term Treasurer Shawn Wooden on April 7 that he won't seek reelection.

Heading into next Saturday's Democratic state convention in Hartford, three candidates have emerged from the last-minute scramble with a chance to win the party endorsement: Erick Russell, a securities lawyer from New Haven and Karen DuBois-Walton, who heads New Haven's housing authority, are both Black. Dita Bhargava, an investment firm executive from Greenwich, is of South Asian descent.

All three are likely to gain the 15 percent of convention delegates needed to qualify for an August primary — as Bhargava did in 2018, when she lost to Wooden, polling 43 percent of the votes.

‘Why have we been cubbyholed?'

The string of African American Democrats in the treasurer spot generates friction and head-scratching. How does it keep happening that Black Democrats run, and win, for treasurer but not for any of the other five constitutional state offices — governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of the state and comptroller?

“The problem I have with it is, why have we been cubbyholed?” asked state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, co-chair of the General Assembly's labor committee and one of the most prominent Black elected leaders in the state.

“That was something that was decided a long time ago. I find it to be peculiar,” Porter said to me as the House debated bills late Thursday night. “I think they felt like they were giving us something that was guaranteed.”

Decades after the age of political bosses, it's a complex dance. Another Democratic 2018 candidate for treasurer, Arunan Arulampalam, who is of South Asian descent, saw some of his support evaporate after Ned Lamont, now governor, then the presumptive nominee, tried but failed to bring on a Black woman as lieutenant governor. That would have balanced the ticket without a Black treasurer.

Arulampalam told the CT Mirror's Mark Pazniokas at the time that he was pressured to drop out. He declined to join the primary but urged the party to look more broadly at what diversity means.

One dilemma: It's hard to reset because statewide seats don't come open often. Former Treasurer Denise Nappier held the office for 20 years until she retired in 2019, for example — and each office has hopefuls elbowing for it, often for years.

As former House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz said recently on Tom Dudchik's “Capitol Report” on WTNH-TV Channel 8, the party doesn't want to typecast Black candidates but it does want to reflect the state's diversity.

An expectation that comes to life

The remarkable string of Black treasurers holds forth not exactly by orchestration, but it isn't unspoken, either. Many people described to me a sort of expectation that comes to life.

“I've always thought it was an African American spot, to tell you the truth,” John Droney, who was Democratic state chairman from 1986 to 1992, when Francisco Borges was state treasurer, told me this week. “I just always thought it was a good thing that we had Black people for high office.”

But as for steering from the top to make it happen — no, Droney said. “I used to be a person of authority and we didn't do anything to make it happen.”

The real problem is not that African Americans own the treasurer post; it's that every four years, the position is the sole way the party finds racial balance — with rare exceptions such as the election of Attorney General William Tong, who is Asian.

After Lamb, the party nominated John Merchant, who lost in 1970; Henry Parker, who won in 1974 and served until 1986; Borges; Joseph Suggs, who filled out Borges second term, then was nominated but lost in 1994; Nappier; and Wooden.

Connecticut has yet to nominate and elect a Hispanic Democrat for statewide office, a record that could end this year in the race for secretary of the state. The Hispanic population is larger, at 17 percent of the state compared with 11 percent for the Black population, but African Americans vote in an overwhelming bloc for Democrats.

“Our community worked hard to get at the table,” said Scot X. Esdaile, president of the NAACP in Connecticut, who sees no problem with the treasurer nominations going to Black candidates. “The whites had the presidency for a long time and had this country for a long time, too.”

The NAACP is nonpartisan but Esdaile can and does push for more representation generally by Black candidates. “I don't think the other seats should be exclusive to white people.”

No path to higher office

There have been close calls that show the string is not

preordained — notably in 1998. Nappier, then the Hartford city treasurer, appeared to lose the convention endorsement by two votes to Frank Lecce, a West Hartford investment manager.

Nappier's forces flipped enough votes to wrest the nod from the convention before the tally was declared final, That caused a bitter rift as Barbara B. Kennelly, the U.S. congresswoman and nominee for governor — and John M. Bailey's daughter — backed Nappier.

Don Noel, the Hartford Courant political columnist, wrote: “Though Nappier took great pains to say her victory was due mainly to her qualifications, not her race, many delegates cited the fear of launching an all-white ticket as the reason for vote switches.”

Heading into the primary against Lecce, Nappier told the Courant's Chris Keating, “If there is a color, it is the color green — the people's money.”

Indeed, the main responsibility of the job, managing pension funds now worth $38 billion, is an awesome one, all the more because the treasurer in Connecticut, a sole fiduciary, is arguably the most powerful treasurer in the nation. Add to that the control over state debt and savings programs and the job could be called the most important elected role in the state, after the governor.

And yet, it has not proven a path to higher office — leading to a theory by Noel, the retired opinion writer.

“It's not a position that gets you publicly known and therefore a steppingstone. If you want a diverse ticket without getting in the way of people with political ambition … if you're John Bailey and you want Blacks to be more prominent in your state or maybe you're just a good guy, it's an easy seat.”

Or, as Porter, the state representative from New Haven, put it: “It's not a bad place to be, but it excommunicates you from all the other seats.”