Candidates who don't know how to run

If nothing terrible happens to the front-runners between now and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, it looks as if Dan Malloy will be our next governor and Dick Blumenthal will be the new junior senator.

Should it come out that way, Connecticut will be upholding its tradition of rejecting candidates for high office who are nominated by their party only because they can pay for their campaigns and maybe spend enough to win.

This year, the Republicans chose the green-as-their-money Linda McMahon and Tom Foley when other, more respectable Republican candidates might have done more respectably. I’m thinking of Rob Simmons, the former Congressman, who was disgracefully dumped in favor of the moneyed McMahon, and Oz Griebel, the only gubernatorial candidate from either party who offered straight talk about the deficit crisis.

Despite the shortcomings so vividly on display in the campaign, Blumenthal is surely preferable to the wrestling magnate McMahon, whose qualifications I first wondered about when the governor appointed her to the state Board of Education. It seemed to be an inappropriate post to offer one who made her fortune exposing the young to vulgar and violent entertainment.

However, I worry about a Gov. Malloy. First, there is the sad fact that the Democratic Legislature that burdened us with the $3.26 billion deficit will undoubtedly be returning with its inept leadership intact. Second, the degree to which Democrat Malloy will be beholden to public employees and their unions remains unknown, but suspect.

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But let’s look at Blumenthal-McMahon first. With all those ads that brought new meaning to the term wretched excess, McMahon offered little to convince us she’d bring anything to the Senate beyond one more vote for the party whose talking points she mostly parroted.

The Blumenthal campaign, marred by his failure to remember where he fought the Vietnam War, wasn’t exactly inspirational either. How much confidence can you muster for someone so controlled by consultants and focus groups that he said he was “fighting†for us or “fighting†against the bad guys 30 times in his last two debates? (I counted.) Do the consultants really believe an intelligent electorate like Connecticut’s really believes a Yale and Harvard educated lawyer they’ve heard on television every few days since 1990 talks that way?

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In the race for governor, we have, in Malloy, a mayor who actually succeeded in leaving his city in better shape than it was when he took office. He would be a good man for the job in good times.

But these are hard times for Connecticut, and Malloy comes across as one more Democrat who will owe too much to the unions that helped elect him. Will he be independent enough to seek needed layoffs or pension and benefit changes? He has failed to convince us he will.

So why hasn’t Malloy’s opponent made more of his? As Rick Green neatly put it in The Courant, the times call out for a Republican who could speak convincingly of the evils of “labor contracts towns cannot afford, pensions, state workers who cash out at 55, UConn professors making six-figure retirements. Why aren’t you making a bigger deal of this?â€

Foley didn’t answer, but maybe it’s because Foley, the proud outsider, never learned how to run for anything a bit more modest than senator or governor. It’s been a long campaign, but we shouldn’t forget he first announced for senator when Chris Dodd looked as if he’d run again. Then, when the Democratic candidate turned out to be Blumenthal, he said he’d rather be governor.

That was the main problem this year: too many candidates who don’t know how to run.

Dick Ahles is a retired broadcast journalist from Simsbury. He may be reached by e-mail at dahles@hotmail.com.

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