HARTFORD, CT — The governor’s race entered its home stretch Thursday, with the two campaigns holding events less than a mile and less than an hour apart, and with plenty of claims and counterclaims going back and forth.
At a 10:30 a,m. press conference on the Capitol lawn, state Sen. Ryan Fazio unveiled what he called a pattern of broken trust. Backed by about a dozen Republican supporters, Fazio called for an end to what he dubbed the Corruption Tax.
“We keep seeing story after story about mismanagement, poor leadership and taxpayers being left in the dark,” he said.
Fazio criticized various reports – including allegations of a toxic culture at Central CT State and at the CT State Colleges and Universities system, Kosta Diamantis corruption conviction and former Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona’s consulting firm receiving a $250,000 contract.
While careful not to state that Gov. Ned Lamont himself was guilty of any wrongdoing, Fazio invoked former President Harry Truman and said responsibility ultimately went to the top.
“When people are struggling to pay their property taxes and electric bills, $250,000 here or $15 million there is not pocket change,” he said. “This is real money to real communities and this administration has lost sight of what a dollar means.”
Fazio proposed a handful of reforms, like requiring legislators requesting earmarks to disclose potential conflicts of interest and site visits for recipients of large amounts of state funding, and strengthening the Freedom of Information Act.
A few minutes later, Lamont and his supporters announced their statewide campaign launch at the Pratt Street pedestrian mall, a few blocks from the Capitol. The Democratic lawmakers stuck to a familiar theme – that a Fazio administration would essentially be an extension of President Donald Trump’s.
Lamont defended Attorney General William Tong against comments made by Republican attorney general candidate John Bolton, who had said that Tong’s dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration had not benefitted Connecticut residents.
“I just heard the Republicans say ‘William spends too much time focused on Donald Trump,’” Lamont said. “William spends too much time fighting for democracy and fighting for the working families here in Connecticut.”
Lamont also invoked Trump in response to a request for comment on Fazio’s accusations.
“You have a president that added well over a billion dollars to his income from gross malfeasance and corruption. I didn’t hear a word from any Republican. I didn’t hear a word from Ryan Fazio,” he said. “This is a state when Republicans were in control, it had a nickname. They called us Corrupticut. Look where we are today.”
Tong said Fazio had “a tolerance for the harms, the dangers that this president visits upon Connecticut.”
Fazio himself, during his earlier press conference, brought up the criticism that he would be too pro-Trump. Commenting on a Lamont political ad that said he favored having state authorities coordinate deportation strategies with ICE and letting ICE into schools, hospitals and places or worship, Fazio said the ad was an attempt to distract voters..
“I think it’s so striking that a guy that’s been in office for eight years runs his first general election campaign ad misleading people about his opponent’s record,” he said. “Isn’t there a lot that he’s proud of?”
Fazio said the ad was “obviously wrong” but offered no correction or clarification to its portrayal of his positions. In response to a later question, he said in general federal authorities should be clear about what they were doing and why and to provide transparency to the public.