Matt Zagaja's blog

Today former GOP Candidate for Governor Tom Foley penned this Op-Ed piece in the Hartford Courant about his experience in running for office. He talks about the process and explains this:

Politicians win elections by making promises. Voters decide if the promises are the ones they like and whether, if elected, the candidate will make good on them. Many factors play into the calculus of the voter's choice — likability, plausibility, personal credibility, a candidate's record and the views of opinion leaders, to name a few.

Foley then proceeds to cynically describe the politics in contrast to business and insinuate the politicians habitually lie. He concludes by recommending the creation of a statute that would require politicians to be truthful.

If the former ambassador wishes to understand what happened in this election he needs to detach himself from his own race and look at things from a broader perspective. He ran a race in conjunction with Linda McMahon and together they spent millions of dollars to woo voters. The narrative they ran with was that of being outsiders. Consultants that could fix state government by not being a part of it. Such a narrative is common especially in anti-incumbent years as we've had. It does not sell in Connecticut.

In business when you apply for a job you send them your resume. Your employer looks at your experience, skills, and personality among other traits. Experience is what won out this year. Though Foley had been an ambassador to Ireland he downplayed that and instead focused on his business experience. In contrast Dan Malloy embraced his role as a public servant and all his years as Mayor of Stamford. McMahon played the outsider card as well and handily lost to Richard Blumenthal. The advantage that Blumenthal had is that Connecticut voters already knew him. He spoke at their kids graduations, and has been perpetually present at political events in the state.

This experience will certainly help these legislators and constitutional officers navigate the tricky waters of balancing budgets and producing policy. They can figure out how government might stay afloat amidst this changing tide and try and ease the pain. However at the end of the day the state is still in an economic crises. This crises is as much the product of the free-market as it is of the government. We need business talent and we need it in business. We need all the Republican candidates who were outsiders to go back to doing what they do best to help lift us out of this mess. Politicians cannot and will not solve this problem on their own.

Remember the controversy with UCONN Professor Ken Dautrich? The report has been released. Ultimately it appears that some state money was spent on some partisan political activity and they recommended some discipline for Prof. Dautrich. Based on the report it appears the professor at least made an attempt to keep things separate, but did not manage to actually do so.

This just goes to show how difficult it is to avoid the appearance of corruption in such a small state where people with unique skill sets end up having to wear many hats. I'm sure the experience was valuable to the students, but it is important that we do not allow state resources to be used to unfairly aid incumbents.

Earlier tonight I attended the Connecticut Attorney General debate at UCONN Law. Democrat George Jepsen debated Republican Martha Dean. The debate started off rather light but after the first question or two the contrast between them could not have been larger. George Jespen framed himself as a traditional democrat while Martha Dean embraced her position as the tea party candidate.

This was especially apparent when candidates were asked how they would respond to the state government attempting to slash the Attorney General’s office budget by ten percent. Jepsen pointed out that the office manages to bring in revenue for the state and while he certainly would work to create efficiency he suggested that the government not be “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” Dean said she would work to create efficiency and claimed that there is a lot of waste in the office that she could eliminate. She did not elaborate on the waste but referenced a state auditor’s report. In her rebuttal she expressed concern that Jepsen saw the Attorney General’s office as a source of revenue. She claimed that it “violated the separation of powers” for the Attorney General’s office to be a revenue source and that only the legislature could do that.

When asked about the qualifications she would look for in employees Dean attacked young people. She recited the quote “if you are under 20 and not a liberal you have no heart, and if you are over 40 and not a conservative you have no brain.” She then proceeded to suggest that young people should work in the “real world” for a few years before they should be allowed to serve in government. Jepsen was more realistic and raised the fact that due to the state budget crises it was unlikely he would be able to hire new attorneys soon, but did agree that fresh law school graduates should spend a few years in other jobs before moving to government.

Candidates spent a lot of time talking about Richard Blumenthal. Jepsen generally stuck by Blumenthal and Candidate Dean attempted to paint Jepsen as being too close to Blumenthal and also accused Jepsen of being political. Jepsen responded by pointing out that Dean herself was political and reiterating that he was proud of his service. Both candidates certainly raised political issues and Dean was not reluctant to admit she would consider putting out position papers on important issues like Blumenthal does.

The other theme in the debate was George Jepsen. Jepsen laid out his views, positions, and took only a few jabs at Dean. In contrast, Dean not only extolled her own virtues, but spent a lot of time attacking Jepsen. She attained the nearly magical feat of being in control and out of control at the same time by moving questions away from their issue and turning them into attacks. Jepsen was more reserved preferring to address the issues and only went off topic when Dean steered the debate in that direction.

This resulted in Dean giving the debate win to George Jepsen on a silver platter. Had Dean decided to keep focused on her own virtues I think she would have been able to win it. Instead she chose to keep the focus on Jepsen and as a result his thoughtful statements and lighthearted manner shined through.

Today Lowell Weicker wrote an op-ed for the Hartford Courant criticizing the state laws that prevent independent candidates from participating. State laws and paperwork requirements serve as an easy target for people saying that it is too difficult to run for office. However as someone who has worked on campaigns I can assure you that among all the barriers to running the paperwork is the least of it.

Running a campaign is not as much of an exercise in paperwork as it is an exercise in footwork. As a candidate if you want to be viable you need to get together a core group of supporters that will bring your message to their friends, family, and neighbors. These people need to not only be willing to vote for you, but also give you money, sign your petition, and make calls or knock doors. While there are votes to be rounded up by carpet bombing the electorate with television ads and mailers, these votes are not going to materialize unless you have a ground presence.

Democrats and Republicans have an easier time because the infrastructure and support for them is already in place. Town Committees meet on a monthly basis and the people in them are willing to do these things. The people on the town committees then serve as information providers for their friends and family in the community. They are the political junkies that their friends turn to in order to understand what is happening in these elections. In Connecticut if a candidate is running for an office in a major party they have probably stopped by your town committee meeting at least once and you've had the opportunity to meet the candidate and ask the candidate questions.

Independent candidates are stuck building this infrastructure from square one. They have much larger hurdles to clear culturally and logistically than those running with the entrenched parties. However if they are able to put in the hard work it is not impossible to clear these hurdles.

I noticed today via a Capitol Watch Blog Post that Ken Krayeske has been nominated to run against my Congressman John Larson by the Green Party. The blog post depicts a candidate that is realistic about his chances (suggesting that while he might not win he hopes to raise the requisite $15,000 to participate in League of Women Voters Debates). Krayeske joins Tom Marsh, a candidate for Governor, and John Mertens, a candidate for senate, in a club of candidates that probably do not have a chance to win but will be on the ballot in November.

What role can these third party candidates play in these races? Krayeske seems to take a two pronged approach. First suggesting that he wants to build the Green Party. I think that this is a good approach to take because I do not believe people identify with parties as strongly as the people and the personalities behind the party. Without strong leaders and candidates running on the party line and bringing the party message to the people I do not believe a party can flourish. Secondly he looks to make pointed criticisms of the incumbent. Here he can bring to light issues people have but that have not yet been publicly voiced. Here we see that elections are good for holding the incumbent's feet to the fire and making sure that citizens get the best representation possible.

Ultimately the thing that surprises me the most is that in spite of the general cynicism that most people seem to have towards politics and the current people in power, third parties have not taken off. Even the big "Tea Party" movement seems to associate itself with the Republican Party instead of forming its own entity. It makes me seriously question whether a third party might ever become viable on a statewide level.

A little late because I've had a rather busy couple of days. However I wanted to share some thoughts on the primary results. The media has been reporting on the low turnout levels and the Courant suggests that low turnout can be attributed to lack of avenues to participation. A reader suggests that negative campaigning and a lack of good candidates caused the low turnout. I do not believe that either of these are the cause. I think the voters are apathetic towards these primaries and that this is reflected in the turnout. For the past month voters have been inundated with direct mail, phone calls, television, and everything else. The election was not some kind of secret. 

The lack of interest in the primaries makes me wonder whether the primaries themselves are worth the taxpayer money spent on them. I'm referring not to the CEP but to the administrative costs of actually putting together the elections. I do not make the suggestion lightly, but maybe these primary contests are not worth the effort. If not a convention maybe we could find some alternative method to choose our candidates. The important thing is to do it in a way that saves money, allows people who are not engaged all year to become engaged, and might also save everyone else the pain and drama of a drawn out contest.

This election also showed that money is not the entire election equation. Many cynics suggested that Dan Malloy and other candidates would not be able to compete with the millions of dollars that Ned Lamont or Tom Foley would spend on their races. However Malloy was outspent by a four to one ratio ($2.5 to $10 Million) and managed to win with a comfortable 16% margin. At the same time Mike Fedele only lost by three points against Tom Foley after being outspent by him. The record amount of money spent by the candidates did not create a record turnout and it did not manage to create the wins these candidates should have seen if money could buy the election. Instead other factors, many intangible such as the field operation, mood of the voters, and sweat equity played a big role in deciding the outcomes. Money does matter but it suffers from diminishing marginal returns and can only take you so far.

The big loser in this election was the Quinnipiac Poll. I don't know what they were doing but I think something is wrong with their polling operation because they did not seem to do a great job of predicting some of the races.

People have also been making comments about the negative advertisements. I'm not entirely convinced that they were the impetus for the low turnout or for the surprising results in the Democratic and Republican primaries but they certainly were noticed.

Since it's Sunday several news outlets have pre-primary commentary. CTNewsJunkie had two interesting pieces. The first one I wanted to bring attention to is the video:

Having worked on campaigns before I shouldn't be surprised by the number of people that rely on the political ads for information but I find it a bit disappointing. I think that this explains why money is a factor in these races because the candidates with more money are the ones that get to communicate with the voters. I would have thought more people would check out some of the emerging online news sources like CTNewsJunkie or CTMirror but the audience for these still seems a bit limited.

I wanted to write up a post to let people know that there are some convenient ways that you can use the events we are putting up here at DeliberateCT. This is made possible because we have an iCal link/feed that you can use. It's accessible by clicking the icon below the "Upcoming Events" on the sidebar or http://www.deliberatect.com/event/ical. However please note that if you click the link directly it will download the events to be imported. A much more powerful way to handle it is available on Mac and in Outlook. First instead of downloading the file copy the URL to your clipboard. 

If you have an Apple running Mac OS X open the iCal program. Click the "Calendar" menu then click "Subscribe" and paste the URL in the box that shows up. Click subscribe and you should have an option to update the calendar over a specified interval. Weekly or daily would probably be best. Save the settings and now you should be able to get the events right on your iCal.

If you are using Google's Calendar you can add us under your "Other Calendars" section there will be an "add" button and then choose the "add by URL option." There you can paste the URL and it will add it to your google calendar.

If you are using Outlook, "In Outlook 2007, select "File," and then "Data File Management." Select the "Internet Calendars" tab. Click "New," and then paste the iCal URL into the field. Hit "Add" and then configure the calendar and save the new settings. (More detail @ How to Add an Internet Calendar to Outlook 2007 | eHow.com.)

Hopefully this will make our events more useful and accessible to you!

You can stream it via CT-N. They are currently discussing their fix including increasing the CEP grant to gubernatorial candidates to $6 Million.

Not many tweets about this yet, but Matt Lesser and Gary Holder-Winfield usually do a great job of tweeting about these sessions.

UPDATE: Also found an article about the earlier Senate Session from CT News Junkie.

A recent Capitol Watch blog entry shares the experiences of House Minority Leader Larry Cafero campaigning door-to-door. He notes that:

[C]itizens are distracted by any number of issues . . . they're thinking about everything from getting a root canal to firing up the casserole. 

"When they log onto their computers at work," Cafero said, "They see Lindsay Lohan's picture in the corner, and she's doing 90 days in jail. They're not focused now.''

This presents a sharp contrast from the daily rush of commercials, blog entries, and other issues that the state's politicos are currently pre-occupied with. However it also shows a level of disengagement by the Connecticut electorate that is disappointing. Unfortunately when talking with my less politically engaged friends I get a similar reaction. They either are not interested or believe that the politicians are the "same old" ones they've been dealing with for years. I do not know what the secret to getting people excited about a Connecticut politician or just Connecticut in general. However, I think that stimulating that passion and vision in everyone will be key to the future of our state in the coming years. Otherwise jobs and young people will continue to slip away.