The party’s over

The primaries ended with an unexpected Republican winner: Bob Stefanowski was a surprising Republican winner and on the Democratic side, it was Ned Lamont who had a significant lead throughout.

Stefanowski won with a relatively small plurality around 30 percent of the total Republican vote cast, which is the advantage of running in a five-way race. The disadvantage is obvious — around 70 percent of the Republican primary votes picked someone else.

Lamont, on the other hand, simply overwhelmed Joe Ganim with TV ads and with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party supplying manpower. I would venture to say that Lamont probably spent at least $5 million on the primary. I bet Stefanowski spent at least that much.

So we are in for a battle of the multimillionaires and the question is, where does that leave the State of Connecticut and our ordinary hard-working, stressed-out citizens?

Lamont is not that quick on the campaign stump so he is likely to make a major mistake along the way. Bob Stefanowski is certainly a political unknown but has some smart advisors and a clean political record — clean because there is no record and nothing to attack at this point. Stefanowski’s advocacy of reducing taxes will sell well with many Democrats as well as Republicans so Lamont has to be extremely careful not to go too far to the left.

It’s going to be an interesting couple of months. I would give a slight edge to Lamont at the moment. It will be easier to deal with being attacked as a Dan Malloy’s successor then it will be for being a Trump supporter (Trump tweeted his support for Bob the day after the primary).

Personally, I think the November election is going to be decided by candidate campaign mistakes. That is where Stefanowski may have an edge. He seems to follow a script and sticks with it. That brought him in as the winner in the primary, but he now has to shake himself loose from the right wing label and get down and dirty with the middle class of Connecticut.

If you are totally fed up with government, you probably are looking for leadership that will show a path to lower taxes, balanced budgets and continued low unemployment with higher wages. It’s not going to be easy to do, but that is what people are looking for.

Can either Lamont or Stefanowski deliver?