The bitter race for governor of Connecticut was too close to call early today, but sitting governor Dannel P. Malloy appeared to open a lead against the Republican challenger, Thomas C. Foley, with results still coming in from the state’s heavily Democratic cities.
Speaking in Hartford after midnight, Malloy said he was confident of victory. If he wins, Malloy, a Democrat, will have staved off a Republican advance on a heavily Democratic state still struggling to emerge from one of the worst economic contractions in the country. A win for Malloy in the often nasty rematch of a razor-thin 2010 contest with Foley would lift the national profile of an incumbent who has emerged as a stalwart champion of liberal initiatives like a raised minimum wage and mandatory paid sick leave.
The governor’s prospects were aided by the sometimes listless campaign of Foley, a former private-equity executive whose business experience and opposition to gun control resonated with some discontented voters but ultimately failed to offset a dearth of policy proposals.
In a repeat of ballot problems in 2010 at polls in Bridgeport, some residents trying to vote yesterday morning in Hartford, the state capital, were turned away when polls opened as much as 90 minutes late. Calling the delays “intolerable,” a Superior Court judge ruled that two Hartford precincts could keep polling stations open until 8:30pm, an extra half-hour.
Soon after, the secretary of the state, Denise Merrill, filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission that alleged “gross misconduct” by the Hartford registrars of voters and raised the possibility of criminal charges. In a reminder of the high stakes of the race for Democratic Party leaders, president Barack Obama called in to a local public radio programme yesterday afternoon to try to stoke turnout for Malloy. The governor has emerged as one of the president’s strongest statehouse allies this term. Yesterday, he depended on winning over the kinds of disaffected Democrats and independents who were undoing Democratic candidates in many other states.
Malloy sought to cast himself as a sensible steward of a stalled economy who, despite inheriting a $3.7 billion deficit, saved jobs for state employees and increased financing for low-performing schools. His stature grew after the mass shooting in a Newtown elementary school, which prompted him to seek and sign a gun control bill in 2013 that banned many models of assault-style weapons and large ammunition magazines and required background checks.
Toni Lupinacci, a registered Republican and mother of two from Stamford, crossed party lines to vote for Malloy because of his gun control stance “first and foremost,” she said, adding, “None of us want to see any more tragedies.” Even beyond the gun control bill, Malloy, the state’s first Democratic governor since 1986, made Connecticut a laboratory for progressive policy. Connecticut became the first state in the country to heed Obama’s call for a higher minimum wage, enacted mandatory paid sick leave and ended the death penalty.
But quarrels between Malloy and Foley over the state’s economic growth pushed many of those priorities to the margins and often gave way to a sense of personal animosity between the candidates. Despite strong job growth in recent months, Malloy struggled to dispel the sense that he had failed to revive the economy in a state whose unemployment rate still surpasses the national average.
His often dour manner, combined with Foley’s plodding style, left some voters resigned to a halfhearted choice. Frances Little, a school bus monitor in Hartford, called Malloy “the lesser of two evils.” Referring to the governor’s efforts to keep a stalled economy afloat, Little added, “I guess they do the best they can, and it doesn’t always work out.”
Malloy, an energetic and occasionally combative former Brooklyn prosecutor, seemed to complicate his re-election prospects soon after taking office by fighting for a historic tax increase and $1.6 billion in concessions from public-sector unions in 2011. Those measures earned him constant derision from Foley, who battered the governor as a stiff and dogmatic incumbent who had gotten his chance and did not deserve another.
For his part, Foley appealed to voters struggling to reconcile themselves to lowered economic prospects by promising tax cuts and a friendlier climate for businesses. To the end, he often avoided sketching out the details of how he would pay for those proposals, prompting charges that he was unprepared for the job.
Roughly $15 million in outside spending flowed into the state, much of it in advertising that intensified the negative tone of the race. The wrangling veered into topics as varied as the names given to each candidate’s boat and the amount of taxes each one paid. Unfazed, Malloy often hit back, drawing attention to Foley’s handling of unions during his private-equity career.
As voters grew more bored of Foley’s campaign and averse to his past business practices, Malloy clawed back from a significant deficit in the polls. He weathered frequent visits to the state by national Republican leaders, like governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who were eager to show their clout among the state’s moderate voters.
In pushing for a long series of debates, Malloy took an unusual step for an incumbent. But it seemed to pay dividends for the governor, as he nimbly turned attacks back on Foley and elicited damaging answers on issues like gun control and climate change.
Malloy was also bolstered by a robust get-out-the-vote effort by union members, who came back to the governor’s side after tense negotiations over wage freezes in 2011.
The New York Times