Bob Stefanowski spent the hour long debate at the Garde Arts Center in New London doing his best to paint Democrat Ned Lamont as a surrogate of Connecticut’s current unpopular governor.
The GOP nominee for governor mentioned the outgoing governor three minutes in to the first debate between the two major party candidates.
“In Ned Lamont, it’s actually going to be worse,” Stefanowski said. “He’s going to try to deny it tonight but he’s been on the radio saying he’s going to raise taxes and out up tolls. Ladies and gentlemen, enough is enough.”
On nearly every question posed by the panelists from the The Day of New London and WTNH, Stefanowski pivoted to either an attack on Dan Malloy, or a link between Malloy and Lamont.
He said, “We need to do exactly the opposite of what Dan Malloy has been doing for the next eight years and Ned Lamont will just continue it.”
Lamont, who is running for statewide office for the third time, pointed out that he attempted to defeat Malloy in the 2010 Democratic Primary. Many of Lamont’s attacks on Stefanowski focused on the former corporate executive’s bold proposal to eliminate the state’s income tax.
Lamont quoted newspaper editorials that described Stefanowski’s plan as, “fantasy,” and “pie in the sky.”
Politics
From a practical standpoint, Stefanowski’s proposal comes at perhaps at the worst possible time for a revenue cut to state government. The income tax brings in more than $9 billion in revenue, roughly half of all of the state’s tax receipts.
Stefanowski said he intends to declare a, “fiscal state of emergency,” if elected governor, and said he thinks he can find five percent of waste, fraud, and abuse in state spending, which could make up for the lost revenue as a result of cutting the income tax either modestly or entirely.
“I can take a billion dollars of cost out of this budget for the state of Connecticut. We can use that to fund a tax cut and that will increase revenues over the long run. The exact opposite of what Dan Malloy’s been doing which is raising the tax rate and the revenues are coming down,” he said.
Lamont countered, saying, “Again, no specifics, except for finding that line item for waste, fraud, and abuse.and that is just the type of political answer that has gotten this state into trouble over the last generation.”
Stefanowski admitted following the debate that he does not have any specific line items targeted for where to trim or eliminate spending.
Some of Lamont’s most potent attacks have to do with Stefanowski’s lack of civic engagement in Connecticut. He lived in London for about a decade, and decided to run for governor in 2017, returning to his home state after a long absence.
“You never got involved. You never even bothered to vote against Dan Malloy. You never even bothered to vote and now you parachute in and you say, ‘I was a big shot at a bunch of companies that both needed enormous bailouts to get through. You got a tax plan that would create a $10 billion hole in our budget.”
Lamont said the attacks against Malloy are ironic because, “Bob wasn’t even there to vote against him.”
The two major party candidates for Connecticut governor are clashing over who is the better person to right the state's economy and reduce massive budget deficits.
Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski met Wednesday night in their first debate of the campaign.
The two candidates - both of them businessmen who have never held elected office - each won their primary elections last month.
Stefanowski, of Madison, said he would lower taxes and emphasize fiscal discipline. Lamont, of Greenwich, said a proposal by Stefanowski to eliminate the state income tax would bankrupt the state.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, is not seeking re-election.
The debate at the Garde Arts Center in New London was sponsored by The Day and WTNH-TV.
