DeStefano Flies Solo as Rell Fails to Show

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DeStefano Flies Solo as Rell Fails to Show

Ted Mann, New London Day October 04, 2006

Cromwell -John DeStefano, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, showed up at a convention of municipal officials Tuesday morning eager to spar with his opponent on a host of policy questions. But, as has become the norm in this year's race for governor, there was no one there to hit.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell skipped the annual forum held by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, and the governor's announced stand-in, the little-known candidate for lieutenant governor, Mike Fedele, bailed as well.

The governor's campaign spokesman took Rell's place during the brief candidate question-and-answer session, and afterward denied that Rell is applying the traditional Rose Garden strategy of popular incumbents - avoiding confrontation with her challenger and coasting toward November on a massive lead in the polls.

Both the governor and Fedele had other commitments, said the spokesman, Rich Harris.

"There's two people, both of whom have full-time jobs that they put first, and they cannot be everywhere," Harris said. "It's as simple as that."

When pressed, he couldn't say what it was the governor had been up to in the morning hours, and only that Fedele had been unable to arrange his schedule around a 'campaign meeting.'

And Rell herself, as she made her way into a fund-raiser with former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman hours later, turned her back on reporters who asked the same question.

DeStefano, the mayor of New Haven, was preaching to a choir of town managers and zoning experts, but, with the governor absent, few TV cameras.

A sympathetic audience, perhaps, for a self-styled hands-on policy wonk of a mayor, and one who used to head CCM, no less. But with the state's most popular politician nowhere in sight, it also seemed like DeStefano might once again be punching air.

"I believe there's work to be done in the state of Connecticut," he said. "And I believe for two years we've had a governor who handled the transition well but hasn't done much of anything."

DeStefano's tone, as in other recent campaign stops, ranged from irritated incredulousness to the pedagogic. The husband of a school teacher, he can occasionally adopt the prompting mannerisms of a reading instructor, albeit with denser material.

A typical sequence from Tuesday's lesson: "The most popular form of housing we have now is?" he prompted the room, drawing murmured responses. "Over-55 housing. What don't live in those bedrooms? Kids." And he was off, linking property-tax woes to state education grants to stagnant job growth.

Harris, meanwhile, offered some news of the governor's plans for a second term, including a pledge to revive her own property-tax reform proposal - the elimination of the levy on personal motor vehicles, an issue he said the governor would have examined at greater length by a task force.

DeStefano had a retort to that as well. Even as polls continue to show that voters like and trust Rell, her challenger has tried to portray her as reactive and aloof, more likely to call for further deliberation than to embrace what DeStefano sees as his own "big ideas."

"We don't need a task force on this," he said, referring to taxes and the education funding system. "After two years, the best we can be offered is a task force on this?"

The DeStefano campaign does not hide its displeasure at what it portrays as Rell's avoidance strategy.

"I think it's irresponsible politics and it's irresponsible governing," said DeStefano's running mate, Mary Messina Glassman, as she and other supporters prepared to demonstrate outside the Rell fund-raiser at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

"I think that the voters of the state should pay attention that this governor doesn't feel she has to participate in the debate for the office or the debate for governing the state, and I think that shows the clear difference between our two campaigns," Glassman said.

Glassman was surrounded by DeStefano supporters who held signs and passed out fliers questioning the Rell-Fedele campaign's commitment to women's issues, in an attempt to cast a shadow on the fund-raiser with Whitman, a former governor herself who went on to serve as secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Bush Administration.

The DeStefano campaign pointed to Rell's own votes while a member of the state legislature in the 1990s, including one against a bill requiring employers to post anti-sexual harassment warnings in the workplace and provide supervisor training to prevent abuses. She also voted against a bill that would have required the executive and legislative branch to take efforts to ensure that appointed bodies reflect the gender and racial composition of the state, the campaign said.

And they highlighted Fedele's vote, as a legislator, for a ban on so-called 'partial birth' abortions, as a sign that he was not committed to abortion rights and as a reason that NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut voted to endorse DeStefano and Glassman.

Both Rell and Whitman disputed those points in brief comments to reporters as they entered the fund-raiser, which was held in a third-floor suite at Rentschler Field, the University of Connecticut football stadium built by Rell's predecessor and running mate, former Gov. John G. Rowland.

"I'm very proud of my record on everything dealing with women's issues, not only as a legislator but certainly as lieutenant governor and now as governor," Rell said. "... I have a very proud record on the things that I've done."

She also defended Fedele's record on abortion.

"A lot of people feel very strongly on the partial-birth abortion (ban) but Mike has always been pro-choice," Rell said.

And Whitman downplayed any talk of a Rell "Rose Garden strategy" - the political term for the tendency of incumbents to shield themselves in friendly environs, like press conferences in the White House Rose Garden, while avoiding confrontation with their opponents.

"You can't hide," Whitman said. "If you're governor, you can't hide. You may not do all the things that your opponent would wish you would do, but hey, that's part of politics. She's certainly out there. She's not hiding from people, and her record is very clear."

Several hours after the fund-raiser, and after calls from a reporter, a spokesman for Rell's state office said she had never planned to appear alongside DeStefano at the CCM forum, which comes as the group marks its 40th anniversary.

"The governor had declined the CCM invitation to begin with," said Judd Everhart, the spokesman, in an e-mail message. "This morning, she was working from home on a couple of policy proposals, concerning health care and 'smart growth' in Connecticut."

That wasn't quite how Rell put it as she waved off inquiries from reporters on her way into the Rentschler Field fund-raiser.

"Actually, I was somewhere else, and now I'm here," the governor said, with a smile.

When a chorus of voices asked where that might have been, and what it was she had been doing, Rell kept smiling and kept silent, walking through the doors without a response.

Rell and DeStefano will both appear Monday in a debate at the Garde Arts Center in New London.