no matter what I say, I mean it in a nice way
In a not so surprise (if you’ve been following the news over the weekend) announcement, Ned Lamont is announcing today that he will run with Mary Glassman as his Lt. Governor candidate of choice. I’ll have more to say about this later, because this is a post from my phone, but for more info in the meantime visit www.nedlamont.com
Apparently there’s a UConn voter registration drive next week, and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon has a plan to pay UConn students $10 per hour to register voters, with a bonus of $5 per Republican voter registered. Brian Lockhart’s Stamford Advocate article explains the situation:
[UConn College Republicans recruitment chairman Joseph] Gasser emphasized there was no intention to promote the drive as a McMahon event and said he recognized there might be some concerns about the payments.
“I approached this extremely carefully. The last thing I want is to be embroiled in some scandal,” he said. “I’m making sure to approach this on a very non-partisan basis, making it clear she may be funding (the registration) but it’s not a Republican-leaning process and we’re following the Secretary of the State’s guidelines.”
But McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said the intention of the drive and others being planned is to help McMahon.
“We’re absolutely registering voters on college campuses and growing the party through voter drives. Every student who is brought on to help with this effort signs a participation agreement — a legal document. Students cannot pressure a potential voter register with a party affiliation,” Patru said. “Having said that, their job is to promote Linda McMahon and people who come and ask about Linda and say they want to support Linda, we share with them we’d love to have your support but you have to be registered as a Republican to vote for her in the primary.”
I’m all for paying college students for their time, but a $5 bonus for Republican registrants raises all kinds of red flags. It also sets up some perverse incentives that may result in fraud.
Update [2010/04/26]: Linda has decided not to pay the $5 bonus after all. The fact that she was ever considering it should raise serious questions about her critical thinking skills and sense of right and wrong.
A lot of great things from 2006 are making a comeback in 2010. Ned Lamont is running. Dan Malloy is running too. I’m even blogging semi-regularly again.
But it’s not all good. Joe Lieberman’s failed strategies are making a comeback as well.
You see, in 2006 Joe Lieberman’s strategist was Roy Occhiogrosso. Roy drove the message of the Lieberman campaign all the way to defeat in the hotly contested Democratic primary. His two key strategies were…
“Ned Lamont has decided that his only chance of defeating me is to try to buy this election with millions of dollars in negative ads full of distortions and deceits about me,” Lieberman said at a news conference. “A lot of it is going to be nonsense and lies, so beware.”
Facing his first serious challenge in 18 years as a senator, Mr. Lieberman has sought to brand Mr. Lamont as a wealthy dilettante who is trying to buy his way into office, and who is out of touch with ordinary Americans. One of Mr. Lieberman’s first advertisements began: “Meet Ned Lamont. He’s a Greenwich millionaire.”
Occhiogrosso is now working for Malloy, and he’s using the same strategies against Lamont in 2010 that didn’t work in the 2006 primary. Take a look:
“Ned’s strategy is clear: he’s trying to buy the Convention with TV ads. Dan’s trying to win the Convention the old-fashioned way: talking with delegates about his values and his experience. In the end, all the ads in the world can’t hide the difference in this race: Dan Malloy has the values and experience that money can’t buy.” [Dan Malloy for Governor Press Release - 4/8/2010]
“Ned seems to think his millions of dollars and his background as a cable executive are why Democrats should choose him over me.” – Dan Malloy
These strategies didn’t work in 2006, and they won’t work in 2010. Democrats have their best chance in decades to win the Governor’s office, and we can’t do it if our candidates are doing Chris Healy’s job for him. What we need is a campaign about ideas, not a bloody primary.
In the past week or so, Lamont released a plan to create jobs, and Malloy has started an online ad campaign to talk about his life and experience.
This is the kind of thing I’d like to see more of, but instead, we’re getting a replay of 2006.
Today Lamont announced the start of a television ad campaign, and the Malloy campaign responded by having staffer Matt Gianquinto send an under-the-radar e-mail to supporters using the ol’ Lieberman ‘06 strategies that Occhiogrosso sold ‘em. An excerpt:
Hey Team,
[...]
I heard a supporter once say they are supporting Dan because he has the values and experience that money can’t buy.
[...]
We have the best candidate, the best team, and the best supporters. Ned can buy a lot of ads, but no amount of money can buy the candidate, the team, and the supporters that we have.
[...]
PS – Feel free to forward this message as a heads up to any of our supporters, donors, and friends.
The only good reason to keep using Lieberman’s old strategies for the primary is if you plan to use his post-primary-loss strategy of forming a vanity party. Dan Malloy is not Joe Lieberman, and we will not see a Connecticut for Malloy Party forming this summer. But by using Lieberman’s failed strategies, Malloy is very likely to meet the same fate in the primary.
Earlier this week on his CT Post blog, Jon Kantrowitz posted the following quote:
It is always critical for the state to tap the business insights and experiences, as well as the professional training and certifications, of our corporate citizens for public service…By enlisting such corporate leadership, government weaves the business community into the everyday rhythm of our state, thereby ensuring long-term, public-private cooperation and success.
Although it reads like a glowing endorsement of Ned Lamont’s gubernatorial candidacy, it’s not. It’s actually an excerpt from Dan Malloy’s letter in support of WWE CEO Linda McMahon’s appointment to the State Board of Education.
The fact that Dan believes he is the most qualified candidate for governor is neither surprising nor objectionable. What’s objectionable about this is not the fact that Dan heartily endorsed Linda on the basis of her private sector experience, but that he believes that hers would be an asset to public service and that Ned’s would not be.
Here are two examples of Dan diminishing Ned’s private sector experience:
From the New London Day [link]
Malloy is a government believer, and says it is naive to think that the state can run efficiently on business acumen alone.
“This argument that Foley and Lamont are making that all you need is a business leader to run government is being rejected,” he said.
From DanMalloy.com [link]
Ned seems to think his millions of dollars and his background as a cable executive are why Democrats should choose him over me. I think he’s wrong. I think Democrats want a nominee who has the right kind of experience for the job.”
So he’s gone from thinking that business experience is critical to being critical of business experience.
The reason I point this out is because we have a great field of differently qualified Democratic candidates coupled with the best chance in decades for Democrats to win the Governor’s race. I think it’s important for them to differentiate themselves without tearing each other down. It’s no secret who I’m rooting for, but I would prefer to see the Democratic primary unfold as a contest of ideas rather than a battle to undermine everyone’s chances of winning in November. I think it’s fair to expect that Dan’s high regard for the value of Linda’s business experience would translate into at least some respect for Ned’s.
Today Ned Lamont released his business plan for Connecticut, which you can read in full here. It has only been out for about 15 minutes, so I haven’t had a chance to read it in full, but the bullet points indicate a very promising plan. Below are the ones I’m most excited about:
I will stop ineffective tax giveaways and instead make strategic investments, ensuring we provide more early-stage financing to promising firms and support industries where we already have the wind at our backs, like biotech and precision manufacturing.
I will modernize our transportation infrastructure, investing in our most congested areas, competing effectively for federal dollars, strengthening passenger and freight rail, and creating thousands of good jobs in the process.
I will invest in our people, improving our schools with innovative reforms, ensuring our kids graduate college with in-demand skills and well paying jobs, and offering full loan repayment for students at state colleges who stay in state after graduation.
Tax incentives are important for business development, but they are not the only factor considered by businesses. If tax breaks are all we are offering to get businesses into Connecticut, it shows a lack of imagination on our part. It also creates a “race-to-the-bottom” between states, and as soon as another state undercuts us, we have to give the business a bigger break to keep them here, or kiss them goodbye. The fact that Ned Lamont acknowledges the ineffectiveness of tax giveaways as a business development strategy is a good thing. It’s not sustainable in the long term, and it does little for the people and businesses who are already here in Connecticut.
Modernizing the transportation infrastructure is probably on every gubernatorial candidate’s list, although the issue is especially salient for Ned in light of the traffic that made him late for the debate. Even though it’s not particularly novel, it’s still a good idea. Improving the transportation infrastructure in the state will make our small state smaller, in a good way. Who loves commuting between Hartford and New Haven (or vice versa) by car? Not me. The easier it is to get from A to B in Connecticut, the better off we’ll all be, so I”m glad to see this included in Ned’s plan.
Investing in the people of Connecticut. I love this one, because I feel that we are our state’s greatest resource. Make it easier and cheaper for people to get an education in Connecticut, and provide them the right incentives to stay, and we’ll attract more jobs to the state. Just as good people will go to where the good jobs are, good jobs will come to where the good people are. We’ve got first rate higher education in Connecticut (in spite of Governor Rell’s attempts to kill it), and the only way to stop (and reverse) the brain drain is to give people a powerful incentive to stay. There’s already a blueprint for this, in the form of State Rep. Tim O’Brien’s Tuition Bill from ‘08, and with Ned Lamont in the Governor’s office, I’m hopeful that it will get passed.
Update: Christine Stuart reports on Ned’s Hartford event at CT News Junkie (emphasis added):
“We spend $580 million per year on 102 initiatives administered by 24 separate agencies,” Lamont wrote in his Business Plan for Connecticut. “Our corporation tax credits exceed $300 million annually, 100 times what they were 20 years ago, yet we haven’t created a single net new job in those 20 years.”
“We don’t treat small and mid-size businesses very well,” Lamont said. “It’s not all about tax incentives, it’s about having a governor whose a partner.”
Connecticut Bob posted something disturbing today (in addition to the creepy Bill O’Reilly audio clips that are making the rounds ::shudder::) about how Senator Chris Dodd intends to be the one who opens the door to let Sen. Joe Lieberman back into the metaphorical family home of the Democractic Party. Bob writes:
Joe Lieberman has been, for all intents and purposes, forgiven by Chris Dodd and the Senate leadership for his little foray over to the dark side in 2007-08.
Of course, Lieberman wants to have it both ways, and he continues to call himself an “Independent Democrat”. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a party designation or simply an expression of what a wild and unpredictable “free-thinker” Lieberman fancies himself to be.
Using his video expertise, Bob put together footage from Sen. Dodd’s appearance on Face the State with tape of Joe Lieberman stumping for McCain:
Below is how I imagine things went on the day that Joe Lieberman decided that he wanted to rejoin the Democratic Party:
*Knock-knock*
Sen. Chris Dodd: Who’s there?
Sen. Joe Lieberman: Why, it’s Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman. I plan to endorse you in 2010, won’t you let me in?
Sen. Chris Dodd: Sure!
What I have trouble illustrating with words above is that it seems that Senator Dodd could not open the door fast enough.
Senator Dodd has many redeeming qualities–and I am a big fan of his work–but his soft-spot for Joe Lieberman goes a long way toward overshadowing all of them.