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Analyzing the Republican Candidates for Governor

July 12, 2018

Connecticut Republicans will choose their nominee on August 14 and no candidate has emerged as the front runner. As there are few ideological differences, most voters are trying to determine the strongest candidate to take on the probable Democratic nominee – Greenwich multimillionaire Ned Lamont. I have not decided yet, but below is my impression of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Mark Boughton. It is hard to speak to Mark Boughton and not develop an immediate fondness for the guy. Cordial and receptive, he is an accomplished politician who has governed Danbury as mayor for nine terms and continuously wins reelection easily, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 margin. He is a former public school teacher, state assemblyman and served our country in the military. He has a plan to eliminate the state income tax and said he would “lie down on Route 84” before allowing tolls. He is the endorsed candidate, meaning he won the majority of the delegates at the Republican Convention. Ironically, his main weakness is his success. With the state in such financial distress, many voters may feel that such an accomplished politician may be too willing to make deal with the Democrats, rather than take the brutal steps necessary to turn Connecticut around.

Tim Herbst. Tim has been plotting his path to Pennsylvania Avenue since he started emitting brain waves while in utero. A political prodigy and self-described “student of the game,” Herbst won his first election at age 19 when he became a member of Trumbull’s Planning and Zoning Commission. Ten years later, he upset the Democratic incumbent and became the First Selectman. He reduced the number of political appointees and decreased pension and health costs of town employees. He can be abrasive at times, but this may be what it takes to get the state in order. Nobody works harder than Herbst and if he is the nominee, he will be cleaning the toilets of voters who are on the fence. He is attracting the more conservative elements of the Republican Party and has the endorsement of the FIC (Family Institute of Connecticut), a socially conservative group skeptical of abortion and gay rights. He also has the endorsement of the CCDL (Connecticut Citizens Defense League), a group that defends gun owners’ rights. This may help him in the primary but in Deep Blue Connecticut, you can be sure the Democrats will pounce on him for these associations should he be our nominee.

Steve Obsitnik. Steve surprised the political class when he received enough delegate support at the Republican convention to qualify for the primary. He has run for Congress in Fairfield County, losing to the popular Jim Himes in 2012. A Westport resident, he graduated from Annapolis and the Wharton School of Business and was part of the team that developed the voice-recognition software of Siri. He is a fiscal conservative and social moderate and well-positioned ideologically should he be the nominee. His main weakness is that at the time of this writing, he has not received the funds for the Connecticut’s Citizen Election Program while his opponents are already on the airwaves. But the van he is riding while touring the state is receiving great publicity and with a little luck, he should soon have the funds to compete.

Bob Stefanowski. A political newcomer, Stefanowski decided to bypass being nominated at the Republican Convention and qualified for the primary by gathering signatures. He was the first candidate to hit the airwaves and thus has a head start in name recognition. A denizen of Madison, he has an impressive business resume. His greatest asset is that he is an outsider and when one hears him speak, he gives the impression that he has the testicular fortitude to veto any bill that does not restore fiscal sanity, even if it means his popularity sinks to single digits. Other candidates from the political class may balk in a similar scenario. His opponent for the outsider mantle, Dave Stemerman, appears to have access to more cash (both men have mostly self-financed and are not participating in the Citizens Election Program) and this may place him at a disadvantage not only in the primary, but in the general election.

Dave Stemerman. Another political newcomer, Stemerman is an alternative to Stefanowski for voters who believe only a political outsider can clean up the fiscal mess in Hartford. A graduate of both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, the Greenwich resident made a fortune running a hedge fund. He is the only candidate at this point who is specific about where the cuts must be made to restore fiscal sanity and has the intellectual honesty to admit that the state income tax cannot be repealed. He has already lent $10,000,000 to his campaign and appears to have the limitless resources that will be needed to fight another Greenwich plutocrat, Ned Lamont. The downside of his candidacy is that Tom Foley and Linda McMahon – both Greenwich plutocrats – did not do well in state wide elections when nominated.

As there are little ideological differences between the candidates, this campaign could get ugly and personal very quickly. Expect to see attack ads any day now. If this happens, the losers and their supporters should get over it immediately and unite behind our nominee the day after the primary. We cannot afford to sulk and lick our wounds. If the Democrats win again, those who choose to stay in our beautiful state will soon be paying outrageous tolls to support forty-year vacations for the burgeoning retiring class of state and municipal workers along with the freeloading Democratic political cronies.

Fallout from Republican Gubernatorial Race May End the Convention System

May 9, 2018

A major reason for Connecticut’s political dysfunction is that it remains a Convention state. In most states, prospective candidates are only required to gather a reasonable number of signatures to have their name placed on the ballot. Not in Connecticut.

Every town has a Democratic and Republican Town Committee. These committees chose delegates to attend conventions that pick candidates. To win the party nomination, a candidate must receive over fifty percent of the delegates’ votes. To earn the right to primary, a candidate must receive fifteen percent of the vote. Thus, prospective candidates spend their evenings addressing town committees, weekends going to dried-out ziti fundraisers and every other waking hour meeting delegates individually in order to secure their support. This is a tedious and time-consuming process and also a colossal waste of time; as it does little to increase the candidate’s profile with the vast majority of prospective voters.

Political outsiders who attempt to run are only welcome if they can self-finance and pay Party Insiders high consulting fees to help garner delegates. But this changed once Connecticut passed the Citizens’ Election Program, which enables candidates to raise small amounts of money from many citizens to qualify for large amounts of public financing.

Now, those seeking the gubernatorial nomination must raise $250,000 from contributions that do not exceed $100. This too is a tedious and time-consuming process, but at the time of this writing, seven Republican candidates have done so. All of these candidates are now in a position to each receive over $1.3 million dollars to run a primary and the winner will receive six million dollars for the general election.

The problem is that none of these candidates are political outsiders. Mark Boughton is a former state representative and has been mayor of Danbury for seven terms. Tim Herbst is the former First Selectman of Trumbull. David Walker is a former US Comptroller. Mark Lauretti has been mayor of Shelton for over twenty years. Prasad Srinivasen is a state representative from Glastonbury. Steve Obsitnik is a member of the Westport Town Committee and a former Fourth District Congressional candidate. Peter Lumaj has run for both U.S. Senate and Secretary of the State. Erin Stewart, the young and charismatic mayor of New Britain, will probably raise the requisite funds in the near future.

Unless there are multiple Convention votes, it will be difficult for all these candidates to receive 15% of the delegates, meaning after working fourteen-hour days for the past year, not only will their political views never be heard; they will not even be on the ballot. And the ones who do not qualify will be quite upset.

They will have the option of petitioning their way on the ballot, but this is not easy. To do so requires collecting 9,500 signatures (2% of registered Republicans) in about a month – a daunting task. But two self-financing Republicans, Bob Stefanowski and David Stemerman are both bypassing the Convention and doing so.

Thus, the Party Insiders who control the delegates will try to do what they have so miserably failed at in the past – pick the strongest candidate while not alienating the various factions of the Republican Party.

But how are they going to do this? If they manipulate the Convention to keep the pro-Trump social conservative Peter Lumaj off the ballot, will they anger the Republican base? Remember, Trump won the Connecticut primary in 2016 by a whopping 58%. The Party Insider’s favorite, John Kasich came in a dismal second with 27%. Yet Lumaj could easily win a multi-ballot primary but lose the general election if upper middle-class women – the swing vote in Connecticut – refuse to vote for him.

How about if the Party Insiders keep the eminently-electable Erin Stewart off the ballot because she is too young and entered the race late? How will Dave Walker, who has dedicated his life to public service, feel when delegates pledged to him switch or abandon him on the second ballot. Will Prasad Srinivasen, who has resorted to banging or delegates’ doors since they will not answer their phones or e-mails, believe he has been treated fairly?

My bet is that the Republican Convention will nominate Tim Herbst and Mark Boughton will qualify to primary him. But keep in mind that I also predicted that my alma mater, St. Francis University would beat the UConn women. We lost by 88 points (a ref job of course).

Unfortunately, we are stuck with this archaic system. Whatever the outcome of this election, both Democrats and Republicans should go to direct primaries. Prospective candidates should be required to garner 1% of their Party’s membership by January of the election year and the primary should be held in May. This will give the winning candidate enough time to consolidate his or her base, and face their opponent. It is simply unfair to have candidates work so hard to get permission to get on the ballot, especially since these Party Insiders are basically useless the second the Convention is over.

The Politics of Facebook

April 11, 2018

The recent testimony of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is being portrayed as the response of our political class to invasions of user privacy. But this is really about the political classes’ realization that Facebook has the power to organize voters and skew elections based on the preferences of Zuckerberg and his minions.

By Zuckerberg’s own admission, the tech industry is liberal. Thus Facebook, along with Twitter and Google are censoring conservatives in an attempt to restore liberalism’s previous monopoly on information. Pro-life and anti-gun control posts are squashed. A popular pro-Trump duo of African-American women, Diamond and Silk, has been deemed “unsafe.”

The tech industry also avails preferred politicians to its data. President Obama used data given to his campaign by Google and Facebook to target specific voters. Google executives visited the Obama White House and astonishing 427 times. Chris Hughes, one of Facebook’s founders, set up the initial web site to fund raise for President Obama and used Facebook data to target donors and voters.

The New York Times marveled at Obama’s genius at using the latest technology, but once it became apparent President Trump did the same thing, they became apoplectic, even blaming Facebook for selling ads to the Russians that attacked Hillary Clinton. But then Facebook executive Rob Goldman pointed out that the Russians purchased few ads, purchased ads for Bernie Sanders too, and spent most of their money after Trump already won.

The liberal media pirouetted and attacked Facebook for allowing Trump to use the data produced by a British marketing company called Cambridge Analytica, who collected data via Facebook through surveys. This time the liberal media drew blood. Zuckerberg quickly learned Political Groveling 101 while liberals called for his head. To add insult to injury, Facebook stock tanked 20%.

But even prior to these events, Zuckerberg was perplexed by the Trump victory and actually went on a listening tour to Trump country. While the political class opined that Zuckerberg was pondering a run for the presidency, it is also possible that Zuckerberg simply wanted to figure out why all the polling and data analysis predicting a Hillary victory were wrong. He may have concluded that Hillary Clinton was correct. These people are truly deplorable hayseeds and the way to beat them is to deny them access to information.

Thus Zuckerberg had Facebook create what are called algorithms to prevent the dissemination of conservative posts. An algorithm is a set of computer code that directs output using what are called “If-Then Statements.” Perhaps an example will make this clear.

Let’s say a web site asks you to type either 1 or 2 into entry point. You type in the number 1. The code that controls the site has a line that says

If userinput = 1 then print “You typed 1”

Algorithms can consist of thousands of If-Then Statements or their variations to analyze millions of data points. Facebook is constantly reviewing posts by users and collecting data. Even if you consider yourself nonpolitical, Facebook can determine your political orientation. For example, if you post a Vegan recipe, Facebook increases the probability that you will vote Democrat. If you post a picture of your daughter’s First Communion, Facebook increases the probability that you will vote Republican. Other data glistened from your posts – your age, your gender, your race, the car you drive, not to mention your actual statements – allow Facebook to pigeon hole your political orientation.

Once this is done, a Facebook algorithm says

If user = Conservative then block conservative postings
If user = liberal then allow liberal postings

This algorithm can be crucial in the close election, in that it energizes the liberal base more than the conservative one. Facebook surely knows this, which is why many former Hillary and Obama staffers are now on their payroll. Big tech is determined to never allow another Donald Trump to occur.

How this will play out remains to be seen. But conservatives who wish to remain politically viable should not be calling for the regulation of Facebook. This is a battle they will never win. Rather, anti-trust litigation must be pushed and Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, should be broken up. Monopoly in any industry –especially information – is not good for the country.