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Both Democrats and Republicans are praising Gov. Ned Lamont’s aspiration for rapid train service connecting Hartford to New Haven, New Haven to Stamford, and Stamford to New York City.
“I’m so excited that we have a governor that finally understands the importance of Fairfield County and Metro-North,” said Rep. Laura Devlin, (R – Fairfield). “The economic factor that that could drive and the desirability factor just to get to New York within even an hour from Fairfield, that would provide.”
Lamont made this bold statement during his first address to the people of Connecticut Wednesday: “You know what we do? I believe in the 30/30/30 – I want the following to be a reality: 30 minutes from Hartford to New Haven; 30 minutes from New Haven to Stamford; and 30 minutes from Stamford to New York.”
New Democratic Sen. Alex Bergstein campaigned on upgrading Connecticut’s railways to high-speed systems. She was also very happy to hear the new governor mention rapid train times during his first major address.
Behind Democrats’ win, a senator and one million phone calls
Jenna Shapiro woke up miserable the day after Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016. The 21-year-old daughter of Democratic activists from Manhattan, Shapiro had canvassed for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and worked on phone banks at Wesleyan, where she was a first-semester senior studying history and contemplating a career in teaching. “I felt like I hadn’t done enough, not nearly enough,” said Shapiro, whose childhood memories include her father’s arrest while protesting the Supreme Court’s Bush-Gore decision in 2000. “I never want to wake up after another election believing I hadn’t done everything I could for a candidate I believed in.”
She woke up happy after Election Day 2018.
Now 23, Shapiro — who put off a career in education for political organizing after graduating in 2017 — was the Hartford regional coordinator for Fight Back Connecticut, the field organization U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy began assembling in early 2017 for the Democrats’ statewide coordinated campaign.
In the final four days of the campaign, a staff of 20 paid organizers oversaw 14,000 volunteers who Murphy says knocked on roughly 250,000 doors and made one million phone calls.
It was an element of a Democratic ground game that helped produce the best mid-term election turnout in Connecticut since 1990, contributing to an unexpectedly strong 44,500-vote plurality for Gov.-elect Ned Lamont and the first Democratic gains in the General Assembly since Barack Obama’s landslide win here a decade ago.
Over pizza at local party headquarters in West Hartford last week, Shapiro was one of the young organizers who thanked the volunteers, a mix of first-timers and veterans, millennials and boomers, and everything in between. Joseph Hutton, the director of the coordinated campaign, peeked around a corner, standing next to Nick Marroletti, the organizing director. Hutton is 29, Marroletti, 25. Somewhere in the crowded room was Jenna Lowenstein, the 31-year-old who managed Murphy’s campaign.
“We’re going to keep it going, and we want you to stay involved, because 2016 was a wake-up call to Democrats, and I think Sen. Murphy heard that wake-up call,” state Sen. Beth Bye told them, her tone more maternal than fiery. “Young people, people of color and women did not feel represented by our party. And Sen. Murphy said, ‘Enough.’ He reached out to candidates, he reached out to you all. Look at this room. This is the Connecticut Democratic Party.”
Murphy was last to arrive. He sat near Gary Turco, a Democrat from neighboring Newington who defeated a two-term Republican state representative by 66 votes. Turco credited Fight Back Connecticut and volunteers who came from West Hartford, where they had run out of doors to knock and phones to call.
“I’ve been involved here in Connecticut politics for a long time. And I’ve ran campaigns and helped Democrats to win. There has never been a coordinated operation like Sen. Murphy and all you put together that I’ve ever seen,” Turco said. “You made it happen.”
Turco smiled and said he would be happy to reciprocate by campaigning for Murphy in Iowa or New Hampshire in 2020. Murphy politely ignored the offer. Re-elected to a second term last week with 59.5 percent of the vote, Murphy seemed content to watch Shapiro and others run the show. Murphy was 22 when he managed his first campaign, Charlotte Koskoff’s challenge of U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson in 1996. Koskoff lost by just 1,587 votes.
Ten years later, it would be Murphy who finally took the western Connecticut seat for Democrats. He ran as an opponent of the war in Iraq, giving him common cause with Lamont, who defeated Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in a primary. Lieberman won as an independent in the fall, but retired in 2012 rather than run without a party’s backing. Murphy succeeded Lieberman in the Senate. With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy exiting after two terms, it was Murphy who took control of the statewide coordinated campaign, personally interviewing and signing off on its top hires.
Lamont, 64, will be Connecticut’s governor in January. Richard Blumenthal, 72, is its senior senator. But at 45, Murphy is the leader of a generation reshaping the Democratic Party in Connecticut.
At a key juncture, he urged other Democratic contenders to coalesce around Lamont. And he encouraged Jahana Hayes, the 2016 national teacher of the year, to run for his old seat in the 5th District, giving Connecticut Democrats their first black nominee for Congress. Hayes will join the 116th Congress as one of the first two black women from New England to serve in the U.S. House.
All four of Connecticut’s U.S. representatives seeking re-election have won their races, positioning them for key posts in the House that flipped to Democratic control.
When the new Congress convenes in January, Democratic Reps. Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson are in line to lead subcommittees that steer federal funding to submarine manufacturing, biomedical research and the state’s web of interstate highways.
Courtney would lead the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. It oversees Pentagon money for submarine manufacturing in Groton and Quonset Point, R.I. “The subcommittee is right at the center of issues central to the shipyard as well as the sub base and all the supply chain,” he said.
In a split decision Tuesday, voters handed Democrats the majority of the House for the first time in eight years while keeping the Senate in Republican hands.
DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that funds labor, health, human services and education, said she will seek its leadership post. First elected in 1990, DeLauro has seniority that puts her in line as one of the so-called “cardinals,” the powerful chairmen and chairwomen of the Appropriations Committee’s 12 subcommittees that play an outsize role allocating the $3.8 trillion federal budget.
DeLauro promises to take on an expansive list of issues dear to Democrats such as the Affordable Care Act, education and equal pay for women. And she would look to fund biomedical research, a growing industry in New Haven and shoreline towns in her district.
Are you a Darien Democrat who is frustrated by the news and who is ready to stand up and be counted? It all starts at the grass roots. The Darien Democratic Town Committee is looking for new members to lead Darien’s Democrats for the 2018-2020 term.
We would invite you to attend one of our regularly scheduled meetings and will give you the chance to meet other Democrats, meet the members of the DTC, and, most importantly, to get involved in the Democratic Party in Darien.
So if you are tired of yelling at your television (or internet browser) and want become a participant in democracy, please contact DTC Chair David Bayne at DFBayne@aol.com about becoming a member of the 2018-2020 DTC.
David Bayne
5 Windsor Road
Chairman, Darien Democratic Town Committee