State Rep. Josh Elliot, co-owner of a family grocery store in Hamden, received sufficient delegate support at Saturday’s convention to challenge Democratic incumbent Ned Lamont in an August primary, with a promise to make Connecticut’s wealthiest pay their fair share.
His campaign is inching closer to raising the money to qualify for millions in public financing under Connecticut’s Citizens Election Program .
E-blast from Elliott:
Yesterday, at the Democratic state convention in Hartford, 501 delegates voted for this campaign. That is 25 percent of the room, a full ten points above the 15 percent a challenger needs to reach the August primary ballot.
We earned that against every reasonable expectation. We were running at a two-term incumbent with near-universal name recognition and effectively unlimited personal resources, and a quarter of the delegates in that hall still chose something different.
We did this simply. For the last nine months, this campaign has been in towns all across Connecticut, sitting down with Democratic Town Committees and asking people a direct question: what kind of Connecticut do you want to live in. And then we listened. What we heard, again and again, is that people are struggling, and that they are ready for a state government that treats that struggle as the central problem to solve.
Yesterday belonged to the people who made it possible. The supporters who sat in that convention hall and took hard glares from the delegates seated around them. The delegates who were pressured to fall in line, who were told that backing this campaign could cost them relationships and standing in their own towns, and who held their ground anyway. That took real courage, and I will not forget it.
Thank you for believing in me, and in what this campaign is building. We are painting a clear picture of Connecticut’s future: a state where housing is something a working family can actually afford, where health care does not push people toward bankruptcy, where the tax system asks the most of those with the most, and where nobody is told to settle for a government that is only good enough.
This campaign is going to win in August, and then it is going to win in November. Keep expecting the impossible from us, and keep expecting the impossible from yourself. We are already on the ballot. We are $25,000 away from the fundraising goal that unlocks the full resources for a statewide campaign. And we are gearing up, in earnest, for a contest that reaches every Democratic voter in the state.
All of that exists because of people who believe Connecticut can be something better, and who refused to give up before the race even started.
I promise you this: I will keep working exactly as hard as I have worked every day since this campaign began.
And here is what I would ask of you. You do not control the outcome; you only control the process. Everything that is not the work is noise. If you want this campaign to win, you cannot sit and hope for it, you have to work for it. You have to contribute, you have to knock doors, you have to make calls, and you have to tell every single person you know that something better is possible for Connecticut, and that together we can make it real.
For those of you who understand how significant yesterday was, let us keep growing this together. And for anyone who felt they had to cast a vote for appearances yesterday, I want you to know the invitation is open. No one sees how you vote in the booth. The work of reaching nearly 800,000 Democratic voters starts now, and there is a place for you in it.
Yesterday we proved this campaign is real. Now we win it.
While Governor Lamont has been a steady hand, leading Connecticut through fiscally turbulent waters, a federally exacerbated pandemic crisis, and now a federally initiated human-services and healthcare crisis, he has failed to take a leadership role in the extremely important areas of utility-rate control and consumer-service management (and he has appointed regulators with too-close ties to the utility companies…). But, perhaps, worst of all, he has also failed to establish an economic plan and direction for our state — rated one of the worst states for job creation and career establishment (which means we will continue to hemorrhage business and talent). Furthermore, he has failed to take a leadership role in rebuilding our cities and creating real relief for tax-overburdened urban resident-property owners. These failures could certainly be interpreted as aspects of his goal of maintaining the status-quo for the wealthy Connecticut oligarchy (of which he is a member) that actually created and benefits from current state policies toward cities and the utilities (they are major utility share owners) and realizes that changes regarding creating equitable tax circumstances and municipal health in the cities, as well as major utility-policy changes, would cost them money.
Thus, we currently have a capable, but socioeconomically-conflicted governor who can only be counted on to maintain the status quo. With Josh Elliot, we have the potential for real change and positive socioeconomic movement, including progress for the cities and urban school districts. If he can convince Connecticut citizens — with economic development plans and policy proposals regarding creating healthy cities and a robust Connecticut economy — he can conceivably beat this popular governor in a primary. So far, he has shown a willingness to think in terms of significant change regarding, in particular, tax policy, but he has come up short on what he would do about the utilities, the cities, and an overall, long-term economic development plan for the state… I’m sure that a big chunk of the Connecticut electorate is anxious to hear what fresh proposals he will lay out on his platform for the state as the primary season progresses. Right now, he obviously has not electrified the electorate, albeit his quite respectful endorsement from a significant portion of the Democratic Convention delegates. It’s wait and see time…