Fighting ‘political insanity’ with low-budget campaign
While seven candidates saw their gubernatorial dreams flourish or die Tuesday, one candidate considered primary day irrelevant.
To Oz Griebel, the former chief executive of the MetroHartford Alliance who is making an independent bid for governor, Tuesday was just another day on the campaign trail.
His running mate Monte Frank, a Newtown attorney, went to bed at 9 p.m., uninterested in who might win the parties’ nominations.
“There are only two choices: there is more of the same, or there is us,” Frank said. “So it didn’t matter who was coming out of the primaries because that represented more of the same.”
Griebel, who lost a GOP gubernatorial primary in 2010, and Frank have submitted 10,000 signatures to town clerks and the Secretary of the State’s office, they said in a news conference at the Capitol on Thursday. They are waiting for the signatures to be verified and predicted they will know whether they have a spot on the November ballot in the next 10 days.
Griebel, a self-described liberal Republican, said he was confidant he could pull moderate Republicans away from the more conservative GOP nominated ticket of Bob Stefanowski for governor and Joe Markley for lieutenant governor.
Add in Frank, a conservative Democrat, and they said they will attract Democrats, Independents and unaffiliated voters — forming a coalition they term the “radical middle.”
“Electing either the Republican or the Democrat is the definition of political insanity,” Griebel said. “It will be a repetition of the last 30 years.”
Since they declared their candidacy in December, Griebel and Frank have been running a low-budget, grassroots campaign focused on the general election.
With only $12,624 campaign cash on hand as of July 10, according to latest campaign finance filings, the duo will be strapped to compete with the volumes of advertising disseminated by Stefanowski and Democratic nominee for governor Ned Lamont, both millionaires self-funding their campaigns.
Their campaign is not likely to purchase TV commercials, they said; Stefanowski and Lamont each aired many before the primary.
“I understand we have a gauntlet task ahead of us,” Frank said.
Griebel and Frank criticized Lamont and Stefanowski for partisan name calling. They promised to stay focused on their goal of creating 200,000 new private sector jobs by 2028.