From the advocacy group https://www.impactconn.org/
Memorial Day Weekend kicked off summer and it seems, based on campaign text messages, that Josh Elliott has relaunched his gubernatorial campaign. He hasn’t quite qualified for public campaign financing, but he has a ballot line, a message and a political contrast. The Connecticut Democratic primary is scheduled for August 11 which gives Elliott a short runway from now. Does he have enough time, momentum and savvy to make that contrast mean something to Democratic primary voters?
Zooming out, last week there was the debacle about the DNC’s 2024 autopsy. A year and a half after the election, the autopsy report was finally made public, and the roll out and report itself were arguably disastrous. The Associated Press reported that the DNC released the report only after internal pressure, that DNC Chair Ken Martin had said it was “not ready for primetime,” and the document was rife with annotations and disclaimers saying portions were incomplete or unsupported.
Precipitating the release was Rob Flaherty’s piece in The Bulwark where Flaherty, Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden then Harris 2024 and one of the few campaign insiders the autopsy team actually interviewed, details his own version of what happened, how it happened and what comes next. Flaherty suggests (and we would agree) that the Harris campaign’s core failure wasn’t tactics but was instead the absence of a coherent brand. Everything Trump did pointed to one story (she’s focused on liberal stuff, not you) while the Harris campaign punched in multiple directions at once. Flaherty describes that even though Harris’s campaign and PAC digital ads tested well, nothing gelled.
Democrats keep treating messaging as if it can solve a deeper trust problem. But it’s clear that national Democrats have a brand problem, not just a messaging problem. When voters do not know who you are, what side you are on, and what fight you are choosing, even good messages can feel disconnected. A strong brand lets a campaign say less because voters already understand the story. But without a brand, winning is a longshot.
So, back to the Connecticut gubernatorial primary. Elliott’s primary campaign will test whether voters’ economic frustration can be channeled into a brand, a governing argument and a turnout operation in 77 days. The opportunity is there: affordability is a real crisis, everybody feels the pinch at the pump, property taxes are painful, and many voters believe Connecticut works better for the wealthy than for everyone else. Can Elliott build a primary brand effectively and activate parts of the Democratic electorate that are not complacent or content?
By contrast, Governor Lamont’s brand is stability, competence, fiscal caution, and anti-Trump seriousness. Lamont is asking Democratic voters to value steadiness in an uncertain national moment and to rebuke Elliott’s riskiness.
Elliott has begun messaging around what an affordable Connecticut could look like, and weaving in class warfare, energy and utilities, healthcare and housing. His core argument is taxing concentrated wealth because, he argues, Connecticut’s tax structure protects the very wealthy while pushing too much responsibility downward through property taxes, local education costs, and underfunded public needs.
But “tax the rich”, while popular and pithy, is not enough by itself. Elliott has to build a broader, practical affordability brand with the heft of a policy agenda by talking to voters about things they care about in ways they understand. And, he must illustrate how he would run a state government that delivers visible benefits to people who feel squeezed. If this is done well, In turn, voters should be able to easily point to who Elliott is, what he stands for and the compelling alternative his leadership and governance will provide. Easy, right?
Elliott seems to be betting that voters are angry enough about affordability and open to blaming Connecticut’s own policy choices, not only Washington, for the pressure they feel. The Massachusetts millionaire’s tax gives that argument a nearby model. A few years ago, Massachusetts voters approved a surtax on income over $1 million, with revenue dedicated to education and transportation. The tax has funded programs including universal free school meals, fare-free regional transit authorities, and free community college for Massachusetts residents.
Two years in, the revenue has materialized, the state has not collapsed, and supporters now have tangible programs to point to. If you were building a political brand riding on a “tax the rich” argument, the conclusion is that the millionaire tax revenue can be tied to things voters experience: school meals, community college, transportation, education funding, and cost relief.
So, can Elliott build a big enough coalition around economic frustration, or is he mostly activating some primary voters who were already inclined to oppose Lamont from the left? Can he give voters an affirmative reason to vote for him, rather than just a reason to register frustration with Lamont? That is the test for Elliott for the next 77 days. The race for the Democrat candidate for governor already has a contrast. The million dollar question is whether that contrast can become a brand, whether that brand can become a coalition, and whether that coalition can become a primary electorate large enough to matter.
