Why Republicans Should Worry.
Republican frontrunner for governor Tom Foley probably likes John and Patty Rowland. He may know them outside the hothouse of politics. The Rowlands showed a hankering for the company of the wealthy that grew more pronounced over time. Foley liked to hobnob with Republican insiders. For years in Connecticut, that meant the Rowland and their courtiers. Foley and the Rowlands were a match for each other.
None of that justifies Foley minimizing Rowland’s extensive, criminal and dismaying betrayal of his public trust in an interview on Connecticut Public Radio today. (Prepare for your jaw to drop at around minute 37.) Colin McEnroe comments on it.
Foley ought to condemn Rowland’s corruption in the strongest terms. Foley could point out that partisanship took a holiday during the Rowland scandals in 2003-2004 when two Republican leaders, House MInority Leader Robert Ward and state Representative Arthur O’Neill emerged as model leaders of probity and the public interest.
Foley may not have enough millions to protect himself from his own spontaneous utterances. That ought to worry Republicans.
(By the way, Jodi Rell was elected governor once-in 2006-not twice, as Foley claims in the interview.)
15 comments
Each passing day makes it clearer that Tom Foley is simply clueless. He would be an embarasment as a candidate and, in the unlikely event he were ever elected, a disaster as a Governor.
Outrageous! This guy wants to be governor and he is openly saying that not only does he not know whether Rowland should have gone to jail, but he’s also saying that he doesn’t know what the laws regarding corruption are. And he wants to become governor? That’s insane. Maybe he needs to take a class.
Honestly, Democrats can only watch Foley’s ascendance and salivate.
I suspect Foley’s biggest mistake was in very publicly stating what many of the state’s Republicans actually believe (but keep quite about in public, ya know?!) Stuff like, “So Rowland was a little bit too greedy. BUT he built that Convention Center… and made the trains run on time!” After all, we don’t hear too many Republicans griping about felon Rowland’s resurrection in the public economic development field (That’s about money, and businesses, right? Sorta Rowland’s… er… “specialty?”)
What should be worrying Republicans is… themselves.
The Rowland era is over, and the state now faces critical issues which must be fixed. I’ve seen Tom Foley speak several times off the cuff and sometimes he makes statements that make pundits and career politicians gasp.
That’s one of the reasons that he is becoming more popular with voters. He’s not a career politician and he speaks bluntly. He sees the mess we’re in and wants to roll up his sleeves and get to work fixing our state the way he fixed troubled businesses in the past.
I think that’s what the voters want: a no nonsense guy who will do what it takes to get our state back on track and doesn’t worry so much if he doesn’t say the exact right thing the pundits think he should say in every interview.
Contrast that approach with Mike Fedele, a career politician who is very focused on saying the “right” thing to the right audience. He’ll says he’ll spend millions of bonded dollars to reopen the Wright School, but says he won’t raise taxes. He says he’s a conservative focused on cutting spending, but yet is taking millions of taxpayer dollars rather than using his personal wealth to fund his campaign even though he is behind in the polls 4-to-1.
I did not listen to Foley’s comment w/ Colin Mc (BTW, why would anyone from this side talk to him anywhere?), but from a conversation I had with Foley at a “meet and greet”, I concluded that his knowledge of the problems of the state and local governments is superficial and limited to briefings he’s been given on a few issues. Taken off his talking points he was actually quite inarticulate and rather condescending to little old me — someone who manifestly could not help him with $. That said, what “lots of GOP people think”, or might be thinking, about what was done to Rowland likely is not that he didn’t get what he deserved, but that there have been plenty of prominent Connecticut politicians and attendants over the last say 40 or 50 years who appeared to have done very well in life (way better than Rowland) w/o having had to “work” in the ways most people think of as work, but they weren’t prosecuted, never mind sent to jail and made the poster boy for corruption for all time.
Wow. Foley seems to be all over the place. Everything I’ve been hearing about him lately is negative. He is definitely not someone who I believe deserves my vote or any of the other votes in the state. Connecticut needs someone to get us out of a whole, not dig it even deeper!
Foley is an example of why politics in our state has been full of corruption and dishonesty; no one condemns or slams it! While Foley has enough money that he doesn’t need to be corrupt, my guess is that he will give a blind-eye to those in government who commit such acts of fraud. A vote for Foley is a vote for crime
Yes. This is exactly the year Republicans should worry.
I mean, they will gain probably 20-30 seats in the house, 4-7 in the senate (even though it only takes one to break the ever so coveted veto proof super majority the dems have) and hold on to the governor’s office. They even have a chance at picking up a US senate seat, and maybe a couple of congressman. I (as a Republican) am just petrified at that notion.
Foley’s negative press (yes, I am a Foley supporter and was a convention delegate thrilled to vote for him)???? Let’s break it down.
Foley has been in court this week. O No!!! Hide the children.
Foley filed a suit (the merits of which have not yet been heard though the supreme court agreed to which means the claim is far from frivolous) claiming that the LG is not qualified to receive over $2 million in tax payer money that he will no doubt blow through in 28 days on tv time, yard signs, out of state consultants, travel expenses, maybe a billboard or two. Yes, Foley is spending his own resources to try and save the tax payers money even before he is elected. What a terrible guy.
“Foley is only trying to stop Mike from getting the money because he cant beat Mike if he gets it.”
Yes. Those pre convention commercials helped him so much that he managed to surge ahead and get……30% of the vote there. Last time I checked 30% is not enough for a win. Foley would win the primary no matter how much money Mike spent.
“Foley has been arrested”
O No!!! It’s Rowland all over again. Foley has never been prosecuted much less convicted of anything. One stint was the result of an ex wife in a bitter custody dispute over exaggerating something that happened. Gee thats never happened before. The other a misunderstanding over 20 years ago that again was never prosecuted.
I think there was some other reason Foley was in the news. O yeah….the Q-poll (yup, same one he is destroying Fedele in 48 to 13). Foley, the presumptive republican nominee, is getting “trounced” by democrats and stands no chance of a General Election victory.
Lets break that down. The democrats are going to nominate Lamont. I’m sorry to all the Malloy supporters out there but Dan Malloy is just too conservative for the radical left wing democratic primary voters in this state. That being said the democrats stand no chance of winning the general election.
Take all the people that voted for Lieberman in 2006 and put them in Tom’s column, plus the few that voted for the Republican, plus about 5% of the ones that voted for Lamont (the environment is friendly to republicans this time, not dems) and that will be the results of the inevitable race between Foley and Lamont.
Looks like Truth Seeker has been “seeking” real potent stuff.
He won’t find what he is seeking in the Foley campaign!
This comment string needs a strong de-Foley-ant.
m. carey, Foley wasn’t on McEnroe’s show, he was on Where We Live with John Dankosky.
“Truth Seeker” – which Congressional seats in CT do you think the GOP will be able to win this cycle?
I don’t think the Republicans will win any Congressional seats this year in Connecticut.
That’s outrageous! I can’t believe he actually tried to say that what Rowland did wasn’t that bad. It seems like he has the same sense of entitlement that Rowland had by the end of his governorship. I don’t think there’s a single person that thinks Rowland shouldn’t have been punished just the way he was. This interview is going to come back to hurt him, if not in the primary than definitely in the general election.
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