It’s a searing image for Connecticut Republicans — a floor-access credential to the party’s nominating convention in tatters.
The bearer was the campaign manager for Bob Stefanowski, who just three months ago was berated by a state GOP official that he was not credentialed and how dare he use someone else’s pass to enter the hall.
That same official tweeted his support Wednesday for Stefanowski, the first petitioning candidate in Connecticut history to win a major party’s nomination for statewide office.
“There was no animosity,” Stefanowski said about his conversations with GOP leaders and his primary foes. “It’s, ‘Let’s move forward and win this thing.’”
The former UBS Investment Bank chief financial officer accomplished his feat with a disparate coalition of support, from gun owners who binge on Fox News to Gold Coast moderates like real estate magnate William Raveis Jr.
They bought into Stefanowski’s contentious proposal to phase out the state income tax, as well as the corporate income and business entity taxes.
Now, Stefanowski must win support of unaffiliated voters, who are not eligible to vote in Connecticut’s closed primaries but are the largest voter bloc in the state. There are 800,000 of them, nearly twice as many as registered Republicans in this blue state. And they will surely be courted by Ned Lamont, Stefanowski’s Democratic opponent.
Raveis was one of those unaffiliated voters up until this year, when the Fairfield resident registered as a Republican.
“There’s a theme here,” Raveis said. “The state’s in trouble, period. That’s what the coalition is about.”
Stefanowski wants to eliminate the the gift and estate taxes. It’s all part of an economic plan that he commissioned from Arthur Laffer, the controversial Reaganomics guru, that also recommends privatizing the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
“Why would a CEO of a major company who is 60ish move into this state?” Raveis asked. “You can’t die here. The taxes are killing us. You can reduce expenses in this state tremendously. Those things have got to be put on the table.”
The opponent is new for Stefanowski. So is the landscape of a general election.
But expect Democrats to crib from the playbook of Stefanowski’s now-vanquished GOP foes, especially when it comes to showing how the math of eliminating the state income tax adds up. The levy accounts for about 55 percent of all tax revenues in Connecticut.
“Stefanowski is even worse than Tom Foley,” Roy Occhiogrosso, a former top adviser to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Democratic political consultant, said of Malloy’s opponent in 2010 and 2014.
Governor (GOP)
- +
- –
- ‹›
Source: Associated Press. All races are called by the Associated Press.
var cands={20977:{f:’Mark’,l:’Boughton’,u:’5a58fe96/turbine/hc-mark-boughton-20180112′,c:4},21310:{f:’Bob’,l:’Stefanowski’,u:’5a590541/turbine/hc-bob-stefanowski-20180112′,c:5},21311:{f:’David’,l:’Stemerman’,u:’5a5907f3/turbine/hc-david-stemerman-20180112′,c:7},20984:{f:’Tim’,l:’Herbst’,u:’5a58fcef/turbine/hc-tim-herbst-20180112′,c:6},20986:{f:’Steve’,l:’Obsitnik’,u:’5a58fd31/turbine/hc-steve-obsitnik-20180112′,c:8},20992:{f:’Ned’,l:’Lamont’,u:’5a5f8eb2/turbine/hc-ned-lamont-20180117′,c:1},21312:{f:’Joe’,l:’Ganim’,u:’5a57c582/turbine/hc-joe-ganim-20180111′,c:2},21297:{f:’Mary’,l:’Glassman’,u:’5b620ad7/turbine/hc-mary-glassman-20180801′,c:1},20975:{f:’Jahana’,l:’Hayes’,u:’5b620a9f/turbine/hc-jahana-hayes-20180801′,c:2},20985:{f:’Erin’,l:’Stewart’,u:’5a60e100/turbine/hc-erin-stewart-20180118′,c:5},20978:{f:’Joe’,l:’Markley’,u:’5b4e35c3/turbine/hc-joe-markley-20180717′,c:4},20987:{f:’Jayme’,l:’Stevenson’,u:’5b4e340e/turbine/hc-jayme-stevenson-20180717′,c:6},20880:{f:’John’,l:’Larson’,u:’5b4e2455/turbine/hc-dummy-head-20180717′,c:1},20881:{f:’Joe’,l:’Courtney’,u:’5b4e2455/turbine/hc-dummy-head-20180717′,c:1},20882:{f:’Rosa’,l:’DeLauro’,u:’5b4e2455/turbine/hc-dummy-head-20180717′,c:1},20883:{f:’Jim’,l:’Himes’,u:’5b4e2455/turbine/hc-dummy-head-20180717′,c:1}};//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.1/jquery.min.js
https://hc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/js/svg-pan-zoom.js
https://hc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/js/hammer.js
var race = ‘Governor’; var party = ‘GOP’; var town = ‘Connecticut’;
http://hc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/js/ct-primary-embeds-081418.js
During the GOP primary, Republicans alleged that Occhiogrosso was the Stefanowski whisperer and that the two had discussed Stefanowski’s gubernatorial prospects as a Democrat.
“Business guy. No government experience,” Occhiogrosso said. “By the way, nobody knows anything about him. [Republicans] are on their way to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory again. It’s mind-boggling.”
Occhiogrosso said Stefanowski will have to once again answer for his spotty voting record and role as CEO of Dollar Financial Group, a controversial payday lending company that has been criticized for predatory lending, ran afoul of regulators and issued refunds. Stefanowski, a first-time candidate, also faced criticism from Republicans during the primary for his failure to vote for 16 years.
“I just find it hard to believe that there’s going to be a stampede to a guy who didn’t vote for 16 years, who made his money screwing over other people and whose [economic] plan has been discredited by his own party,” Occchiogrosso said.
Stefanowski’s defenders say that the Madison resident was brought in to clean house at Dollar Financial after the lending scandal and that voters are smart enough to look past the attacks.
“This guy has got quite a story,” Raveis said. “He grew up through the blue-collar ranks and became a senior executive. That really resonates. He’s a good man. He’s not like a jerk. He’s likable.”
Originally, Raveis endorsed Dave Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, for governor.
But Walker — like the credential worn by Stefanowski campaign manager Patrick Trueman — was a casualty of the nominating convention. He did not receive enough votes to qualify for the primary.
“Bob was smarter,” Raveis said. “He stayed outside the system.”
Stefanowski made a cameo at the springtime convention, paying for hospitality suite at Foxwoods Resort Casino, complete with a carving station and open bar, where he greeted delegates and got them to sign his petitions to get onto the primary ballot.
He turned in 12,000 signatures of registered Republicans when he needed 9,081, securing the fourth line on the ballot, beneath the names of Mark Boughton, the party’s endorsed candidate, Tim Herbst and Steve Obsitnik. Only hedge fund mogul David Stemerman came after him.
It didn’t matter.
Stefanowski finished first or second in all but five of the state’s 169 municipalities, stringing together victories from the Naugatuck Valley and Quiet Corner to Fairfield County and the Greater New Haven area, his home turf. In a five-way primary, 30 percent of the vote was enough to win.
“Look at how bad the convention got it wrong,” said Jonathan Hardy, a Meriden Republican and executive board member of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League who individually endorsed Stefanowski early in the race. “They choose a candidate like ‘American Idol,’ like who’s the most popular one who they think can win, not the best one for the job.”
Hardy said he appreciates Stefanowski’s fiscally conservative values and honesty when asked about trying to undo the 2013 gun-control package passed in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
He said Stefanowski was the only Republican to say that total repeal of the law is unrealistic in the divided legislature and that instead he would like to modify parts of the law, which expanded its definition of an illegal assault weapon and banned high-capacity gun magazines. The state adopted a background-check requirement for the purchase of ammunition.
“I think the Connecticut Republican Party needs to start sticking to our core Republican principles and not our Connecticut Republican principles,” Hardy said, noting that there are 300,000 pistol permit holders in the state.
Stefanowski’s rise is cause for self-reflection for many Republicans, who haven’t won a statewide election since 2006. Some said perhaps there should be a direct primary instead of a convention, held in June, not August, when much of the state is on vacation. That would allow time for a run-off between the top vote-getters in a crowded primary.
“I think you’ve got to rethink the whole process,” said Ben Proto, an Obsitnik adviser who was state director of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. “You should have to get more than 50 percent of the vote to become a party nominee.”
Stefanowski was the first Republican or Democrat on television in the race and had the airwaves all to himself for nearly two months while Boughton, Herbst and Obstinik waited for their public campaign financing grants to be approved and for Stemerman to disentangle himself from his hedge fund.
“Too many old Republicans watching Fox News all day getting bombarded by commercials,” is how one member of the party’s state central committee reacted to Stefanowski’s victory in a text message.
Like Lamont, Stefanowski opted out of public campaign financing. Participants get $1.35 million for the primary and $6 million for the general election. Stefanowski supplemented $2.3 million in personal funds with $634,000 in individual contributions.
“I’ve saved the taxpayers $7 million already before I’m even in office,” he said Wednesday.
Peter Lumaj, a conservative firebrand candidate who endorsed Stefanowski after he was a convention casualty, said the GOP nominee is independent-minded.
“To some people, they were shocked that Bob won the primary,” Lumaj said.
Their plan for the general election, he said, is to try court voters in Connecticut’s Eastern European community, as well as Reagan Democrats, including union members.
“So we’re going to expand the base,” Lumaj said.
![By ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president. Jurors heard a potentially pivotal piece of evidence — […]](https://www.courant.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Trump_Hush_Money_04191_ae4073.jpg?w=524 "By ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president. Jurors heard a potentially pivotal piece of evidence — […]")
