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In Thursday night’s televised WFSB/CT Insider gubernatorial debate, a lighthearted question about which three people each candidate would most like to have over for dinner produced a revealing contrast.
Republican state Sen. Ryan Fazio named Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ, and Babe Ruth.
Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont agreed on Lincoln, then added Paul McCartney—and Zhou Enlai (also rendered Chou En-lai or Cho En-lai), the longtime Premier of the People’s Republic of China and a founding-generation leader of the Chinese Communist Party—and "one of the most fascinating human beings" according to Lamont.
Of all the figures in history and culture Lamont could have chosen, he selected a senior CCP official who served as Mao Zedong’s chief administrator and diplomat for decades, helping consolidate communist power after 1949, manage the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution eras, and shape the regime’s foreign policy. Zhou died in 1976; he is not a distant historical curiosity to Chinese Communist Party loyalists but a core figure in the party’s own pantheon.
The choice stands in sharp relief against Fazio’s selections of an American president who preserved the Union and ended slavery, the central figure of Christianity, and an iconic American athlete. Lamont’s list included a rock star and a communist premier.
This is not an isolated curiosity.
The Connecticut Centinal previously reported, based on Freedom of Information Act productions, on the Lamont administration’s early and sustained engagement with Chinese officials. Records showed that within months of taking office in 2019, Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, and others met with Huang Ping, then Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in New York. Other correspondence included outreach around the early COVID period in which the administration sought assistance accessing Chinese manufacturing resources for personal protective equipment amid the pandemic shortages. A joint letter from Lamont and Attorney General William Tong referenced Connecticut’s substantial trade with China and requested help clearing the way to those resources. Later reporting documented the arrival of a large PPE shipment facilitated in part through those channels.
The FOIA record, as detailed in Centinal’s coverage, does not allege secret pacts, but it does document a pattern of treating Beijing’s representatives as ordinary diplomatic interlocutors at a time when the Chinese Communist Party was already the subject of growing national security scrutiny over intellectual property theft, influence operations, and the origins and early handling of COVID-19. Huang Ping himself was later identified in federal charging documents in the Linda Sun case as a PRC official involved in efforts that included blocking Taiwanese officials and PPE-related matters in New York.
Connecticut voters watching the debate saw two different instincts on display. One candidate reached for foundational American and religious figures plus a sports legend. The other, when given an open invitation to name anyone, chose a top CCP leader alongside a Beatle. In a state that has faced real questions about Chinese influence, supply-chain dependence, and the long-term costs of the pandemic response, the contrast is more than trivia. It is a window into priorities.
You can watch the full debate here:
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