Gubernatorial hopeful Bob Stefanowski, just one day after being certified to appear on the August primary ballot, made it a point to attack three of his GOP opponents for their use of public financing for their runs.
He even vowed to propose to eliminate the Citizens Election Program for the governor’s race.
“I don’t mind it for the state legislators. It's part-time jobs. It’s not a ton of money,” Stefanowski said at his Branford headquarters. “But for a full-time gubernatorial candidate in a state that’s essentially bankrupt to be asking for $20,000 a day to buy bumper stickers and yard signs, I don’t know how you get yourself comfortable with that. I couldn’t do it.”
Stefanowksi, making his first ever run for any kind of public office, has run an unconventional campaign by Connecticut standards.
He effectively ignored many Republican campaign norms, like lobbying delegates to the state’s convention, attempting to woo the likes of party insiders.
Instead, Stefanowski attended local Republican Town Committee meetings, and pounded the pavement collecting petition signatures to achieve ballot access.
On Monday, he became the first Republican to ever qualify for the gubernatorial primary in that fashion, and he feels even better about his chances in the primary.
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“Right now, I’ve got 16,000 signatures from registered Republicans, going into a race that’s probably 25-30,000 votes. We can go back to those people. They already signed my ballot. Again, we’ve been an unconventional campaign from the start and it’s really worked well for us to date.”
Stefanowski spent his professional career working as an executive for General Electric and for UBS in London. He also worked in private equity. He says that career, managing a $500 billion balance sheet, and overseeing up to 10,000 people, makes him uniquely qualified to be governor compared to the other Republicans running.
The Madison resident touts his humble roots in New Haven as another qualifying factor.
He says his business background is what can pull Connecticut out of the economic doldrums, though his rhetoric is loftier than the math that follows it.
He proposes gradually phasing out the state’s income tax, the General Fund’s largest single source of revenue of more than $9 billion annually. Stefanowski says growth in the private sector and increased spending by consumers will lead to a better state economy.
“When people have more take home pay, hopefully they’re going to save some of that, but they’re also going to buy goods and services,” Stefanowski says.
However, he doesn’t have a complete answer when it comes to replacing the revenue that the income tax provides to the state. By saying increased spending will lead to prosperity, that’s relying heavily on the state’s use taxes like sales in order for the state to generate more revenue. Stefanowski says increased corporate growth as a result of other business tax cuts will lead to more people buying homes, cars, and doing more shopping which will fill the state’s coffers.
“Corporations will start to add people coming in. We’ll have a larger tax base because won’t be fleeing the state like they are right now.”
As for another tax issue that’s popped up on the campaign trail, Stefanowski says he does not favor imposing any taxes on endowments on institutions like Yale University.
He says a quote attributed to him back in February, where he apparently endorsed the concept, was a “throwaway line.”
Stefanowski clarified his position saying any endowment tax, “was never part of my formal plan.”
As for the rest of the race, Stefanowski is relying on donors to fund his race, and says that path provides him more credibility than others running for the Republican nomination. He says he can discuss being fiscally responsible with taxpayers’ money in ways the other Republicans simply cannot.
“One of the reasons I’ve been successful in business, is I’ve walked the talk and I do what I say. I think when you begin being hypocritical, it’s going to hurt you at some point.”
