Federal Court Decision Bad News for Malloy and Fedele.
Among the forest of implications in today’s state and federal court decisions on this year’s election, was one change that could be lethal for gubernatorial candidates Democrat Dan Malloy and Republican Michael Fedele. The additional grant provisions of the campaign public finance law provided when a candidate outside the public financing scheme exceeds the public limits has been struck down by the appeals court.
If Fedele faced Ned Lamont, he would be limited to the $3 million public grant, no matter what Lamont spent. The same would apply if Malloy faced Republican Tom Foley. This strategic calculation could matter in a low turnout primary–like the one on August 10th is likely to be.
It may be time for Malloy to start campaign like a populist running against a plutocrat.
2 comments
The bigger problems facing Fedele are: no name rec, a boss who won’t endorse him, the fact he got smacked around at the convention by people his has served with for years and his awful campaign. All the money in the world wouldn’t have helped this campaign.
That and the fact that all this drama about joint campaigning would be moot if he had simply raised his $250K like Malloy did. He couldn’t raise his $250K because he doesn’t have the broad based support that needs to be demonstrated in order to qualify for taxpayer money. If a State Rep candidate can’t raise the necessary $5K to qualify and a State Senate candidate can’t raise the $15K to qualify and a statewide candidate can’t raise the $75K to qualify guess what, NO PUBLIC MONEY FOR YOU!
Odds are Jack Orchulli, Kevin Lembo and Jeff Wright will be facing this reality on Saturday that is of course the SEEC decides to break the law yet again and figure out some scheme for them to get their taxpayer dollars.
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