‘We’re Gonna Win’ – Still Spunky At 83, A Ready Rosa DeLauro Poised For Power Of The Pen In Congress

For nearly 40 years Rosa DeLauro has served as the leading lady in Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District that covers Democratic strongholds New Haven, Middletown, Hamden and stretches west to include Stratford. All you have to say is Rosa and everyone knows.

I first met her during my days as communications director for Mayor Tom Bucci. Her husband, legendary pollster Stan Greenberg, was a campaign advisor. She was a few years away from winning her congressional seat in 1990.

A tireless worker with a masters from Columbia, she’s the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. That means if Democrats regain control of the House – Rosa says they will – she becomes the chair and with it control of trillions in federal spending and a check on a president that’s largely had his own way with the people’s money.

OIB friend Paul Bass, New Haven’s ultimate paperboy, interviewed Rosa on his radio show (see above) and filed this report:

Rosa DeLauro had her stack of policy-prep printouts. She was ready.

DeLauro brought the stack to WNHH FM’s studios for an interview Tuesday on “Dateline New Haven” about why she’s running for a 19th two-year term representing New Haven’s Third U.S. Congressional District. Just as she has for the past three dozen years and counting.

DeLauro is also preparing for a career-defining moment. If she wins the Nov. 3 election, and if her fellow Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, she will return to one of Congress’ most powerful positions: chair of the Appropriations Committee. She’ll control the gavel during deliberations of how to spend each one of the $7 trillion or so in the federal budget.

DeLauro said on “Dateline” she’s eager to regain the gavel to address “affordability” by boosting social-service spending and the child tax credit (rather than, say, focusing on impeaching Trump) and fight back against executive encroachment over Congress’ spending power.

DeLauro has brought her stack of printouts (sometimes four or five folders of them) to similar interviews she has conducted for every campaign she has run since her first election in 1990. No matter the size of the media outlet. No matter whether she faces more than a nominal opponent. (Some years I feel guilty about how much paperwork she reviews and brings for an interview.) You don’t find other candidates boning up that much on the details for local interviews, even if unlike DeLauro they have little experience negotiating the fine points of child tax credits or infant formula regulation or home heating oil assistance. She approaches every election, every interview, as high stakes.

Might those printouts have something to do with the unusual position DeLauro finds herself in during this election?

At 83, with more than three decades in office, DeLauro might seem like an example of the endangered incumbent younger Democrats have sought to unseat in primaries this year. (See: John Larson.)

Instead, she was the one Medicare-age incumbent Democrat singled out for support by the leader of a generational-change primary organization, named David Hogg (who said DeLauro’s progressive record earned his support). She did face two potential Democratic challengers raising the generational issue this year, but neither won organizational support or made it to the ballot. Her Republican opponent in the general election is not receiving money from the national party. Nor has a third-party candidate gained institutional or financial traction.

“If I wanted to be a good legislator,” she said she concluded going back to her first 1990 run, “I needed to know what I am talking about. It’s not all right just to be able to answer the first question. But you have to have the second, third, and fourth question. And my staff knows this. I tell them, get me the information. I will read it.

“You’ve got to be able to talk about what you’re interested in. You’ve got to be able to persuade them. You’ve got to be able to answer the questions. Oftentimes there’s just one bite at the apple. And male colleagues can get away with saying anything. Nobody challenges that, but women work harder.”

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