Stefanowski focuses on ‘lack of affordability’ in new bid for governor
Bob Stefanowski, who lost to Gov. Ned Lamont in the 2018 gubernatorial election and has made no secret of his intention to run again, announced Wednesday his bid for the Republican nomination.
Stefanowski publicly declared his candidacy Wednesday morning, calling in to “Chaz & AJ in the Morning” on WPLR-FM — the same forum he publicly conceded the race to Lamont in 2018 — and later in an email blast. He filed paperwork with the state late Tuesday evening.
Lamont, who has also filed to run for reelection, won in 2018 with 49.4 percent of the vote. Stefanowski garnered 46.2 percent of the vote.
The hallmark of his 2018 campaign was repealing the state’s income tax, but in statements Wednesday, Stefanowski indicated this time around his focus will be on the pandemic, crime, and the affordability of the state.
“I’m still very much in favor of cutting taxes,” Stefanowski said in an
interview after his announcement Wednesday. “But the issue is broader than that. It’s about affordability.”
In his email announcement, he said the state has become “less affordable and more dangerous” over the last three years. He also pointed to Connecticut having some of the highest taxes, utility rates and child care costs in the nation.
A self-proclaimed “political outsider,” Stefanowski said, “I’m running for governor to make government work for the people of Connecticut, not political insiders.”
Asked about his proposals for tax relief, Stefanowski said his ideas include lowering the state’s sales tax — legislative Republicans’ plan to temporarily reduce the state sales tax from 6.35 percent to 5.99 percent is “a good starting place” — and getting rid of the 1 percent surcharge on restaurant food or on “prepared meals,” another proposal from Senate Republicans.
Stefanowski said he also wants to look at lowering the state’s gas tax, which is 25 cents per gallon. He did not provide details on how he would fund his tax relief proposals.
“There’s a lot of frustration with the lack of affordability in this state,” he said. “It’s not just taxes, but utility bills, groceries, gas.”
Stefanowski did not earn the Republican nomination in 2018 and needed to defeat former Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton in a primary. This time he will face off against a veteran member of his own party: Themis Klarides, former state House of Representatives minority leader, who announced her candidacy last year.
Klarides has jumped ahead in the race for the Republican nomination with about $400,000 in expenditures, including nearly $200,000 in recent spending, according to campaign filings with the state. Stefanowski said Wednesday he has made an initial investment of $10 million into his campaign and plans to fundraise to further boost his campaign coffers.
If he becomes the Republican nominee, Stefanowski will face off against a popular governor who spent about $15 million of his own money in the 2018 race and is believed to have access to resources well beyond that. Lamont has invested $210,000 of his own money so far, according to his first filing since announcing reelection.
Lamont declined to say Wednesday how much he planned to spend on his reelection campaign, but said it wasn’t guaranteed to become a spending race.
“I don’t think it has to be that at all. I think that if we stick to our message, keep it positive, talk about what you want to do for the state of Connecticut, how, from my point of view, how I think we build on the very positive momentum you’ve seen for the last three years, it doesn’t have to be an arms race,” he said.
The governor reiterated comments he made a day earlier when asked about a potential rematch against Stefanowski, saying he’s focused on navigating the state through the latest phase of pandemic, keeping students in school, and Connecticut’s economy open.
“I can respond to every single hit that comes from the political world, but I’m trying like heck to focus on the job at hand,” Lamont said Wednesday.
Stefanowski has become a wholesale critic of Lamont, accusing him of government overreach in his pandemic response and more recently the administration’s decision to admit COVIDpositive patients into nursing homes and the holiday at-home testing debacle. He has also called for an audit of pandemic relief spending following alleged misuse of funds in West Haven.
Stefanowski said Wednesday if he were governor, he would have left the decision on whether to impose a mask mandate to local officials — a move Lamont made late last summer after initially ordering a statewide requirement. The state still requires unvaccinated individuals to wear masks when in public indoor spaces.
As for a vaccine mandate for state workers, which Lamont has ordered, Stefanowski said he would not have instituted such a requirement. But he said he’s fully vaccinated and boosted and “highly encourages people to get vaccinated.”
Since this summer, with a flurry of headlines about car thefts and carjackings, Stefanowski has frequently taken to his Twitter page to claim the state has become less safe under Lamont’s watch. He has also voiced his contempt for the state’s police accountability bill signed by Lamont following mass protests on the issue in Connecticut and across the country after the death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop.
“Getting rid of qualified immunity for officers was a mistake,” Stefanowski said, adding it’s led to low morale among law enforcement professionals and police being more reactive than proactive for fear of “personal liability.”
Stefanowski was a Democrat until just before he became a Republican candidate in 2017 and did not vote or even register to vote for at least 17 years. He spent about 10 years living abroad as a corporate executive. His corporate experience includes: chairman and managing partner for 3i Group as the Americas and Asia, CFO of UBS’ investment bank, and chairman with DFC Global, a position he left in 2017 to become an independent consultant.
Stefanowski has not said who he voted for in 2020, but has tried to distance himself from former President Donald Trump and his repeated false claims about the election being stolen.
“Joe Biden is the elected president of the United States. Period,” he said Wednesday. “It’s time to move on.”
He said he liked some of Trump’s policies and didn’t like others, but did not provide specifics other than to say, “I am for tax cuts, if we can fund them and afford them.”
“The problem with Connecticut and our nation right now is not Donald Trump’s policies,” Stefanowski said. “It’s Joe Biden’s and Ned Lamont’s.”
Asked whether he agreed with a statement made by Nancy DiNardo, chair of the state Democratic Party, calling Stefanowski “too extreme for Connecticut,” Lamont tried to tie his potential challenger to the lasting impacts of Trump’s presidency.
“I just think that on some issues, the legacy of Donald Trump is a problem," Lamont said. "The Supreme Court is about to outlaw a woman's right to choose, so the Supreme Court is going to greatly limit our ability to do gun safety laws, so people are going to have to decide where they stand on these Trump-era reforms that still have life today through the Supreme Court."