Chris Powell: The ambiguous charms of self-funding 'political outsiders'

Meriden, Conn., a heavily Democratic city that just rejected a property-tax increase.

Connecticut doesn't know the two rich and self-funding candidates for the Republican nomination for governor, Bob Stefanowski and David Stemerman, who are called "pop-up" candidates by the candidate endorsed by the Republican state convention, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton. So Stefanowski and Stemerman are impolitely introducing each other to Republican primary voters. It's not pretty but it's useful. 

Last week Stemerman broadcast a television commercial noting that Stefanowski enrolled as a Republican only a few weeks before becoming a candidate, long had donated to Democratic candidates, and hasn't been voting Republican. (As it turned out, Stefanowski hasn't been voting Republican because he hasn't been voting at all for 16 years.) 

Indeed, while Stefanowski seems to have been a Republican for a long time, he left the party and enrolled as a Democrat for less than a year before re-enrolling as a Republican again a year ago, apparently because he first considered running for governor as a Democrat. 

So much for core beliefs. 

Stefanowski concedes most of this, explaining weakly that he was working abroad and should have sought absentee ballots. He counters that Stemerman was once a Democrat, too, and donated to Barack Obama in 2007. But Stemerman left the Democratic Party 15 years ago and says his contribution to Obama was just the price of admission to a fundraiser sponsored by a friend and there were no additional donations. 

Indeed, for corporate executives like Stefanowski and Stemerman, politics is often not a matter of core beliefs but just business that requires cozy relations with both sides of the street. 

Stefanowski got his commercials on TV before the other Republican candidates and for a while was thought to have an advantage, but he may be badly damaged by exposure of his opportunism and dilettantism. Since Stemerman's connection with the other party is fairly remote, Republicans may take less offense from him. 

The exchange between the self-funders is a reminder that the mantle of "political outsider," seemingly much desired by some candidates for governor, can also mean unknown, untested, uninformed, and full of last-minute, unpleasant surprises, as state Republicans might have learned from their awful habit of nominating self-funding political neophytes for governor and U.S. senator in recent years. 

But there's nothing wrong with changing parties out of principle rather than opportunism, since people's views and parties evolve. Winston Churchill changed parties twice, from Conservative to Liberal and back again, because of policy differences before saving civilization from barbarism. Having gotten away with it all, he reflected: "Anyone can rat but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." 

Stefanowski botched his "re-ratting," even as the next governor may need Churchillian ingenuity to save the state from parasitism. 

At least there was a hopeful sign last week from Meriden, a heavily Democratic city that held a referendum on its City Council's proposed budget, which carried a property tax increase of 5 percent. 

The budget was defeated by 5,999 to 260, a margin of 96 to 4 percent, and turnout was fairly representative — almost 6,300 voters. 

If even a Democratic city has had enough of raising taxes, how will ordinary Democrats view a candidate of their party for governor who plans to raise taxes again to appease the government and welfare classes? 


Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn. 
 

Chris Powell: Riding rails through Conn. ruins

 

 "Appalachia'' (gelatin silver print), by MILTON ROGOVIN, at the Thompson Gallery, Weston, Mass.

By CHRIS POWELL

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Reading the governor's press releases, Connecticut might think that preservation of farmland and prevention of "suburban sprawl" are compelling issues. Riding the train from Greenwich to Hartford gives a contrary impression.

Thanks to Amtrak, such a trip is still possible for those who can deal with the bumps, shuttered washrooms, and clogged toilets. The train windows remain clear enough to reveal a stunning and almost unbroken panorama of economic collapse -- ruined and abandoned factories and commercial properties occupying what might be considered prime locations, adjacent to the railroad and highways and served by all utilities.

If there was really any money in agriculture in Connecticut, hundreds of large farms could fit on the abandoned property that is already cleared as well as inside the abandoned buildings that remain structurally sound. Of course the abandoned properties could be redeveloped as housing as well.

The ruin may be most striking in Bridgeport. While the call letters of the city's radio station, WICC, were chosen for "Industrial Capital of Connecticut," today the "I" would have to stand for "impoverished." New Haven, Meriden, and Hartford, once industrial powerhouses themselves, now consider it a triumph just to tear down a ruined building. Even fairly prosperous towns along the railroad, like Milford and Wallingford, have such embarrassing eyesores.

In any case "farmland preservation" -- government's paying farmers for the "development rights" to their property -- doesn't make agriculture profitable or even sustainable. It only lets farmers withdraw their equity from the land without having to sell it for housing, and thus makes suburban and rural towns even more residentially exclusive, restricts the housing market, and supports prices for those who have housing while driving up costs for those who don't.

Most advocates of "farmland preservation" care far less about sustaining agriculture than about keeping new people out. And while Connecticut's industrial decline is no secret, riding the rails through the core of that decline explodes the premises behind "farmland preservation" and complaints of "suburban sprawl."

The ride shows that Connecticut's problem is not preserving farms or stopping "sprawl"; instead the problem is urban rot. Since the infrastructure remains -- including the railroad, which, while creaky, is still more convenient than cars and buses for getting to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia -- what has made Connecticut's cities so unattractive to people who can afford to live elsewhere and pay taxes in support of government?

For starters are the schools, the worst in the state. But schools are only reflections of a community's population, and city populations are of course overwhelmingly poor and fatherless.

So the big policy question has to be: A half century into the "War on Poverty," with government now providing the poor with food, rent, heat, medical insurance, social workers, ever-longer unemployment compensation, disability stipends, and lately even cellphones, what is making and keeping people poor if not government itself? If the ruined factories along the rail line hint that the answer involves the loss of low-skilled, entry-level industrial jobs, couldn't government find similarly basic work for people to learn with in lieu of unearned welfare benefits? Thousands might be employed perpetually just cleaning up the trash along the rail line and the streets in every town.

Couldn't government enforce standards in school so that people emerged with enough skills to make their own way? Skilled people still might find good employment in any number of endeavors -- like modernizing the whole Northeast rail network. After all, "work, not welfare" used to be a populist and liberal objective. Right now the only consolation of riding the rails through the ruin of Connecticut may be that at least we still have the world's best imperial wars and public employee pension systems.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

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