Ned Lamont, left, Democratic candidate for governor, shakes hands with Tom Foley, Republican candidate for governor, at Greenwich High School, on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010. File photo.
Don’t tell Tom Foley or Ned Lamont that the 2010 campaign is over.
Thwarted in their respective bids to become governor, an office that went to former Stamford Mayor Dannel P. Malloy, the two political rivals from Greenwich will headline a Yale Law School debate on the “state budget crisis” Monday night in New Haven.
The title of the 30-minute debate and ensuing question-and-answer session for students: “Is Connecticut Wisconsin?”
The event is sponsored by the American Constitution Society, Federalist Society, Yale Law Democrats, Yale Law Republicans, Yale College Democrats and Yale College Republicans.
“Ned and I will need at least two (moderators) between us,” said Foley, a Republican who lost to Malloy by about 6,500 votes in the November election, a contest marred by a ballot shortage in Bridgeport and a week of wrangling between the two camps before the race was conceded.
Foley, a venture capitalist and GOP fundraiser who served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland under President George W. Bush, showed that there is no love lost between him and Malloy.
“From a policy standpoint, they’re literally tone deaf,” Foley said the proposed budget put forth by Malloy’s administration, which eyes $1.5 billion in new taxes to close a $3.3 billion budget deficit inherited by the Democrat.
“I made it clear in my campaign that I felt we spent too much money in Connecticut,” Foley said. “Government costs too much. Governor Malloy obviously feels differently.”
Lamont, cable television entrepreneur who lost the August Democratic primary to Malloy, a race that the state’s leading public opinion poll showed him winning, is saving his commentary on his rival’s budget proposal until the Elm City showdown.
“Tom and I both have a pro-jobs and a business orientation, so there will be some similarities there,” Lamont said. “Maybe the structure or specifics of the budget there will be a parting of the ways.”
Lamont, who vaulted onto the national political stage with his victory over Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary but lost the general election to Lieberman, sat in the front row Monday night for a listening tour stop by Malloy in Greenwich.
Choosing to stay away from the event, Foley recently started his own think tank called the Connecticut Policy Institute, a Manchester-based 501(c)(4) organization that he said is nonpartisan and will churn out regular white papers.
“It’s meant to be a voice for good long-term economic policy for the state and education reform,” Foley said.
Foley said that the think tank, which has a modest staff and will cost about $250,000 annually to operate through donations, is not meant to be a voice of opposition to Malloy.
Still, Foley made it no secret that he is gunning for Malloy in 2014, when he said the negative consequences of the Democrat’s budget proposal will create an opening for the GOP.
“If that’s the case and the Republican Party wants me, I’d be inclined to do it,” Foley said.
Foley is a big time fraud just like Governor Scott down in Florida. He wanted to privatize everythng just like Scott is trying to do and then funnelling it into companies owned by his wife
Tom Foley and the Blogger Trackers sounds like a 50′s dance band, but has no place in Connecticut or national politics. One of my partners told me that there is a witch hunt going on behind the scenes, seeking to track down and maybe even take legal action against critics, bloggers, hackers, and other assorted ne’r do wells.
Take some advice from an old, maybe wise trial lawyer.
Mr. Ambassador, emails are susceptible to alteration and their integrity cannot be guaranteed. The same is true for blog posts and online comments at news sites. No matter how angry it makes you, Sir, you need to rise above your critics and behave in a statesmanlike manner.
IP addresses and other identifiers are easily disguised, re-routed, even spoofed to create deliberate identity shifts. Your critics could actually be other people entirely, so if you go throwing your weight around with lawyers or D.A.’s or other threats, you could have OHHH such a mess on your hands and theirs. You might even get laughed at by the Judge as he grants summary dismissal and then entertains all the highly publicized countersuits that would come your way. The ACLU would have a field day with you on this.
And computers themselves, the only reliable smoking gun to validate whatever thin circumstantial case you think you might have against this legion of online critics, can be cleansed to Pentagon and CIA standards by special software that is commercially available to anyone, or simply destroyed and thrown away. Then it is a fruitless game of “he said, she said.” And you lose.
As a good prosecutor once said, “It’s hard to prove murder with no dead body and no weapon or other evidence.” The minute Mr. Ambassador goes public with any witch hunt efforts or vindictive legalities, it will become so ridiculously and notoriously public that it will set the Republican Party back a good 20 years.
The good Ambassador actually has a lot of momentum now, and Malloy is flailing around looking like he will probably fail. If Foley plays his cards right, keeps his cool, doesn’t show himself to be a seething Anger Management type, he will probably win the next time he runs for office. Be smart, Mr. Ambassador, the prize is within your reach. Stay cool. And win.
Sincerely offered by:
A Dedicated Republican Trial Lawyer