The most influential business association in Connecticut has a machine in the fall to replace anti-business lawmakers with those who support a pro-business agenda.
Joe Brennan, the president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said his organization will commit $400,000 in independent expenditures for the Fall election with a mission to install more lawmakers who will sympathize with his effort to make Connecticut more business-friendly.
"This isn't an effort just to back Republicans. We're doing independent expenditures, supporting Republican seats and Democratic seats and in our endorsements we'll be supporting Democrats and Republicans as we always have," Brennan said.
Even though he said it’s not a partisan effort, he acknowledges the focus will be on vulnerable Democrats like Killingly State Senator Mae Flexer and Meriden State Senator Dante Bartolomeo. Each won their campaigns by slim margins.
Brennan said those are the kinds of senators who he has circled, not because of the “D” next to their names, but because of the votes they’ve cast.
"It's not an effort to just go after anybody because of their party. It's really driven by their votes in the legislature," Brennan said.
Gov. Dannel Malloy has been both a supporter and opponent of CBIA in the past year and said Monday that he was aware of CBIA’s effort to support pro-business candidates, that could lead to a Republican majority in the State Senate.
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"In my job, you've got to work with Democrats, you've got to work with Republicans, you've got to work with independents and people get to spend their money the way they want,” he said.
He did spurn the CBIA, calling the group “misguided,” however, because of their support for incumbents who didn’t vote for Malloy’s proposal for a transportation lockbox that would protect funding from being spent elsewhere.
"One of the highest things on their calendar was to accomplish a lockbox for transportation so that we can move forward on a long-term basis to rebuild transportation in Connecticut and a number of candidates they are supporting, particularly on the House side, voted against that," Malloy said.
Brennan disregarded such criticism. He said a divided House and Senate could be good for Connecticut and lead to policy results more people could be happy with.
"When one party controls one chamber and another party controls the other chamber either nothing happens or they sit together and work cooperatively toward legislation. That's what happened back in the 90s. If that's the result of this, then we're hopeful that we'll get good legislation out of this," Brennan said.
