Election preview: U.S. Senate, U.S. House, 187 seats in CT legislature in races Tuesday

Hartford Courant – Sunday, November 3, 2024
By Christopher Keating

After months of disputes, harsh rhetoric, and attack ads on television, the 2024 election is finally coming to an end Tuesday.

Some voters are exhausted by a presidential campaign that essentially lasts two years, including jockeying and maneuvering even before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. But this year’s version was shortened in a way when Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden in August to take on former President Donald Trump.

In Connecticut, more than 550,000 voters have already cast ballots due to early voting, but many others plan to be voting on the traditional Election Day.

Besides the presidency, the contests include a statewide election for U.S. Senate, five regional races for the U.S. House of Representatives, and all 187 seats in the state legislature.

Of the 187 seats, 44 are uncontested, including five in the state Senate and 39 in the House. The House includes 27 Democrats and 12 Republicans in communities where their party dominates. In Hartford, five of the city’s six House districts are uncontested, while three incumbent Democrats in House districts in formerly competitive West Hartford are uncontested as the Republicans are not running a candidate.

U.S. Senate

With an expanding national profile, Sen. Chris Murphy is seeking his third, six-year term in a rematch against Republican restaurant owner Matthew Corey, whom Murphy defeated by 20 percentage points in 2018.

In their first and only debate last week, the two combatants clashed over the economy, taxes, immigration, and abortion, among others.

They also battled over guns, which has become a signature issue for Murphy because he helped negotiate the most far-reaching federal gun safety bill over the past 30 years. Part of the dispute arose when Murphy was asked about sponsoring legislation to take school resource officers out of the schools. Murphy’s campaign, though, said the information came from an incorrect headline from 2020 on a bill that does not do what Corey says it does.

“Well, I actually haven’t introduced legislation to remove school resource officers,” Murphy said during the debate. “I’ve introduced legislation to direct federal funding toward social workers and psychologists that I think are very badly needed. I actually think it should be up to every individual school district whether they have armed officers, and I support their decisions when they choose to bring those security personnel into the schools.”

Corey, who has called for more school resource officers, said he can support armed teachers in certain parts of the country if approved by the local school boards.

“If there are trained military people, if they are former police officers, I don’t have a problem with that,” Corey said. “Look, that’s up to the communities itself, whatever school districts want to make up their mind. … Our police officers are being attacked every day because of the policies that are coming out of this administration, and Senator Murphy, who embraces this administration, is soft on crime. Catch and release doesn’t work. People are walking back on the streets, and our police are handcuffed.”

Murphy countered, “It is true that crime is coming down in this country. It is true there is significantly less urban gun crime. … I don’t know why we want to go back. Donald Trump says he wants to eliminate all the progress we’ve made on tightening our gun laws on the first day that he’s in office. That would be a disaster for us.”

Later in the debate, Corey said he owns “a few guns,” while Murphy said that he does not. “But I support every law-abiding citizen’s right to own a gun, and I’ll continue to do that,” Murphy said.

After the debate, the two sides continued to disagree – with Corey saying that Murphy lied and Murphy’s campaign saying the bill Murphy co-sponsored does not tell state or local school boards what to do about armed guards and does not remove resource officers from the schools.

A nationally known senator who often appears on MSNBC and other outlets, Murphy holds a huge fundraising advantage with $6.88 million on hand as of Oct. 16. The underfunded Corey had less than $100,000 and only recently started broadcasting television commercials to compete against Murphy’s ongoing blitz of constant ads on local news programs and channels like ESPN, Bravo, and HGTV, among others.

Two other candidates are on the ballot but did not appear in the debate. They are Justin C. Paglino of the Green Party and Robert Finley Hyde of the Cheaper Gas Groceries Party, which he created this year as he gathered enough signatures to secure a spot on line 2G. Paglino had less than $3,400 in cash on hand, while Hyde had $47, according to the most recent public finance records.

Hyde complained that he was excluded from the debate after being told that he did not meet the minimum polling requirements.

“This isn’t just an issue of a debate,” said Hyde, a Trump supporter who has run in the past as a Republican. “It’s an issue of whether we value true democracy or a system rigged for political elites.”

5th District

The stakes are sky-high in the 5th District as U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes is battling against Republican George Logan in a rematch of the 2022 race that Hayes won by less than one percentage point. As a result, both national parties targeted the race, which this year will help decide the U.S. House majority and the next Speaker.

Punchbowl News, which is read by Washington political insiders, noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson has visited 40 states since taking the top job and planned to visit at least seven states during the final week, including battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, along with the Nutmeg State.

“The state that sticks out to us on that list is Connecticut, where Republicans haven’t won a federal election since 2006,” Punchbowl said. “This fundraiser [for Logan] has been on the books for some time. Most Republicans think this race in the 5th District is out of reach for the GOP.”

Logan sent a fundraising email to his supporters with a video of him standing next to Johnson, who said, “This is one of the biggest and most important races in all of America. George Logan can flip this seat from blue to red.”

But in a major political blow for Logan, a key national Republican group, the Congressional Leadership Fund, withdrew $600,000 in planned commercials and instead redirected that money to other candidates in competitive races.

The district is now rated as “lean Democrat” by the highly influential Cook Political Report that charts races closely. In addition, top lawmakers are keenly aware that Biden beat Trump by 11 percentage point in the district in 2020.

A recent poll by Emerson College, The Hill, and WTNH, Channel 8 showed that Hayes was ahead of Logan by only three percentage points in the sprawling, 41-town district that stretches from Simsbury to Danbury to Salisbury along the New York and Massachusetts borders. Democrats have dismissed the poll as inaccurate, while Republicans said it was correct because voters are frustrated by high grocery prices and too much federal spending.

Hayes responded by saying she has seen at least five internal polls that showed she is ahead of Logan by more than the margin shown by the Emerson Poll. As such, she said it made sense for the Congressional Leadership Fund to pull back on the TV ad buy.

“If Mike Johnson’s polling showed it was a dead heat, they wouldn’t be pulling up stakes and moving somewhere else,” Hayes told The Courant. “That’s pretty basic. Anyone who ever ran a campaign or worked on a campaign, that’s pretty basic.”

One of the biggest outside supporters for Logan remains Americans for Prosperity Action, a name that is unknown to most voters for a national group that was created by the conservative Koch Brothers.

The group, which seeks to elect Republicans around the nation, sent at least eight campaign fliers in the U.S. mail to voters in the district that praised Logan and criticized Hayes. In addition, supporters went door-to-door and left hang tags at homes with pro-Logan campaign literature saying it was paid by Americans for Prosperity Action.

Republicans have blasted Hayes for remaining at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago when a major flood caused millions of dollars in damages on Sunday, August 18 in her district. Hayes, though, says she started making telephone calls in Chicago for assistance that eventually led to a disaster declaration by Biden to allow reimbursements by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA.

State Senate

Three Republican incumbents are trying to hold their seats in particularly tight races in the state Senate, where Democrats currently maintain a 24-12 majority. But some optimistic Democrats think they can win those seats under the assumption that there will be a huge voter turnout in a presidential year. If so, that would give the Democrats a supermajority of 75% at 27 to 9 in the Senate, their highest margin in years.

Those three races were all razor-thin battles in 2022 as none of the three Republicans reached 51%. That was in the off-year elections, and Democrats note that the turnout is expected to be far higher for the bitter presidential battle between Harris and Trump.

Part of the change in votes is from the shifting demographics in Fairfield County, which has become more Democratic at the same time that pockets of the Second Congressional District in eastern Connecticut have become more Republican and supportive of Trump.

A key example of the changes is that Greenwich remained a hardcore Republican stronghold for more than 80 years before shifting sharply by 2020 when Biden defeated Trump in Greenwich by 62% to 37%, a 25-point win that would have been unthinkable in the past. The win was even larger than Hillary Clinton’s 18-point win over Trump in Greenwich in 2016. When the gap is that wide at the top of the ticket, political operatives say it is often difficult for lesser-known candidates in down-ballot races to pull off a victory in tight races.

The tightest races include Republican state Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich against Democrat Nick Simmons, a former Greenwich resident who has since moved to more-Democratic Stamford. A second key race pits longtime Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield against upstart Democrat Rob Blanchard, an insider who has worked for many top Democrats. Both Simmons and Blanchard are former aides to Gov. Ned Lamont.

Outside of Fairfield County, the third major race pits first-term Republican Senator Lisa Seminara of Avon against Democrat Paul Honig of Harwinton in a rematch of their nail-biter that Seminara won two years ago by 50.1% to 49.9%.

But Republicans have tradition on their side as they have held the seat in the 8th District for more than 50 years, dating back to the tenure of Republican Lewis B. Rome in 1970. The boundaries have changed through redistricting over the decades, but the core towns like Canton and Simsbury still remain. The 11-town district now stretches from Avon to Colebrook and Norfolk.

Both candidates will appear twice on the ballot. Seminara has the Republican and Independent Party lines, while Honig has the Democratic Party and union-backed Working Families Party.

Part of the race has centered around abortion as Honig has blasted Seminara in multiple mailers sent to voters’ homes.

“I’m pro-choice,” Honig told the crowd during a debate at a regional high school. “I always have been. I always will be. Connecticut’s abortion laws have been on the books for 30 years, and they served our citizens well, and I will fight to defend them. This is a different position from Senator Seminara, who has publicly stated, ‘I’m pro-life. I always have been. I always will be.’ ”

Seminara responded in personal terms, saying she has a daughter who was born with cerebral palsy after they both survived a difficult birth.

“I am so glad we are talking about this question tonight because my opponent has painted me out to be an extremist for the past three years, and it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Seminara said. “It is clear to me that the majority of my constituents want the right to choose and thus as your senator, I respect that and will not change existing law.”

State House

With difficulty in recruiting candidates in partisan districts where veteran lawmakers consistently win races, 39 of the 151 state House of Representatives races are unopposed.

These include seats held by prominent legislators like House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford, Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford, longtime budget committee co-chairwoman Toni Walker of New Haven, and outspoken liberal lawmaker and potential future gubernatorial candidate Josh Elliott of Hamden. In West Hartford, Democratic incumbents Jillian Gilchrest, Tammy Exum and Kate Farrar are all running unopposed.

Democrats currently hold the majority in the House by 98 to 53, which is a far larger margin than the 79-72 Democratic advantage in 2017 after the 2016 elections that vaulted Trump into the White House.

In Simsbury, incumbent Democrat Melissa Osborne is facing Republican newcomer Michael Schulitz, an investment portfolio manager who has also been a youth football coach. Osborne describes herself as “Simsbury’s independent voice in Hartford” who brought home $2.1 million to the town, including $900,000 for the Performing Arts Center that attracts high-profile musical acts and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, among others. Schulitz says he will “lower taxes, decrease energy costs by including hydroelectric and nuclear as green energy, and reduce business regulations.”

In competitive races, eight-term state Rep. Michelle L. Cook, who has a history of winning tight races, is running against Republican newcomer Joe Canino in Torrington.

In a tossup district in Southington, state Rep. Chris Poulos is running on the Democratic and Independent Party lines against Republican town council member James E. Morelli, Jr. The race is being closely watched because Poulos, a moderate Democrat, won in 2022 in one of the closest elections in Connecticut history. The contest was decided after a recount by a single vote.

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