https://www.wtnh.com/news/politics/speaker-nancy-pelosi-to-headline-connecticut-dinner-1/2032856171
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will be the keynote speaker for the Connecticut Democratic Party‘s annual fundraising dinner.
The California congresswoman will appear June 21 at the John Bailey Dinner at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. General admission tickets cost $200 for the evening event, named after the late party chairman. Tickets for a VIP reception with Pelosi cost $1,000.
Tickets for young Democrats, age 36 and under, cost $125.
Organizers say the dinner will focus on women in leadership. Former State Democratic Party Chair Nancy DiNardo, the first woman to hold the position, will receive the party’s highest honor, the 2019 William A. O’Neill Award for leadership.
Former Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, the current Democratic Party chair, says it will be a “night of Nancys.”
https://www.wshu.org/post/connecticut-democrats-push-public-healthcare-option#stream/0
Connecticut Democrats will take action on a bill to create a state public option for healthcare coverage before the state legislative session ends in 11 days. Republicans say they’ve not been consulted.
Governor Ned Lamont joined Democratic legislative leaders in announcing the bill. He says as a former small business owner, he appreciates the state creating a public option for healthcare.
“It gives us the best opportunity in a long time to extend access to people who don’t have access to affordable healthcare, and to bring down the cost of healthcare.”
Matt Lesser, Senate chair of the Insurance Committee, says the plan would reduce healthcare costs by 20 percent for individuals and small businesses.
“We are going to lower the price of prescription drugs by bringing in prescription drugs from Canada. We are going to expand Medicare for low income adults. We are going to control rising premiums, deductibles, with subsidies and reinsurance. We are going to follow other states and create a cost containment commission, looking at the overall cost of healthcare.”
He says it will also be paid for by a 1% tax on opioid manufacturers.
Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano is alarmed that Democrats are introducing the bill so late in the session without consulting Republicans.
“With a bill that hasn’t even had one day of sunlight. Even as we stand here. But that is the arrogance of the majority that we have never seen in this building, even under Malloy. He would at least give the opportunity before parading it out at a news conference.”
The Connecticut healthcare public option would be available by 2022 if Democrats are able to pass the bill and have it signed by Lamont.
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.