Source: Hartford Courant
Candidates for statewide office keep trying to scramble the past to secure their future. Take Ned Lamont, a Democratic candidate for governor. His latest campaign ad refers to his unsuccessful 2006 race for the U.S. Senate. The narrator of the 60-second spot says Lamont took on the political establishment to bring real change.
Lamont snatched the Democratic nomination from Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a dramatic primary four years ago. The Greenwich scion then lost to Lieberman, who ran as an independent, by a wide margin.
The ad never mentions that Lamont's a Democrat because he's trying to remake himself as an independent in a difficult year for his party. Lamont spent millions disdaining Lieberman's independence in the 2006 fall campaign. For weeks, the former longtime member of the all-white Round Hill Club criticized Lieberman for seeking re-election as an independent, what Lamont now says he'll be if elected governor.
Lamont snatched the Democratic nomination from Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a dramatic primary four years ago. The Greenwich scion then lost to Lieberman, who ran as an independent, by a wide margin.
The ad never mentions that Lamont's a Democrat because he's trying to remake himself as an independent in a difficult year for his party. Lamont spent millions disdaining Lieberman's independence in the 2006 fall campaign. For weeks, the former longtime member of the all-white Round Hill Club criticized Lieberman for seeking re-election as an independent, what Lamont now says he'll be if elected governor.
Lamont reached 20 years into history to find a campaign theme. He'll be nobody's man but yours. If your next thought is about pouring gas on a fire, you're remembering Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s 1990 campaign for governor. He pledged to be nobody's man but yours. The three-term former U.S. senator declared that enacting an income tax would be like pouring gas on a fire. He won and began pumping accelerant on the state's deep recession.
Ah, 1990. That was nine years after Republican Tom Foley's first troubling incident with a motor vehicle and the police, and three years before the second one. The 1981 episode, reported by The Courant's Jon Lender a week ago, involved a party in the Hamptons, a collision between two cars of partygoers and a night in jail for Foley.
The wealthy Greenwich businessman, Foley (not Lamont), who's financing his own Republican campaign for governor, is having troubles with his memory. He can't remember at whose manse the party was held. He doesn't know the names of the people in the car he struck from behind.
He probably remembers his first big stock trade and the SAT scores that got him into Harvard. A night in jail? Pish-posh. Who recalls the details of an assault with a motor vehicle charge? What Foley characterizes as a routine fender bender felt like a deliberate ramming to his fellow partygoers in the car ahead of him. The police seem to have been persuaded by their version of the encounter.
The case is sealed and Foley's not going interested in providing anything other than his vague recollection. Twelve years later, he blocked his estranged wife's car in his driveway, relented, and then chased her through the streets of Greenwich. She says he ran her and their baby son off the road. Foley denies that and says he was only trying to get her to tell him where they were going, as she was required to do.
Foley sounds like a man with a bad temper. That personality trait is generating some buzz among political professionals. The party-endorsed candidate looks vulnerable. Foley sounds perplexed by the attention given the arrests, neither of which brought a conviction. He shouldn't be.
Foley was not well-known to the Republicans who nominated in May. He's still unknown to the party faithful who will troop to the polls for the Aug. 10 primary. He points to his experience in business, in Iraq and as ambassador to Ireland as reasons to elect him governor. We don't know many of the details of what he did in those roles or the rest of his life.
Voters shouldn't be satisfied with the face a candidate chooses to show. There's always more, and candidates often squeal when it emerges.
Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. He can be reached at kfrennie @yahoo.com
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