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CTPP1228B

I'm Mark Sudall. Welcome back to Power and Politics. We continue our conversation with Gail Alberta and Gary Rose, and, uh, let's Gayle talk about the governor's race. We've got 4 candidates here, 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans. Who do you see as the Democrat and Republican going into November. Into November I think Lamont by far is going to be the Democrat. Incumbents have a hard time losing. Uh, that's just kind of the nature of US politics for the Republican side that race is a bit different, right? We're used to could be close. I'm assuming it's going to be very close. Like that would be if I had to, you know, predict that would be my prediction, but. Uh, we've traditionally seen, uh, the last couple of times to run against Lamont, you know, older white men, and these are two young guns, right, who have dramatically different ideas of how the government should work just because they're in a completely different generation, and, um. So yeah I think it's gonna be interesting um I think Stuart's gonna have a little bit more of a challenge with fundraising just because of her you know what she used to do and you know her kind of uh relationship with donors right she's doing a lot more donor um stuff probably can't self finance in the same way as her challenger um. But at the same time they both have experience leading just in different ways so it's going to shape up to be probably a very hotly contested primary. I think so. If I can just add one thing about the Republican nominating contest is I think we're going to learn an awful lot about where the party is when it goes to a primary because we have a very moderate, uh, you know, mayor, former mayor who has worked across the aisle. Which has aggravated a lot of Republicans and then we have in Ryan Fazio, a very conservative Republican who really is making a big name for himself based on electric rates and so forth, yeah, and so I think we're going to see really a uh an interesting clash there between factions within the party. And I'm really interested to see how that shakes out. There's another name too that is, has been out there, no formal declaration yet though, and that's Betsy McCoy, the former lieutenant governor of New York. She's talking about running. I don't know, but she's from Greenwich and has a ton of money, but I, uh, I, I don't know if she's going to enter the race or not. She's been hinting at it. Uh, Gary, uh, interesting. The governor almost had to testify involving the scandal with his former state budget deputy Casa Diamante. Was that case, you think, a black eye for the governor? Oh, absolutely. You know, the Diamantis case is huge. I mean, you have your. Your assistant budget director now convicted in court and now it's going to go to federal court as well. And I for one think that the Diamantis case could actually be something that could bring Lamont down. Gayle's right that he's going to be the candidate. There's no question about that. Although there's a little bit of a question, but, but nevertheless, um, you have a major scandal of from someone who was working right under the nose of the governor, and he didn't, he didn't know that there were these kickbacks going on in this scandal. So I think the Diamantis scandal is something that I'm sure either Fazio or Stewart can use to their advantage and. Educate the public about it as well if they don't know anything about it and when they hear about it they're, they might have some questions about the governor's leadership. Yeah, it's a serious issue. Yeah. Gay, there was a special session and of course the biggest issue was takeaway of the Affordable housing bill. Is this the right fit you think for Connecticut? You're just like giving me a load of questions. Well, uh, you know, uh, is it, is it the right fit for Connecticut? I I think it's, I mean, there's a lot in here. There's a lot to unpack in there to digest and. Sometimes bills come down to implementation. How do we take what is passed and actually implemented right at at the local level and I think that's gonna be the the bigger question is it a step in the right direction? Yeah, probably, right? Um, is it gonna fix everything? Absolutely not. There's a lot more that can be done. Um, that we have to work on, I mean we have a housing shortage, right? We have, um, not only unaffordable housing in a lot of areas, but we don't have a lot of workforce housing, which is gonna be a huge problem to attract employer, right, to attract employers and then to keep, you know, people here, right? We have a huge brain drain in the state, so is it a step in the right direction? Yeah, but is it gonna fix everything? Absolutely not. You know, we have 169 towns in in Connecticut and there's even though towns are not sovereign units of a state, they are nevertheless a lot of people think they are and a lot of people like to control, you know, housing and education and issues within their own community and so even though the governor says that there was a lot of buy-in from first selectmen and so forth. Um, I have my doubts about that and that when the bill, when it really starts to take shape in the form of a policy, there's going to be a lot of resistance, um, out among the communities. I'm certain of it. And Gary, uh, all those involved in the Bridgeport ballot fraud case went to court. It's still kind of an ongoing case right now. Is the state doing enough, do you think in terms of election security? Yeah. They've tried to beef it up a little bit. They tried, and we do have people being prosecuted for the ballot fraud, but the question is, you know, what really is being done? And so are we really elevating security behind behind, say, you know, ballot harvesting? Are we eliminating that? Are we, do we have more video cameras set up at ballot boxes, you know, drop boxes to monitor that? I have my doubts about, you know, first of all, I'm not sure if anybody is actually going to go to jail for what happened in Bridgeport, even though the scandal happened some time ago, and there have been prosecutions and There's mountains of evidence that there was that that there was illegality, but, but I don't see the state really responding in a, in a real decisive way to curb what happened in Bridgeport because what happened there can happen in New Haven, Waterbury, Hartford, even in local towns it can happen, small towns, sure, so I don't think there's been enough and we put this in context of the upcoming election. I'm sorry, we got to take a break. Well, we'll get back to that. The rising cost of healthcare is a topic of discussion now more than ever as doctors report rising cases in flu and COVID.

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CTPP1228C_2025-12-28-10-17-37

And welcome back to Power and Politics as we get ready to wrap up our final segment here with Gail and Gary, and still a lot to digest here. Let's talk a little bit about this blue wave and if you also want to kind of continue from where we left off before into this blue wave that we saw in the municipal elections and how that's going to spill over in the next year. Yeah, so picking. On what Gary was saying with the ballots and just election security in general, elections have become very politicized, right? We've kind of saw that start right in the early 2000s with the Bush Gore election, but it has become even more politicized, especially after 2016, 2020, and then, you know, 2024 with, you know, Trump's runs and all of them in between, uh, so I think in. General election security and how we count ballots is gonna be really important for the 2026 election. We saw that be really important in the 2025 election at the local level, right, where people were wanting to make sure not only that the ballots were secured, no fraud was going on, but that their ballots were also being counted as they intended them to be counted, right? And so that's gonna play a role in 2026 too. Now the blue wave. Uh, that is, uh, so something that happened, right? We gotta look at it as a moment in time. Um, does it give us some fodder for 2026? Yeah, probably a little bit, but that really was at the moment, you know, within Trump's first year of office, kind of the, you know, states that had their races like Jersey and um. Virginia and then the local governments kind of pushing back right against some of the Trump policies um it also kind of shows that perhaps the Democrats are kind of getting back on the horse per se um they've been struggling as a party to unify around the message um we've also seen progressive candidates like New York's mayor or soon to be mayor, um, and, and how progressives are doing really well, that younger generation, and really it comes back down to. You know, some of the basics. It comes back down to messaging and reaching voters and canvassing and getting that message out. Do I think that will impact 2026? Yes, I think Democrats might have an advantage, especially if we don't get this healthcare subsidy passed or some sort of reform. Gary, I've got 30 seconds for you. Well, you know, so many people have said it was a referendum on Trump this last local election, but you know, every 2 years I moderate a candidate forum in my hometown. Democrats, Republicans, at-large candidates, district candidates, and so forth. And during the forum, I never once heard Trump's name. I never did. People talked about, you know, a turf field and a splash park and things like that. And so I, I do question whether or not it really was the referendum. You can cut me off. Thank you both for being on the show. Appreciate it. OK. All right, that's our show for this week. Thanks for watching.

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