State GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola Jr. introduces Ann Romney during the Prescott Bush Award dinner at the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa in Stamford, Conn., April 23, 2012.
The leader of Connecticut’s cash-strapped Republican Party is forgoing his salary until next year when the GOP is on better financial footing, a somewhat ominous sign heading into a mid-term election year for the state’s minority political bloc.
State GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola Jr., who makes $52,000 a year in his elected post, announced the belt-tightening measure in a recent email to Republican State Central Committee members.
In an interview with Hearst Connecticut Newspapers Thursday, Labriola downplayed the severity of the budget crunch.
“I decided to play it safe and forgo my salary temporarily to make sure we didn’t have cash flow problems,” Labriola said. “Since then, we have been so successful in replenishing our balances that we expect to be reinstating the chairman’s salary in the near term. So the sky is not falling.”
At the end of October, Republicans had about $62,000 between their state and federal fundraising accounts, according to election filings with the respective clearinghouses.
But in the wake of the November 5 municipal election, which drained significant resources from the GOP, the treasury balance plummeted to $15,000, barely enough money to get Connecticut Republicans through the months of December and January, said a person with direct knowledge of the party’s finances. The person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak for the party.
Labriola said the party now has close to $40,000 in bank and can meet its bills, including payroll for a staff of five people.
“We’re in and will finish the year comfortably in the black,” said Labriola, who served as party treasurer for five years before he was first elected as chairman in 2011. “December is shaping up to be a strong month for fundraising. But it’s a normal occurrence that’s gone on for as many years that I can remember that we spend our money to help our candidates get elected and then we rebuild our balances.”
In contrast, Connecticut Democrats, who have a stranglehold on the governor’s office, Legislature and the congressional delegation, reported a balance of $531,005 between their state and federal accounts at the end of October.
The cash flow issues of the state GOP loom as source of discontentment among some Republicans.
“I don’t want to give him a grade, but I would just say that it’s not the way I would run the party,” Al Alper, Republican Town Committee chairman of Wilton, said of Labriola.
Alper, who unsuccessfully opposed Labriola for party boss in 2011, said he is reserving judgment on the size of the GOP’s war chest until the end of the first quarter of 2014 when core donors typically open their checkbooks.
“If this were the end of the first quarter next year, I might be concerned,” he said.
Alper expects that Labriola, backed by the 72 members of the Republican State Central Committee, will rebound.
“When the chairman is falling down or falling short, they have a responsibility to prop him up,” Alper said.
Alper discounted the theory that state GOP is at a serious disadvantage entering the midterm elections because of money, however, saying that lackluster approval ratings of Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Congress, combined with the uncertainty over Obamacare, will help Republicans.
“They need hundreds of times the cash on hand because the wind is at our back,” Alper said of Democrats.
Not wanting to be seen as undermining Labriola’s leadership of the GOP, a number of prominent Republicans were reluctant to discuss the party’s financial health.
Allen Levy, a Republican State Central Committee member from Westport and well-known critic of Labriola, gave a brusque no comment and hung up the phone.
A Wallingford lawyer who comes from a political family with roots in Naugatuck, Labriola is the first sitting state GOP chairman since 1994 to be re-elected to a second term with a Democratic governor in office.
Connecticut Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in seven years. The party is embarking on a small donor program to help replenish its treasury.
“It was a tougher operating environment than we anticipated,” Labriola said of 2013.