Weicker: State GOP needs to rebuild its brand

Lowell Weicker Jr., former governor and former U.S. senator, delivered a blistering commentary on the state of Connecticut Republican Party Friday in Hartford.

The political maverick who left the GOP to found A Connecticut Party and instituted the state income tax, Weicker called the party a “non-entity.”

“The Connecticut Republican Party mirrors itself after the national Republican Party. Forget it, it doesn’t sell in Connecticut,” Weicker told Hearst Connecticut Newspapers in an interview.

He later took part in a panel discussion on the state’s current fiscal crisis that included Ben Barnes, secretary of the Office of Policy and Management.

Weicker didn’t spare the previous two Republican governors during his commentary either, referring to John G. Rowland as a convicted felon and M. Jodi Rell as “a wonderful lady but one that was more interested in polls than governing.”

Unless the state GOP rebuilds its brand in Connecticut, Weicker said the state is on a dangerous path.

“The reason I think we’re in a hole: we don’t have a competitive two-party system in the state,” Weicker said. “You can’t do that.”

Neil Vigdor