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Democrat Ned Lamont defeated Bob Stefanowski to become Connecticut's next governor, maintaining unified democratic control over one of the country's most blue states.
At first glance, a dominant Democrat in a state where Donald Trump won 40% of the vote is not particularly surprising. But moderate Republicans – including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Phil Scott of Vermont and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire – participated well in the governor's elections in the Northeast and were well placed Tuesday. Meanwhile, polls showed that Stefanowski gave Lamont a real chance.
Democrats enjoy unified control over Connecticut since the election of Dan Malloy in 2010, but years of austerity in budgeting and economic hardship have made Malloy one of the most the country's least popular governors, with a shocking disapproval score of 70%, according to Morning Consult. to refuse to seek reelection.
But unlike other New England Republicans, Stefanowski did not get far from President Donald Trump. The national political climate was just too bad for the GOP to have a chance to win.
Every election is important, but the concrete political stakes of this election were relatively modest. The lower house of the Connecticut legislature is firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party. A Stefanowski government would have had a hard time setting up a visionary conservative program.
At the same time, the last eight years of democratic governance and the narrow division within the state Senate mean that Lamont does not have many progressive fruits available to all.
That said, the ongoing strengthening of the national economy should gradually ease Connecticut's fiscal difficulties and give Mr. Lamont a more successful mandate than Malloy enjoyed.
The most important point perhaps, however, is the fact that a national group of progressive militants is finally avenging the former Connecticut senator, Joe Lieberman.
The Netroots fight back
The history of this election goes back to the mid-2000s, when George W. Bush was president and we had political blogs and something called "the Netroots". And although the Netroots personalities have many causes, the highest cause of all was hating then Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.
The hatred for Lieberman was so deep that even a friendly and professional man, Ezra Klein, had once accused him of being "ready to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old election result. ".
The great missed chance of killing Lieberman's career in electoral politics came in 2006, when he lost a major challenge to the business leader, Ned Lamont.
But then, Lieberman refused to approve the Democratic candidate for the Senate, preferring to run for re-election as a Lieberman party candidate in Connecticut. The Republicans, faced with an election tsunami that year, basically threw in the towel and let Lieberman sip conservative votes. The National Democrats, meanwhile, wanted to invest resources in the victory over the Republicans and largely missed the race.
Lamont lost, Lieberman returned to the Senate, he passed the 2008 cycle to campaign for John McCain, after which he was welcomed with open arms by the Democratic caucus. Once back there, he used his senator position safely to sabotage efforts to add a public option to the Affordable Care Act, significantly weakening the law and increasing health insurance premiums for millions of people.
This would be a strange note in history, with the exception of the circumstances surrounding the 2018 Governor's Run, which aimed to nominate a Democratic Party candidate known to the state but unrelated to the unpopular democratic administration. in place.
Someone like … Ned Lamont! Lieberman, meanwhile, announced the week before the elections by joining Stefanowski's team as a transition advisor, thus reinforcing the issue of Lieberman's war veterans.
Lamont's victory underlines, fundamentally, that progressives are riding high in this cycle – both in terms of voter confidence and, above all, in the recruitment of candidates to advance the local party's bad name.
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