CIVPAC endorses Governor Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s August 11 Democratic primary.
Lamont’s principal opponent, state Representative Josh Elliott, offers Democratic voters a clear ideological alternative. Elliott supports substantially higher taxes on wealthy residents, relaxation of Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails, a public health-insurance option intended to move toward single-payer coverage and a more expansive role for state government in energy, housing and social services.
Those positions are consistent with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. They are not the direction CIVPAC believes Connecticut should take.
Lamont has demonstrated that center-left government can pursue social goals without abandoning fiscal discipline. His administration has produced balanced budgets, directed more than $11 billion in budget surpluses toward reducing pension debt, preserved middle-class tax reductions and expanded the earned-income tax credit, paid family leave and early-childhood education. The fiscal year 2027 budget was approved with broad bipartisan support while continuing to reduce long-term pension costs.
Connecticut entered Lamont’s administration with a history of deficits, unfunded liabilities and fiscal instability. The state remains expensive, and its finances are not permanently secure, but its position is substantially stronger than it was before he became governor.
CIVPAC does not agree with every Lamont policy. His administration has accepted levels of state spending and public-employee compensation that deserve greater scrutiny. Connecticut residents continue to face high electricity, housing and tax costs, although the electricity problem reflects a complicated mixture of regional fuel constraints, transmission and distribution expenses, and state policy choices.
Connecticut’s enormous pension liabilities also did not arise by accident. Public-sector unions have considerable political power to seek compensation through retirement benefits whose full costs will not be paid for decades. Elected officials, meanwhile, have an incentive to promise future benefits rather than impose current taxes or reduce current spending, leaving the eventual bill to their successors and future taxpayers.
Lamont deserves credit for directing budget surpluses toward reducing that debt, but preventing its recurrence will require greater discipline in negotiating public-employee compensation. Readers can review CIVPAC’s position on labor unions.
Recent deaths involving children with open or prior cases at the Department of Children and Families (DCF), together with excessive caseloads and declining casework quality, raise legitimate questions.The DCF’s underlying challenges long predate Lamont, and the agency spent more than three decades under federal court supervision. But the present deterioration cannot simply be dismissed as inherited. Federal oversight ended in 2022 after the agency was found to have achieved sustained improvement; the state Child Advocate has since documented a sharp decline in core case practices, severe staff turnover and inadequate follow-through on corrective plans. Although recent child deaths do not establish DCF negligence in every case, the failure to preserve the gains achieved before federal oversight ended raises legitimate questions about administrative accountability.
Lamont’s housing record is mixed as well. He recognizes the need to increase supply but has sometimes been overly deferential to local resistance. Connecticut cannot make housing affordable merely through subsidies and tenant protections; it must make it easier to build substantially more homes.
Those reservations do not erase the central contrast in this primary.
Elliott argues that Connecticut’s fiscal restraints prevent the state from spending enough to solve its problems. Lamont understands that those restraints are one reason Connecticut can now fund important services without returning to chronic deficits and tax increases.
Political leaders should not treat every budget surplus as permission to create another permanent program. Nor should they assume that affluent residents and businesses will remain indefinitely available to pay whatever tax burden the state chooses to impose.
Lamont has combined progressive social policies with a degree of market awareness, fiscal realism and institutional restraint that is increasingly uncommon in the Democratic Party. His approach is imperfect, but it is considerably more sustainable than the program offered by his challenger.
CIVPAC endorses Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for governor of Connecticut.