Commentary—

Blumental Takes No Risks, But Risk-Taking Isn’t Fatal

By Chris Powell

Ever since Joe Lieberman used it to oust Lowell P. Weicker Jr from the US Senate, Connecticut’s attorney generalship has been considered the best stepping stone to higher office. In addition to its important responsibilities for the public good, the attorney generalship presents many chances to gain publicity by striking poses against straw men and protecting people against things they easily might protect themselves against, like Publishers Clearing House.

So the decision of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to seek a fourth four-year term rather than challenge Governor Rowland next year is likely to be construed as a declaration that the Democratic nomination for governor is almost worthless. For if even Blumenthal — who is almost as widely recognized as the governor and Connecticut’s US senators, who could raise plenty of campaign money, and who has been regarded as his party’s strongest potential candidate — doesn’t think he has enough chance of winning to justify putting his political career at risk, what chance do candidates with fewer advantages have?

But Blumenthal’s withdrawal does not necessarily mean that Connecticut will not have a competitive election for governor next year. Some politicians are simply more cautious and protective of their political careers. Others, sometimes spurred by a stronger vision of public policy, are more willing to put themselves at risk for a good greater than their staying in office.

Blumenthal and others who are in office already and are reluctant to risk their offices to challenge a strong incumbent may figure that a defeat would end their political careers, and sometimes it does. Former US Rep Toby Moffett was defeated by Weicker for the Senate in 1982, was kept out of a primary against Gov William A. O’Neill for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1986. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress from a different congressional district in 1990 and lost again. Having suffered three straight defeats, Moffett left elective politics.

But other Connecticut politicians have had different experiences.

Lieberman, last year’s Democratic nominee for vice president, gave up his state Senate seat in 1980 only to be defeated for the US House of Representatives in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. If anything could have been construed as a bitter humiliation, that was it.

But Lieberman dusted himself off and two years later was elected attorney general, and the rest is history.

Rowland gave up what almost certainly could have been a lifetime job as a US representative to run for governor in 1990 and lost to Weicker. But even after being out of elective office for four years, Rowland managed to win the governorship in 1994 and then, overwhelmingly, again in 1998.

John B. Larson gave up a lifetime job in the state Senate to run for governor in 1994 and, though he had the Democratic state convention’s endorsement, he lost a primary to state Comptroller Bill Curry. That could have been bitter humiliation too.

But in what may have been the greatest act of grace in state politics for decades, Larson rushed to Curry’s side on Primary Night, heartily endorsed his opponent, and kept his hand in politics, winning election as US representative in 1998, though he too had been out of office four years.

In challenging Larson for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1994, Curry gave up the state comptroller’s office, which he probably could have held indefinitely too. Though he lost the gubernatorial election to Rowland that year, he was appointed an assistant to President Bill Clinton and has remained on the public stage in Connecticut.

With Blumenthal having taken himself out of the way, Curry will be running for governor again next year, and he may not have much competition for the Democratic nomination.

The conventional wisdom will hold that another defeat for Curry will be politically fatal to him. This is nonsense. For if he loses again, it will be only because he willingly faced great odds and did his party a service by taking a nomination that grander leaders declined. And politics today is now so full of placeholders concerned most about their own status that there is much room for anyone with something to say — and Curry has a lot to say because, right or wrong, he is devoted to public policy.

Winston Churchill, a politician who, thank God, was not intimidated by long odds when civilization itself was at stake, was not intimidated by a few political defeats either.

“Politics,” Churchill said, “are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can be killed only once, but in politics many times.” And, as he proved, resurrected almost as often.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.)