‘He’s a drag on any ticket’
Connecticut GOP lukewarm about another Trump presidential bid
After suffering setbacks in three straight election cycles, Connecticut Republicans on Tuesday faced the likelihood that their party’s de facto figurehead, former President Donald Trump, will stick around for at least one more national campaign.
Trump announced his third presidential run Tuesday night in a primetime address from his home in Florida, a week after his party’s underwhelming performance in the midterm elections, which many saw as a repudiation of candidates hand-picked by the former president. Anticipating the move, several Connecticut Republicans offered a less than enthusiastic response.
“Given that 60 percent of Connecticut residents don’t support him, I think he’s a drag on any ticket, on the Republican Party,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, RNorth Branford.
While elected Republicans in the state House and Senate have generally held more lukewarm attitudes about the former president than the party’s voters, Candelora noted that several still came out to endorse Trump during the GOP primaries in 2016. He said he was not aware of any members of his caucus who are planning to back Trump again.
“What I generally hear is fatigue,” Candelora said.
The former part-time Greenwich resident’s highwater mark in Connecticut came in during his first run in 2016, when he captured 40 percent of the vote as Republicans made modest gains in state legislative races. In each of the two subsequent elections held under his presidency, however, Republicans lost ground in Hartford while failing to make a dent in Democrats’ control over statewide and federal offices.
In Westbrook — one of over two dozen Connecticut towns that backed Trump in 2016 before voting for now-President Joe Biden four years later when Trump was swept from
office — Republican Town Committee Chairman Harry Ruppenicker Jr. said that local attitudes had largely soured toward Trump, despite lingering support for his economic policies.
“Most of the local Republicans I talk to just want to move on, even some of his biggest supporters,” Ruppenicker said, pointing to Trump’s penchant for disparaging nicknames and — prior to his banishment from the platform — his controversial use of tweets.
Ruppenicker also said that Trump had displayed poor judgment in picking candidates who cannot win general election races, pointing to Themis Klarides, a former House GOP leader, as an example of a more moderate Republican who he said would have posed a greater challenge to Blumenthal. Klarides — a 2016 Trump delegate who later criticized the 45th president sharply — lost to the Trump-backed Leora Levy in an August primary for U.S. Senate.
Ruppenicker added that other potential candidates with a proven record of winning elections, namely Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have captured the attention of Republican voters.
Republicans in Connecticut had hoped to make gains this year by running against an unpopular Biden, using high inflation and energy prices as main messages. Instead, they were again shut out of the top races while ceding ground to Democrats in areas such as Greenwich, once a bedrock of Republican support.
In the Senate race, Levy lost decisively to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a noted critic of the former president.
As if to affirm the Republicans’ unease with Trump, Democrats on Tuesday expressed confidence that should the former president appear on the ballot in 2024 they would stand to benefit.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” said Nancy DiNardo, the chair of the Democratic Party of Connecticut. “I think it’s going to be an interesting battle on the Republican side that can only help Democrats.”
DiNardo quickly added that her only concern about Trump running again is that “he tends to incite violence.”
When asked about Trump’s widely speculated announcement on Tuesday, Gov. Ned Lamont said voters had already shown their distaste for Trump at the polls.
“I think the American people are ready to turn the page, myself,” Lamont said. “I think you saw that last Tuesday. But he’s the former president of the United States and he’ll make an announcement.”
Ben Proto, who took over leadership of the Connecticut Republican Party after his predecessor quit in the days following the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, sought to downplay the possibility of another Trump ticket on Tuesday. He noted that other candidates vying for the party’s nomination in 2024 will give Republicans options.
“There are going to be people who are detractors, yes, and there are going to be people who are supporters also, just like any candidate,” Proto said.
When asked whether Trump’s decision to weigh in on this year’s midterms had a negative effect on Republican candidates in Connecticut, Proto said that “a lot of factors” influenced the results, and that the election’s lower turnout could also be taken as a sign of voters’ dissatisfaction with Democrats.
The party’s standard bearer in this year’s elections, Bob Stefanowski, offered a different assessment last week after losing to Lamont in the governor’s race by a wider margin than he did in 2018, when he ran with Trump’s backing. This time, Stefanowski largely avoided any mention of Trump.
In a radio interview on the morning after the election, Stefanowski said he believed “the brand of Republicans is a bit bruised right now,” noting that the party had been swept in federal races across New England. Stefanowski did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s announcement on Tuesday.
Candelora said the controversies surrounding Trump have tended to obscure the former president’s accomplishments, especially on the economy and tax cuts. He predicted that despite their fatigue, elected Republicans in Connecticut would be able to get past another Trump campaign without facing more crippling losses.
“By and large Republicans survived him being on the ticket in 2020,” Candelora said. “We continue to survive.”