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Governor Ned Lamont, primed for a third term, now finds himself between a rock, conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio, and a hard place, Democrat primary opponent state Rep. Josh Elliott. Other politicians have survived the squeeze.
Lamont was nursed early in his political career by former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, widely regarded as a “moderate” Republican until it became impossible for Republicans in Connecticut to regard him as such. Towards the end of his Senate career, Weicker had brashly identified as a liberal Democrat, long before the term “Republican In Name Only (RINO)” had become a fashionable tag for politicians who straddled both party political sawhorses in their highly misleading political campaigns. Finally, and at long last, Connecticut Republicans gave Weicker the boot, shortly after Weicker had presented himself in his last campaign for the Senate as a “turd in the Republican Party punchbowl.” During his last year in Congress, the left leaning Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) gave Weicker a positive rating ten points higher than that of Connecticut Democrat U.S. Senator Chris Dodd – no RINO he.
Lamont, who over the years has cultivated a “moderate” moniker as a Democrat, now finds himself facing a similar disposition of political forces.
The Democrat Party in the nation’s northeast corridor and California on the west coast has been marching left for decades. Current Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani campaigned and won office as a happy-faced socialist. Four term U.S Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been a tub-thumping socialist his entire political life. Sanders moved into the U.S. Senate after having served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2012, 2018, and 2024, winning his latest term with 63% of the vote. Lately Sanders has been stumping with Mamdani and –no great surprise – Democrat contender for the U.S. Senate in Maine Graham Platner.
Given the radical changes in the orientation of the Democrat Party, Elliott is feeling the juice.
CTMirror reports, “Elliott consistently has faulted Lamont, a candidate seeking a third term, for refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy, a theme he intends to pursue once he gets his public financing grant. Elliott is a fan of the 4% surtax Massachusetts imposes on annual incomes exceeding $1.1 million…
‘We have a full slate of plans to address the affordability crisis in our state and not do it on the backs of working families, the way the governor has,’ Elliott said Monday. ‘So it is about both explaining to the public the way that Ned Lamont continues to fail them — and that while they may like him, he is also the sole reason that they’re struggling to live in our state.’”
This is a somewhat deceptive formulation. High taxes and Connecticut’s overabundance of business regulation also contribute to the state’s affordability crises. For the past two decades, that crisis has, so to speak, trickled up from the certifiable poor to the state’s middle classes, and the upward flow will not likely be greatly diminished by a wealth tax. Whatever you tax tends to disappear, responsible economists tell us. Historically – not that the new progressive/socialist class dwells overmuch upon history – wealth taxes have tended to trickle down from the redundantly wealthy to the middle class.
The first federal income tax was initiated as a temporary measure to discharge Civil War debt. The first permanent income tax became law in 1913 following the establishment of the 16th Amendment granting Congress the power to levy a federal tax on states without regard to fair apportionment. Following President Franklin’s Revenue Act of 1935 during the Great Depression, the top income tax rate zoomed to 79% to fund New Deal programs, and World War II pushed the top rate to 94% in 1944–1945.
When spending is a constant, taxes do not decrease, which is why Ben Franklin said, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
The first federal income taxes were levies directed at those considered at the time to be wealth-hoarders. It did not take long for such taxes to trickle down to the middle class. A glance at a pay stub circa 2026 will show that the federal tax bite on middle class workers is much more substantial now than it was when the first federal tax was little more than a twinkle in the eyes of ancient progressives.
Elliott’s chief beef against Lamont is that he is not Elliot. As such, Lamont is less willing than excitable socialists such as Mamdani and Sanders to plunder Connecticut’s wealthy class, a staple of Democrat demagogy on the left. Lamont, according to Elliott, has been insufficiently severe with the Trump regime. Agitators on the left would welcome a return to a top progressive income tax rate of 94%. Lamont is by no means averse to spending money, and his union connections are in good repair. Connecticut’s high taxes, the state’s continuing accumulative deficit, and the insatiable appetite on the left for spending other people’s money are all signs of a democracy that spurns working class interests.
It is amusing to see how Elliot so far has handled Lamont’s off-putting niceness: “Elliott said Lamont is too nice to Donald Trump and too nice to electric utilities, claims the governor rejects. ‘Nice is a problem right now. Nice doesn’t solve affordability. Nice doesn’t solve fascism or fight back against fascism,” Elliott said. ‘So he can be nice all day long, but that’s a liability right now.’”
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