Face CT 8-2-26

Welcome to Face Connecticut, an in-depth look at today's issues. Hello and welcome to Face Connecticut. I'm Morton Cunningham on WTIC News Talk 1080, Light 100.5 WRCH-965 TIC. Our guest is Progressive Democratic Challenger for Governor Josh Elliott, who's also a Hamden State Representative. It's been a while since Josh and I have done an update together, but nonetheless it's good to have him on the program as we get ready for early voting. on Monday, August 3rd, and the primary coming up on August 11th. Josh, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Morgan. Where's your campaign at this moment in time? Sure. So brief snapshot. I'm a five-term state representative deputy speaker, been doing this work for a decade. Got elected about two years before Ned did. I announced my candidacy July of last year. So we are coming up on the 13 month mark. I'm the only challenger against Nevillemont in the Democratic primary. This is the first Democratic primary against a sitting incumbent in 48 years. we had to do two big things to make sure that we were competitive. We had to, one, get onto the ballot, that was difficult, and two, raise the money, even more difficult. To get onto the ballot that was in May, we had to get 15% of the 2,000 or so delegates that go to the convention, Hartford. We got well over that. We got 25%. The other bit was the way more difficult bit, that's having the financing to run our campaign. So we have something in Connecticut. called the Citizens Election Program. It's basically public financing grants to allow people like me who don't come from immense wealth to be able to run my campaign. So I had to raise $335,000. Now, if you're looking at Ryan Fazio, Malloy, back in the past, they raised about $250,000. I had to raise significantly more because it went up by an inflationary amount because I asked for the money after January this year. So it went up. We actually raised about $370,000. from people given between five to three hundred and forty that got us a grant of three point seven million dollars so we spent about three hundred thousand dollars over an eleven month period and now we're going to spend about three point seven million over about a four month period uh four week period and that started about two weeks ago which is why people who are listening are probably now just starting to see ads and why they haven't seen that previous just like you said we are about i think 10 days away from the august 11 primary date August 3rd, this coming Monday for a week, we are going to have early voting. Unaffiliated voters will still be able to change your registration to a Democrat if they want to vote in this primary. Coming up on the 11th, if you're registered Republican, if registered independent, you will not be able to change your registration. And we are seeing the race tightened dramatically. And Ned Lamont is now below 50% in the polls. So we are feeling very good about how things are going. I want to go back to May for a moment when it was the convention and you had earned about a third, roughly, of delegate support or just under a third. And that did take a number of people by surprise. You had to get 15% or more in order to qualify to be on the primary ballot or you'd have to petition your way on. What do you think is your secret sauce in getting to this point?

So the secret sauce is just the work ethic and the message. I'm pretty honest, I think with myself that this is so much less about me as a candidate and really so much more about the moment that we're in. So I had to run for statewide about four years ago for Secretary of the State. And instead of getting 15%, I was around 13%. And my feeling was could I try to cut deals and get that 15% in a way that's a say Jillian Gilchrist was able to do. to make sure that she got off the ballot for the first congressional district. That was something I decided not to do. I wasn't at the money that I needed to be. I wanted to just make friends. I ended up backing the winner in Stephanie Thomas and was able to then move forward. But because of that experience, I built a lot of relationships with Democratic town committee chair. So we have 169 towns in the state and in every single town. We have a Democratic town committee and we have a Republican town committee. So my job was to go to as many of these DTCs as I possibly could. And over the course of the campaign, I've been to about 136. I would have been to more, but I wasn't invited into every single one. In fact, I was rejected from a number of them. There was a lot of holding up people's arms and saying, nope, you're not allowed to come and talk to four people. I get it. That's part of the political process. I'm nothing special. It's only ever an ask for me to be in front of people. So I started this tour. last year, but really intensely between January through March. There were some nights I was in front of one through four DTCs, and this was every single day during the week. And I just think it was the fact that I was really putting myself out there. In the second congressional district where Joe Courtney is, I was actually winning about 42 to 45 percent of the delegates that went to convention because there were a lot of small towns that Nevillemont has simply never stepped footing. I was willing to go to every single town. If I could have been to everyone, I would have. But a big part of this was just simply being in front of people. I remember some of the videos that you had put out at one point in time, like in Bridgeport where you had to more or less fight to get just a few minutes of FaceTime in front of a crowd, one of those scenarios that you were explaining where you weren't always welcomed in. But you were ultimately. But my question is kind of along these lines. Josh, if there's support for the incumbent, there's support for you, the Democrat Party is at this point of time backing Lamont. Is there a division in the Democrat Party right now, and how do you overcome it? Whenever there's a primary, there's going to be intense feelings and this feeling of division. But what I will say is that I have been very vocal, that I will be supporting the Democrat in November, whether or not that's me or Ned Lamont. This is not something that Ned Lamont has said. He is more than welcome to make whatever decisions he wants to make. I am a true blue Democrat. Now I'm progressive. I'm an economic populist. I want to push our our party in the direction of helping working families fixing a tax structure. But when we say there's division, all we're saying is that we're having hard conversations about what our party stands for, about what the public would like to see our party stand for, about what the public would like to see their elected officials and government work on. And so this is the time to be having those conversations. If you're not doing it during a primary, then you're simply not doing it at all. And as somebody who's been doing this work and works my way up into leadership over the last 10 years, I can tell you how I see firsthand how well over 85 of the members of our 102 member House Democrat caucus are left-leaning Democrats who get a number of bills out of committee, things like a permanent and fully refundable child tax credit, tax reform generally, asking the wealth to pay their fair shares.

fully free universal school meals, talking about a public option, talking about unemployment benefits for striking workers. And these are all things that Governor Nevemont is single-handedly killing year after year. Now, the thing is, there are some moderate members of our caucus too who don't want to see these things passed. And so we have to make sure that we're having a robust conversation. But we are at a point where so many people have been elected to do a job that they can't do with Neve-Lamont. And so my premise for this race is that The state and the population at Alexis deserves somebody that reflects their values. Josh, let's get into some of the issues. And for anybody who's just joining us on Face Connecticut, I'm Morgan Cunningham. And he is Democrat candidate for governor ahead of the primary coming up in just a few, really a few days and state representative from Hamden, Josh Elliott. Let's talk a little bit about taxes. What do you have proposed for taxes? So the important statistic data point that I want people to really understand where I'm coming from is that the top 4,500 incomeers, the wealthiest in our state, pay less than 8% of their income to state and local taxes. The bottom 1.2 million income earners, the neediest in our state, they pay over 20%. It's a differential of nearly two and a half, three to one. And the reason for this is that we're the second most reliant state in the country on the property tax, which is regressive. It's regressive, but it's also a middle class wealth tax. And while billionaires are paying literally no income taxes because of the way that our tax codes are written. People who are working from nine to five are essentially getting taxed on anywhere from three to five percent of their overall wealth because the vast majority of us have the vast majority of what we own stored in our homes as equity. And this is what we use to spend money on police and fire and local transportation, public works. But most importantly, our education system, meaning that. The quality and investment of education that you get is dependent on the zip code that you grow up in. Now, other states that figure this out, they have county-based systems where one of two states that don't. The way that we fix this is by asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. Now, what this is not, this is not class warfare. This is not gouging the rich. This is not going after business owners that are job creators. But the fact is that the ultra wealthy are paying less than half of the rest of us are as a percentage. We have a broken system where we have people that are creating this wealth generationally while people are struggling now. It's not the best use of resources in our state and it's deeply unfair. So it's less so about closing tax loopholes because it's not a loophole. This is just the system that we have. So we need to look at what Massachusetts just did recently a few years ago. They implemented a 4% surcharge on people making a million dollars or more. This includes capital gains, dividends, and income. And the thing is, that brought in billions and billions of dollars. What did they use that money for? They sent it back to municipalities to offset the cost of education, bringing down their property taxes, something that we could do here. Right now, we are essentially a tax haven compared to the rest of the Northeast for the ultra-welting. I think that's a big mistake.

We can grow about the fact that we have some of the best investment in education. But if you boil down those numbers, there's a massive divide between who has access to that education and who doesn't. And my belief is that everybody deserves access to a good education. There's a situation that played out of the state of New York earlier this year. You might have seen the headline. Governor Kathy Hochul was trying to convince some wealthy New Yorkers who left for, say, Florida to come back to New York. How are you so sure that you won't have to make that same kind of plea? Well, I guess here's a broader question. If we are begging the ultra wealthy to move in our state, if we're trying to determine what our laws are depending on a few people, That doesn't really sound like democracy to me. We should be angling for a tax code and people will say a flat tax. So I believe in a flat tax, no. The progressive tax is meant to offset how regressive every other kind of taxes. Whether you're talking about the gas tax, the sale tax, the property tax, the car tax, all these fees and all these fines. That's why you have a progressive income tax because it's the only thing that offsets how bad all those other taxes are. What I will do is I will make sure that we build. We build out our transportation infrastructure. So it's quicker and easier to get to New York City. It's possible to get to Boston. We have more rail lines everywhere. By investing in that infrastructure, that is how you get more and more people here. And by investing education, that's how you build out disposable income, which means that entrepreneurs are more likely to be successful. And as you continue growing this out and you have an educated workforce. You're going to have bigger businesses that come here because they know that they have a base of people that they can then hire from. It's not just throwing money at the ultra wealthy. It's not begging the ultra wealthy to come back. It's building something truly sustainable here and truly equitable because, again, it's about building a culture. Progressive Democrat Challenger for Governor Josh Elliott with us this week on Face Connecticut. Josh, shifting to another issue, you have supported kind of more or less diversifying the electric grid in Connecticut as a way to deal with high energy prices, high electric bills, in which more municipal run grids will exist. Do I have that in a nutshell, correct? What's your plan specifically on electricity? Okay, again, I always want to start with context. Here's the context. Here in Connecticut, we have investor-owned utilities. We have Eversource and we have UI. And they are held in private hands, they have shareholders, and Eversource made $1.69 billion in profit last year. That's important to recognize because it doubled from the year before. Over the course of the 2010, shareholder returns also doubled. What we are paying for by being one of the most expensive states in the country for energy is simply the profits of these companies.

Eversource CEO makes over $15 million a year, not even including all the stock options and benefits. Okay, that's where we start. Now, across the US, 70% of energy is distributed like with Eversource and UI with IOUs, but 30% is distributed publicly. If you look to Nebraska, Nebraska as a state distributes all of their energy. publicly really important to know that what i'm talking about is not this insane alien bizaro idea it's things that we actually do across the u.s not only do we do it across the us we do it here in our state six towns including broughton including wallingford they have their own public utility and what do we know about public utilities across the u.s they are 30 to 40 percent less expensive Does that take into account here as well? Yes, it does. Now people will say that's because of the public benefits charge, they are wrong. The public benefits charge is not on those bills. That is true as a percentage, as a portion of what you save. What you're actually saving is not paying for these insane amounts of money going towards profits when you have a culture where when I first got elected, three Republican senators were on payroll for ever source. You have Eversource buying up people. The previous speaker of the house gets paid $50,000 a year and is on WT&H slamming this campaign. You have Democratic Town Committee shares. You have leaders of the party, the executive director of the party is on payroll. You have mayors, ex-mayors who are on payroll. Whatever source is doing runs very deep. But what I can tell the public is this. You have somebody who is willing to challenge. their own governor from their own party because I recognize that affordability is truly a crisis right now and I'm willing to take on these fights. Governor in Vermont has put out oppressor basically saying, well, what he'll do is he'll have smart meters, which essentially blames the consumer for consuming too much. And he will bring Eversource and UI in front of Pura every 15 years to do what? Wag your finger at them. The fact is we need to do a lot more. We need to have a municipal option. And my plan is to allow municipalities to purchase their grid. And if they want to contract out with places like Ebersourcing UI, that they can maintain the grid if they want. But in terms of raw ownership that needs to be done by municipalities, that will cut into the profit. And in places where just again, like Wollingford and Groton, where they have their own municipal power lines and grid, they have fewer brownouts, fewer blackouts. cheaper and everybody's happy because you're looking at the administrators in the face at the grocery store. It's not somebody living in a different state, collecting a paycheck just to gouge us. As far as implementing this plan goes, Josh, when you look at Connecticut, of course, there are large cities like Hartford. There are bigger suburbs like Glastonbury, but there are also really rural towns, Andover, Brooklyn, North Canaan, just to name a few, okay? So how does it look when you've got a bigger city that might be able to take on this kind of a plan?

versus something that's a little more rural where it might be, or at least people would expect it to be harder or perhaps even inaffordable. How does it look as far as installing more of these across the state? Is it possible and is it financially feasible? I think that is an excellent question. There's a multiple ways to come after us. So the financial feasibility question is really important because this is a big hit from Ned Lamont on this campaign. Josh's pie in the sky talks about these big ideas, but how are you going to pay for it? Billions and billions of dollars. Well, listen, we're not going to do something that doesn't make sense on paper. We're only going to do it if it makes sense on paper. Now, it's really important to know. that when I juxtapose things like the Aquarian deal, for example. So this is a sale of Aquarian from Eversource becoming a public-private partnership. And that payout by the public was a massive amount of capital that was sent right to Eversource because we overvalued it. So if you overvalue what you're paying for, you're not going to get your money back. And in places around the country where these efforts have failed, that is what has been happening. But when you value on the front end and write into law that you're going to value by book value, not market value, then you make sure that you protect yourself down the line so you're actually getting a requisite return. Now, how do small towns do this? I'm not going to tell you that they can. And that's why my plan is a public option. It's not a public determinant offer that they have to do. This is saying that if you as an administrator in the town feel that you have the bandwidth to do this, then you should be able to do it. You'll use state bonding as a backdrop. You'll have the COG system, which we'll be investing in to make sure that there's expertise. We'll have ways to make sure this can be done regionally, if it needs to be done regionally. Now, Maine was going through this, a similar process a few years ago, and they were looking at a full state takeover. It was two to one popular. Everybody in the public wanted this. The governor didn't. And ultimately, the advocates were outspent about $45 million to about $1.5 million. It failed at the polls two to one. Six months later, they were asked again. The public said by two to one margins, we want public power. The public wants this. What we have to make sure is that the political will exist to make sure that it happens. And that is what I provide to this position. Just in the interest of time, I want to go over to another issue, and that is on education, Josh. Just a few days ago, the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, endorsed the incumbent, your opponent, Governor Ed Lamont. And as far as education is concerned, I remember speaking with the CEA president some time ago, maybe a year and a half ago. in which she said that they were going to consider who they're going to be endorsing in this year's race. And part of that was because they were frustrated with how schools were being funded. Now, you're in the legislature and you know that earlier this year there was an influx of money that was found and sent to schools to help them get through the next budget year. But at the same time, the education cost-sharing formula.

which has not had its base revised since 2013, but has had bonuses essentially thrown in recent years at it. That's a big part of their frustration. So I'm not quite sure why they're backing him because they're unhappy with that system, but they did get some more money. My question to you is, what do you do about education and that particular issue? There are a lot to unpack there. Here's what I'll say about CE. 99% of the time when you as a candidate fill out a questionnaire, they will proactively reach out to you to schedule an endorsement interview. CEA did not do that. What they did, they sent out an email saying, fill out the questionnaire and then tell us if you want to have an interview. I missed that little verb on the bottom because that is so not part of the norm. And so they actually never had me in front of them even to talk to their eBOR or talk to their membership. So when they go through this process, but don't actually bring me in, I spend an hour, hour and a half filling out the questionnaire, I just sort of question the process. I'm not salty about it. But I also think it's really important to know that they really bungled the process on this. The other bit is that I was also endorsed by the four C's. These are the college professors across the state at our community colleges. And this is also an NHFT, the New Haven Federation of Teachers, also endorsed me an AFT, did not endorse either way. Well, I'll also say CEA has tons and tons of teachers who've been getting their teachers positions cut. Look to Enfield. There's about 130. positions in their public school system that got caught last year. The fact is we know and the teachers know that Nevemont has been horrific for a K through 12 and higher education. He doesn't understand that just because you are spending more than a dollar this year than last year, if you're not matching what the actual costs that we're seeing locally are going up from the state level that we're going to be over a line on the property tax and what that means. is that towns and cities have two options. They can't either raise their property taxes. They can cut teachers positions or they can do a combination of both. And what we're seeing in Norwalk and Enfield and Hartford, a New Haven across the state is we are gutting our education system. This is due to one person and one person alone that is Governor Ned Lamont. This is not hyperbole. But Ned Lamont says he's given the middle class the biggest tax cut they've ever seen. He's talking about a rate of 5% to 4.5% at one of those middle marginal income tax rates. But what he ignores is the fact that we have been historically depriving our municipalities of billions and billions of dollars. So when you get your property tax bill, know that it is going up because of them up. Now, you look to the actual funding of our education system and we know that the ECF formula per pupil funding hasn't gone up in the last 13 years. Now, what happens? Places like ranch with a no rate of 11 can subsume those costs. They never have a problem, but places like Waterbury, New Haven and Bridgeford, places that don't really have the taxable base because what is happening in these urban centers, you have religious institutions, hospitals, educational facilities, government buildings, nonprofits generally that don't have taxable property. So these massive swathes of land that are untaxable.

And so the state does not give enough resources back. And that is what we're seeing over and over and over, is that people are struggling. And Ned Lamont just does not understand that he is the sole reason this is happening. Josh, we're just about out of time. Any final thoughts? I know there's more we could talk about, but anything that we didn't get to that you want to get to. No, what I would say is this, is that I have a true recognition that people are struggling. Every time I'm running for office, I'm heading at least 5,000 doors. And what that told me is I have a broad array of knowledge of how people are feeling and how they're doing over the course of time. And the fact is that more and more people are struggling as more and more people cement massive generational wealth. And the thing is that we have the ability to help people here. Last year, we saw HR1 pass, which was a massive giveaway to millionaires and billionaires. We know disproportionately they live in our state. For us to say that we can't help people in this time of need is factually inaccurate. What we need is the will, and that is why I am running. Josh, this was just supposed to be a broad overview, but I'm sure we'll talk again. I appreciate your time on Face, Connecticut. And you tell me when you want me in? I'll be in again. Face Connecticut is a production of the News and Public Affairs Department of WTIC Radio.