Understanding the 1994 Connecticut Gubernatorial Election

[homelycooking]

Understanding the 1994 Connecticut Gubernatorial Election
second in a series



Background

The 1990 Gubernatorial Election, which resulted in Connecticut's first third-party governor, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., since the Civil War, touched off national interest in the struggle of third-parties to disprove Duverger's Law and establish themselves as self-sustaining movements with a potent organizational scheme and continuous ballot access. Arising from this national change in the political climate was the presidential candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992, which won nearly 20% of the national popular vote. Third parties of the early 1990s filled a gap in American politics created by Republicans' newfound focus on social issues and the rise of evangelical Christian social activists within the Republican Party. Many socially moderate voters, willing to accept some level of abortion rights and wary of the growing power of protestant Christian fundamentalism, remained too fiscally conservative to vote for a Democratic Party, that was becoming increasingly influenced by the votes of minorities and dominated, especially in New England, by rather liberal politicians. In Connecticut, a predominantly Catholic state in which the "old money", rather than the New Christians, dominated the Republican Party, the appeal of Lowell Weicker's brand of moderate-to-liberal, non-ideological and non-partisan politics was greater than that of John Rowland's rather doctrinaire conservatism on all issues.
But this is not to say that the ACP supplanted the two major parties; on the contrary. Dogged for much of its existence by the unfortunate nickname "A Cult of Personality", sharing an acronym with "A Connecticut Party", it is undeniable that the ACP was not able, in the four years it held the Governor's Mansion, to find a successor as capable and renowned as Lowell Weicker. The ACP had trouble attracting new membership - by 1992, it had only about 1,500 official registered voters to the Democrats' 700,000 and the Republicans' 500,000. Further indicative of its membership troubles was its failure to run more than a handful of candidates for the General Assembly elections in 1992 (it ran a little over 20 candidates, and none of them came close to winning). In most districts, the ACP merely cross-endorsed the Democratic candidate, leading in part to a renewed Democratic majority in Connecticut's legislature.
In the elections after 1990, the ACP proved itself to be merely a spoiler. The 5th CD Election in 1992 was the only one to feature an ACP candidate not cross-endorsed from another party, and it was that candidacy that split the left-of-center vote and led to the reelection of Congressman Gary Franks, in the opinion of future Congressman John Larson. Though the ACP often picked up respectable vote totals through cross-endorsement, it was not able to attract enough voters by its own appeal to help build a strong third-party organization.
Weicker’s term in office, however, proved to be a highly effective one. The critical issue of his tenure as Governor, of course, was the implementation of a state income tax. While during the 1990 campaign, Weicker signaled neither his opposition nor support for an income tax, the declining economy of 1991-1992 and a $700 million budget deficit impressed upon Weicker that the income tax was a necessary, though regrettable, measure to raise state income and preserve some of the necessary state services that citizens had come to rely upon. Republicans and moderate Democrats were outraged and ensured that Weicker’s budget, which included the tax, died in committee. The legislature proposed three alternate budgets which raised other taxes and reduced spending but did not institute an income tax, all of which the Governor vetoed. By August 1991, however, some Democrats willing to break the budget impasse reluctantly agreed to support a graduated 4.5% income tax, and Weicker’s proposal passed amid last-minute vote wrangling and fierce debate. Lt. Governor Groark was required to break the tie in the Senate, which voted 18-18 on the budget, and the House passed it by a 75-73 vote. The feeling that the tax had been slammed down the throats of Connecticut voters was common, and provoked a 1991 protest rally attended by 40,000 in which future gubernatorial candidate Tom Scott led the chants of “We Hate Weicker!”
Aside from the tax battle, Weicker managed to use the fierce competition for votes and control of the state legislature to his advantage, passing a bill to legalize slot machines (which helped fuel the growth of the casino industry in New London County), charting a new course toward alleviating Connecticut’s egregious achievement gap by exploring regional integration of school districts and passing an unusually wide-ranging gun control bill that also banned assault rifles, all over Republican complaints. Weicker, however, did not mince words with Democrats, either; he excoriated them in a 1993 speech before the General Assembly for so rigidly adhering to liberal dogma. By using the legislature’s “quibbling” and inability to override vetoes to push through moderate and even liberal proposals, Weicker managed to accomplish things that did not come about even during two decades of Democratic governors.

The Candidates

The ACP’s heir apparent, Eunice S. Groark, the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, was the obvious – and only feasible – choice for a gubernatorial candidate, as she was the ACP’s only elected official anywhere in Connecticut beside Mr. Weicker. Her choice of Audrey Rowe, a bureaucratic operative notable mainly for being African American, for Lieutenant Governor meant that Connecticut would have its first (and, to this day, only) all-female ticket on the ballot.  
The Republican primary was merely a formality for John Rowland, the Republicans’ obvious choice to make another run for the governor’s mansion. He crushed his opponent, Secretary of State Pauline Kezer by thirty-six points, after a primary campaign in which Kezer, lacking in funds and name recognition, was largely overshadowed by the resurgent Rowland’s attempt to avenge his narrow loss to Republican turncoat Weicker. Kezer’s insistence that the Waterbury Republican was too conservative to win over moderate Republicans who would otherwise vote ACP failed to win over the party faithful increasingly concentrated near Rowland’s Waterbury redoubt.
Rowland, however, was to face an unexpected challenger on the right. Tom Scott, the populist firebrand, seasoned campaigner and loquacious talk-radio host, entered the race for the purpose of mobilizing fiercely conservative voters to protest the liberal politics of Weicker, get really tough on crime, and above all, abolish the income tax. Scott’s virulent anti-tax rhetoric, blue-collar base of support, and appeal to libertarians and hardline neoconservatives is notable for its similarity to those characteristics of the Tea Party. Considering in retrospect that Scott’s Independence Party challenge to more traditional New England Republican values in Connecticut was eventually co-opted by Rowland’s pushing the Republicans to the right, one wonders if the fate of the Tea Party will follow from this potential prefiguration.
Once again, Democrats failed to unite behind a single gubernatorial candidate and were forced into a contentious primary that seemed capable of overexerting both candidates and the party as a whole before the general election. Rising liberal star Bill Curry, a State Senator from Farmington, “curried” favor with established Democratic constituencies in hopes of building a strong left-wing base of support. Senate President pro tempore John Larson of East Hartford ran a more media-centric campaign aimed at moderate Democrats, and as the candidate with more institutional backing, was widely viewed as the favorite. Curry’s ability to mobilize left-wing Democrats, however, put him over the top in a close race.

[homelycooking]

The Campaign

With the absence of Weicker’s dynamic and controversial political figure, the early lead in the campaign was taken by Connecticut’s second most dynamic and controversial political figure, Rowland, who quickly opened up a sizeable lead over Curry. Groark struggled to break 10% in polling early in the campaign, as she experienced difficulty in attempting to transfer the coalition of moderates and liberals who broke party ranks in 1990 to support Weicker to her side. Throughout the campaign, she struggled with poor name recognition, a lack of funds, and a lack of attention – despite being Lieutenant Governor, Rowland and Curry viewed each other as their principal rivals and focused their attacks accordingly.
With the entrance of Scott into the race, however, many of Rowland’s supporters jumped ship for the fiercely anti-tax radio host. Rowland’s lead in the polls disappeared, and it appeared that the loyal liberal coalition that Curry built up during the Democratic primary would be enough to win the Governor’s mansion if Scott could win enough conservative voters and spoil Rowland’s candidacy.
Rowland and Curry did their best to stake out the election in bipolar terms – Curry proudly declared his support for the income tax and abortion rights and won the endorsement of the New York Times, though denying all the while that he was a “liberal”, while Rowland denounced the tax and advocated spending cuts as a solution to future state budget crises. The Republican took heat from the other candidates on social issues, especially when news surfaced that he had attempted to suppress a police report dating from a domestic dispute in the 1980s with his ex-wife.  Scott blasted Rowland as too soft on crime – a hallmark of Scott’s campaign was to bring back the electric chair as a deterrent to crime – on economic issues, and on abortion rights. While Groark attempted to rise above the aggressively partisan fray by portraying herself as the moderate candidate, she was often forced to defend Weicker’s record, especially on handing out “corporate welfare” as an incentive to job creation, and was unable to clearly define the differences between herself and Weicker – or at least the widespread perception of him as pompous, devious and traitorous.
But in a race where four candidates each had a reasonable shot at winning, the political calculus quickly became so complicated as to bewilder even the most able political minds. Rowland’s campaign considered, by late October, lending some praise to Groark in hopes that she would attract the votes of liberal women and accordingly hurt Curry. This strategy, as well as Groark’s overtures to minority voters, Curry’s barnstorming in towns supportive of Scott and Scott’s strategy of primarily attacking Rowland had to be executed with precision and subtlety, as one wrong move could lead to an unforeseen and unintended consequence. Groark voters wary of a Republican victory were actively courted by Curry, some Scott loyalists considered voting Rowland to defeat Curry or possibly Groark, and Black and Hispanic voters considered breaking with their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party to support Groark and Rowe’s all female, half-minority ticket, even if it meant a better chance of a Rowland victory, unless Groark surged at the last minute and Rowland was sufficiently undercut by Scott. It was an uncommonly complex election that remained unpredictable even up to Election Day.

[homelycooking]

The Results

Rowland defeated Curry by three and a half percent. Scott won an eminently respectable 11.5%, and even though Groark over-performed the expectations of many, the ACP’s share of the vote fell below 19%, nearly half of the vote won by Weicker, and caused the party to lose automatic ballot access.
A map of the results shows an intense regional polarization of the vote.  Unsurprisingly, Curry performed well in large cities, in liberal strongholds such as Mansfield, and managed to hold together the traditional labor-manufacturing voting bloc in mill towns like Stafford, Griswold and Sprague. However, aside from wins near Bridgeport, New Haven and Torrington, Curry’s wins came primarily from towns encircling Hartford. A number of factors could be attributed to this phenomenon: Curry, being a former State Senator from Farmington who was a factor mostly in Hartford’s political scene, won most of the towns serviced by Hartford’s various media while Rowland, by virtue of his Waterbury origins, did not receive the automatic media coverage typically bestowed upon the home-grown candidate. A Curry win also correlated strongly with a strong vote for Scott, which we shall discuss further later on.
Though Rowland did not increase his vote percentage by much from 1990 to 1994, he did not lose any town in 1994 that he had won in 1990. Rowland was able to win back much of the Gold Coast-centered, fiscally conservative but socially moderate vote that swung partially to Weicker in 1990 and returned to the Republican column without many defections to the populist Scott or the moderate-liberal Groark. Furthermore, he deepened his strength in the Naugatuck Valley, in large Fairfield County towns and in many paleoconservative Litchfield County hamlets. In Windham and New London Counties, Rowland also managed to begin to erode the Quinebaug Valley’s vote for Democrats, especially where the manufacturing economy had busted and voters determined that more substantial private investment into the local economy was necessary.



Did Groark’s project of wooing Black voters succeed? In part, yes. In Bloomfield, the middle-class Black suburb of Hartford, Groark broke thirty percent, indicating that moderately well-off voters were not as fiercely loyal to the Democrats as once was thought. However, in the cities, poor minority voters went with what they knew – the predictable dogmatic liberalism of Curry and the unions, syndicates and liberal civic organizations that he brought with him. Groark won a meager 13% in New Haven and 7% in Bridgeport.
The ACP’s best performances came, once again, from Southeast Connecticut, helped in no small part by Weicker’s support of a proposal to legalize slot machines in casinos and racetracks. From there, besides an overall strong performance east of the Connecticut River, Groark performed well in upper-income suburbs of Hartford, especially in the Farmington Valley. The unusual politics of this very wealthy region filled, however, with cosmopolitan moderates and liberals commuting daily to Hartford favored Groark, as the Valley’s high income levels discouraged Democratic wins and its socially liberal politics kept Rowland’s and Scott’s vote totals down.  Groark also won Salisbury in the days before its transition to a Berkshire Valley-style Democratic stronghold was complete.
Groark’s performance indicated why the ACP was destined to fail. As a somewhat generic ACP candidate, she broke the 35% barrier – the minimum vote necessary to win a three-way race – in little more than half a dozen towns. Contrary to what political analysts of the time believed, Weicker’s victory in 1990 did not indicate that a third-party like the ACP could win – it indicated only that Weicker himself could win. The 1994 election was the true test of the ACP, and as evidenced by the ACP’s poor performances in legislative elections in 1992 and 1994, a third party which did not rely upon the stature of a politician like Weicker could not survive.

   

Tom Scott failed to spoil the election for Rowland – he won only 11% of the vote and failed to crack Rowland’s gigantic margins in Fairfield County. He failed to win a single town. But the distribution of Scott’s vote is nonetheless fascinating and deserves a closer look.
Four towns in all of Connecticut recorded more votes for Scott than for Rowland – Newington, East Hartford, New Britain and Plainville. Common between these towns are a location in Hartford County, proximity to a major urban center (Hartford), proliferation of early-post-war suburban development encompassing almost the entire town, and presence of a sizeable, though still small, minority population. Scott performed most strongly in these and other former streetcar suburbs, home to blue collar workers who, by the nature of their occupations, were more likely to listen to conservative talk radio during the daytime. Scott’s emphasis on crime also struck home here, for although Newington and Plainville were not centers of robbery and homicide, they were close enough to those centers (Hartford) that they still felt the impact of crime on their communities.
Another reason for the strength of Scott among blue-collar workers may have been his emphasis on a very ideological, polarized conception of the tax debate. Small business owners and those living pay-check to pay-check likely sympathized with Scott’s essential frugality and insistence upon balanced budgets, where income must equal expenditure, and increased income justifies increased expenditure, and not vice versa. Those who were willing to accept a more abstract vision of government and its right to tax generally did not support Scott, especially after his vitriolic, hyper-partisan political history.
Since Scott’s performance was so strong around Hartford, he split the vote almost evenly with Rowland, resulting in Curry victories throughout Hartford and Tolland Counties.

Conclusion

1994 marked the death, for all intents and purposes, of the ACP. Groark and Rowe faded from the political scene, and without automatic ballot access or a clear party leader, the ACP withered away. Rowland began the first of three terms in office. Curry remained a bright Democratic star, even if dimmed somewhat after the 1994 campaign. Scott continued his conservative activism, though he never attempted another third (fourth) party challenge to the Republicans.
Much was made of the town of Plainville’s election history leading into the campaign – it had voted for the winner of every gubernatorial election since the 1960s, and was seen as a strong indicator of who had captured the crucial suburban working-class vote. That bellwether streak ended in 1994, however, when the town voted for Curry and Rowland ran a distant third. Groark came in fourth – a devastating decline for the ACP, which had handily won the town in 1990. But the surprise was Scott’s performance of 29% - second place and his highest percentage anywhere in Connecticut – signaling that not only was third-party moderation dead, but so too was old-style New England moderate conservatism. On a national scale, the 1996 election signaled this with the decline of Perot – we will have to wait to see if the Tea Party’s performance through 2012 confirms it as well.

[homelycooking]

Wow. I had no idea how long that was until I had to break it into three posts - it's 3,000 words long. It took eight hours to research and write. I guess I really am hopeless...

Please let me know what you think. Your questions and comments are always welcome.

[Napoleon]

Scott's performance is indicative of the reactionary racism of many Nutmeggers, as much as I hate to admit it. If you look at his best performances, it's nearly uniformly concentrated in the white towns surrounding Hartford. It also makes for a particularly strange Litchfield outcome. The race issue has definitely improved since the 1990s however.

My main complaint is with you declaring ACP dead. IMO, it was never alive (see CfL). At least there is no eulogy.

[homelycooking]

Well, CfL is a different matter entirely. As for the ACP*, sure we can toss out 1990 and attribute the party's strength to Weicker. But in 1994, I think many more people were voting on the idea of having a moderate third-party presence on Connecticut's ballots and in their elections. Groark was not a dynamic or polarizing figure, and while she certainly won "Weicker legacy" votes and the votes associated with her Black running mate, her strength against notorious Democratic and Republican opponents indicates some measure of "life" in the ACP, not to mention Groark's win in New London County. If Groark had won just a few thousand more votes, the ACP would have retained ballot access and I would have been forced to write a very different analysis.

* What a grammatical nightmare. Thankfully, we can abbreviate the party as ACP, lest we be forced to refer to it as "The A Connecticut Party".

[specific_name]

Excellent analysis here, homely. Between this and your maps, I must say you've contributed quite a lot. How do you get all of this data, do you go directly to the state and request it?

Wow. I had no idea how long that was until I had to break it into three posts - it's 3,000 words long. It took eight hours to research and write. I guess I really am hopeless...

Hardly hopeless ; ). You know you could use this as material for a research project if you're in school. I don't know what you study or if you're an undergrad- maybe looking for a grad program. But if you added formal citations and formatting appropriate for a polysci paper, plus removing any colloquialisms and whatnot, you'd have a decent research paper on your hands here. I'm sure it could be useful in a practical manner, outside of the purely fun element of it. 

[Napoleon]

It's also interesting how anti-tax the Gold Coast (most of CT-04) was in the 1990s. Of course, Malloy is tryingavoid this but I can't see Republicans getting anywhere close to these margins. You can see even Stamford went Republican.

[homelycooking]

Excellent analysis here, homely. Between this and your maps, I must say you've contributed quite a lot. How do you get all of this data, do you go directly to the state and request it?

Wow. I had no idea how long that was until I had to break it into three posts - it's 3,000 words long. It took eight hours to research and write. I guess I really am hopeless...

Hardly hopeless ; ). You know you could use this as material for a research project if you're in school. I don't know what you study or if you're an undergrad- maybe looking for a grad program. But if you added formal citations and formatting appropriate for a polysci paper, plus removing any colloquialisms and whatnot, you'd have a decent research paper on your hands here. I'm sure it could be useful in a practical manner, outside of the purely fun element of it.  

Thank you, specific/generic! I'm naturally a political science major, so I have plenty of expericence with citations, formatting, etc. But I'd have to rewrite most of this if I was to use it for school, since I am home for the summer and don't have access to my university library. While I stand by my conclusions and am confident in their basic accuracy, I could (and should) enrich them futher with better sources. I'm a bit consumed at the moment, though, with my project to establish the authoritative archve of Connecticut's electoral history...

And the CT SotS has the data on their website.

[homelycooking]

It's also interesting how anti-tax the Gold Coast (most of CT-04) was in the 1990s. Of course, Malloy is tryingavoid this but I can't see Republicans getting anywhere close to these margins. You can see even Stamford went Republican.

Stamford is an Edge City (see J. Garreau) that once was very suburban in character, akin to Greenwich, but is now developing into an urban center in its own right, with a booming minority population. I don't think observers of that time would have been surprised to see Stamford support Rowland.

Anti-tax, yes. But not from the libertarian, proto-Tea Party perspective of Tom Scott, who recorded his lowest percentages in the Gold Coast.

[Napoleon]

Most observers in 1988 wouldn't have been that surprised to see him win CT but anyone today would be surprised to see a Republican win. That's all I was saying. I do have to give Rowland credit for sort of pretending to be a social moderate.

Stamford will be the next Bridgeport, IMO. Definitely not the city I was born in anymore.

[CatoMinor]

I cannot wait till the next installment

[homelycooking]

Most observers in 1988 wouldn't have been that surprised to see him win CT but anyone today would be surprised to see a Republican win. That's all I was saying. I do have to give Rowland credit for sort of pretending to be a social moderate.

Stamford will be the next Bridgeport, IMO. Definitely not the city I was born in anymore.

Rowland succeeded at that quite well. In an election so centered on economic and taxation issues, social issues receded quickly from the forefront. In any case, die-hard pro-life voters could always throw away their votes on Joseph Zdonczyk.