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Its Baaaaack!

For a couple of years, I have mentioned the Public Affairs Council’s (PAC) national “Pulse Survey”. This annual survey of more than 2,000 adults, usually conducted in early fall, looks at the balancing act of three sectors – business, government, and the public. This fall survey takes a peek under the sheets of what Americans think about how Washington politics is working or not working, and also looks at those global and societal concerns they believe American business should confront.

Conducted in September 2022, the survey reached out to 2,210 adults to see who the public thinks is the most trusted source of political information; specifically looking at which industries rate highest on their “trust meter” compared to others, and who the influencers are in the near future. 

So a week or so ago, the President of PAC presented the findings at the council’s annual board meeting with this lead in ….” What do American’s loathe most about Washington? The behavior of politicians.”

The survey found 10 reasons for this opinion. Of the 10 factors, the most discomfort was based on elected officials being more focused on getting reelected than serving those who elected them (71% considered this a major problem). Next up was the impression that elected officials routinely use their positions to benefit financially (66%), followed by the lack of civility and increased partisanship (66%), and finally, they lack trust in their elected officials over the amount of time they spend raising money for their next elections (58%). Definitely not a good look for public servants.

It’s interesting that when looking at the demographics, younger respondents didn't really see it the same way as their older counterparts in the study. In fact, they felt that the amount of time politicians spend trying to get reelected wasn’t all that bad with only 53% of Gen Z'ers thinking it was troublesome compared with 85% of baby boomers. Whether it was of concern that elected officials were benefiting financially the same age groups differed by 44% vs 80%. The trend continued when 43% of Gen Z’ers saw the intense partisanship- compared to 82% of the baby boomers who recognized it. And in considering whether elected officials spent too much time raising money – it was the lowest concern of the younger crew-  37% of Gen Z'ers versus 73% of baby boomers ranked it as the four biggest reasons they don’t trust elected officials.

Overall, participants gave approval ratings for various segments of the community with 37% approval for how the federal government operates; 50% for their state government; and major companies were at the breakeven of 51%. But the shining star of approval rating goes to small businesses with a whopping 85% approval rating! 

This is telling of how our country is changing and maybe we all should wonder what this will mean as the years fly by. What will the culture of America look like in 2050? 

The second part of the survey dealt with the public’s opinion of how businesses are managing or not managing social/community-based issues. They show greater expectations in the area of businesses being responsible for engaging in community-improving issues.

Straight from the report’s findings, we learn that protecting the environment and ending hunger were the top social issues Americans want major companies to be engaged in, with 68% of respondents supporting involvement for each. Americans were also strongly supportive of corporative involvement in ending discrimination by gender (67% support), race (66%), and sexual orientation (62%). Seventy percent (70%) of Americans consider racism to be a problem in the U.S. Unfortunately for major corporations, 21% said companies were playing a positive role. Seventeen percent (17%) said businesses were playing a negative role, and 45% believed they weren’t making a difference.

In terms of the least trusted businesses, it should come as no surprise that pharma and health insurance companies were rated at 43% as those industries were viewed as less trustworthy than average companies. Furthermore, according to the report: In regards to where Americans feel they get the most trusted sources of political information, the survey showed - friends and family (71% trusted) and businesses (44%). The least trusted were super PACs (17% trusted) and political campaigns (23%). The news media had a trust rating of 40%.

So which institutions will have greater influence as we look down the road in three years? The survey said that tied for first place were major companies and the U.S. Supreme Court — both with 32% of the public expecting them to become more influential. Two other institutions that were expected to have greater influence were the federal government (31% said it would gain influence) and political parties (30%).

So what does this all mean? To me, it means change is “a’coming”. And despite our desire to return to normal or accept the new normal, that’s not coming our way for a long time. Whether it’s in our workplace or within our own family, with this new information, the way Americans think about the future will be different. The environment is not the same as in past years, the next generation of leaders don’t see the world the same, they don’t have the same rules for work and home and they are more socially aware of a lot more things than our generation.

If not now, in the near future I hear myself telling my grandchildren about working long hours during the summer as a waitress to pay for my college books, my car, and gas. Similar to your grandparents who, if like mine, told us of how they worked very hard in cold and heat to earn money to go to college.

Next week in Connecticut there will be change as residents go to the polls to vote, but the balance of the political power more than likely will remain the same. But the individual legislators that arrive at the Capitol on Jan. 4th will be looking at the world through different lenses. Those who have served for a while will greet a whole new breed of public servants that more than likely will reflect the Gen Z'ers reflected in the public affairs survey.

Can’t wait to see on Nov 8^th!

Forecasts for the Election

CT Agency Corner will be back next week in this space, but in the meantime I wanted to take an opportunity to give our readers a glance of the margins in play for the legislative races leading into the big day Tuesday. Here's some analysis of what the state could be looking at next Wednesday, but as a disclaimer, it's important to remember that we can't predict the weather, the winner of the World Cup or who Kim Kardashian will date next so these are just PREDICTIONS and not FACTS. 

House of Representatives

The House has been controlled by Democrats for a very long time but the margins of power have certainly fluctuated over the past 12 years. Currently the House is 97 Democrats to 54 Republicans but the widest margin seen in history came after the Obama election in 2008 where Democrats held 114 seats to 37  Republican seats. 2016 brought a historic narrowing of this margin after the Trump election saw the margin shrink to 80 Democrats and 71 Republicans.

Republicans on Tuesday are expecting to pick up a minimum of five seats which would bring the margin to 92-59 and potentially give Republicans more negotiating room with moderate Democrats on certain policy initiatives. That said, 92 Democrats would still be a large enough number to have control over the budget and larger priorities without Republican support.

Senate

The major theme in the Senate races will be that, in a year leaning towards Republicans winning seats nationwide, Democrats are aiming to try and achieve a "super-majority" of 24-12. A super-majority is the veto-proof margin needed to be able to (theoretically) override any veto by the Governor. How could this be the case if the House is expecting to lose seats to Republicans? 

Currently the margin in the Senate is 23 Democrats to 13 Republicans and this year there were three critical swing seats in the Senate occupied by Republicans that are not seeking reelection. It's fair to assume that these senators would have easily won reelection had they stayed in their seats, but an open-election brings different platforms and candidates that will certainly reshape how their districts look.  

In summary, a "best case scenario" for Republicans in the Senate would be to retain those three seats and pick up two additional seats to bring the margin to 21-15 but the margin is more likely to remain closer to its current 23-13. 

Vote!

We hope you vote on election day for who you think best represents your community. And, in case you were wondering, I think election day will be 55 degrees, Argentina will take the 2022 World Cup and Kim will work on self-care for a while until meeting her new soulmate, Joe Canino. 

Eminent domain has a sordid history here in CT, harkening back to 2005 when the City of New London attempted to use eminent domain to acquire a pink house for economic development purposes. The owner of the house, Susette Kelo sued the City of New London objecting to this particular use of eminent domain. The ruling by the Supreme Court in Susette Kelo, et al v. City of New London in a 5-4 decision said that the City of New London did not violate the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment and were allowed to proceed with the taking of the property. Despite being victorious in the law, the City of New London faced pushback from the public. AARP, NAACP and several other interest groups were vocally opposed to this process and the local government officials and developers had more than the legal problem to contend with. Since that time, there have been uses of eminent domain for economic development projects but many local leaders are extremely careful to properly vet those plans, work with private property owners and only use the taking process in rare circumstances.

In recent weeks, the City of East Hartford has decided that they cannot bargain with a property owner on Silver Lane that has sat vacant and blighted for years. The Town Council unanimously approved using eminent domain to claim this 22-acre plaza and budgeted $4.5 million for the process. Silver Lane has been an object of previous Mayors’ efforts to reinvigorate the area and the city has $10 million from State bond commission funds to do just that. The plan is to solicit potential developers to turn the site over and connect it to a larger project where about 470 new apartments are being built just down the road.  

GOTV – It’s Rally Time!

All campaigns have a major goal in mind when it comes to their field program. They need to identify their supporters, get to a “win” number, continue to be engaged with those supporters (while also trying to add more), and then get their supporters energized to vote! This coming weekend we have what is normally the biggest piece of each campaign, GOTV (GET OUT THE VOTE). Many times, elected officials or those who want to be elected officials, bring in outsiders to their districts or state to get their team fired up and as President Obama used to say, ready to go. These types of events, mostly advertised in “rally” form, have already been happening in a few tight races in the state. Let’s check in on a few.

Just over one week ago, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) was at Yale Law School for an event and what better way to utilize his time in Connecticut than to help out a campaign that seemed to need an injection of energy, Representative Jahanna Hayes' race in the 5th CD. Senator Booker, a former presidential candidate who has a ton of popularity among the Democratic base, headed to Cheshire for a campaign stop. As readers of this column know, the 5th CD race is HUGE and the polls are tight. Energizing this part of the congressional district for Hayes is important, and Booker did just that.

Now, over to Governor Candidate Bob Stefanowski. Tomorrow, another New Jersey (former) elected official will be coming to CT for a visit. Former Governor Chris Christie will be headlining an event for Stefanowski and guess what it’s booked as? A “Rally for Connecticut.” This type of energy may help the candidate heading into Tuesday as the 55th Governor of New Jersey is popular in this neck of the woods. It's an interesting choice for Stefanowski to host this rally in Wallingford, a location he won by over 2,000 votes in 2018. Look for this event to help him drive out turnout there.



Sure, the above examples are big. But don’t think these types of events don’t trickle down to lower races. In Bridgeport on Saturday, there will be a door knocking event for local Democrats. In Norwalk, Stamford, New London, and all across Connecticut, you will see some serious energy from both Republicans and Democrats as we head into election-day and as the campaigns host their watch parties on election night. Grab your rally sign, A HUGE weekend coming up, full breakdown of the results coming soon!

November 4th: Connecticut Founder, Alchemist and Witch Protector John Winthrop Jr. Arrives in America

Today in 1631, John Winthrop, Jr., one of the most important figures in Connecticut history, first set foot in the New World, having arrived in Boston where his father, John Winthrop Sr., was governor the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A Renaissance man of many talents, the younger Winthrop was well-versed in alchemy, natural magic, medicine, and early modern industrial technology, and quickly acquired a talent for political maneuvering as well. After establishing the town of Ipswich north of Boston, Winthrop briefly returned to England. There, a wealthy group of Puritan would-be emigrés engaged him to found a new colony on their behalf at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Winthrop named the settlement he founded in late 1635 Saybrook after the two leading investors (Lord Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke). Eleven years later, in 1646, acting on his own behalf, Winthrop founded another major early Connecticut settlement at the mouth of the Thames River. Originally called Nameaug –the Pequot Indian name for the site, which meant “the fishing place” – it would grow and evolve to become New London.

Winthrop’s contributions to Connecticut history involved more than establishing new plantations (the English name for new colonizing ventures). He made the pursuit of alchemical science, medicine and industry the mission of New London, offering medical care, establishing mills, alchemical furnaces and iron works, while building a network of knowledge-sharing and trading connections that reached throughout the Atlantic world.

As an alchemist and student of magical arts, Winthrop was recognized as an authority on the acceptable and unacceptable uses of magic, and used that authority to intervene on behalf of accused witch suspects to protect them from conviction and execution. Before he became involved in witchcraft cases in 1655, Connecticut was New England’s fiercest prosecutor of witches, executing all seven of the people indicted for that diabolical practice between 1647 and 1655. (In contrast, Massachusetts acquitted half of the people charged with witchcraft in that colony during the same period). Under Winthrop’s influence (and later authority as governor), Cnnecticut moved from the colony most likely to execute witches, to the colonel that ended witchcraft executions a generation before the trials at Salem.

In 1657, Winthrop was elected governor of the Connecticut colony. He served continuously in that position from 1659 until his death in 1676, all the while continuing his scientific studies and cultivating influential connections in England and on the European continent. Winthrop’s scientific reputation was so respected he became a founding – and the first American – member of England’s Royal Society, still one of the world’s leading scientific organizations.

Winthrop’s connections served him well in his efforts to secure a royal charter for a vulnerable Connecticut colony after the restoration of Charles II in 1659. Against all odds, Winthrop was able to convince King Charles II — who held a contemptuous view of Connecticut’s puritans for harboring some of the regicides that killed his father — to not just grant Connecticut a royal charter giving the colony legitimate status, but arguably the most liberal charter in the history of British North America. The Royal Charter of 1662 gave Connecticut an unprecedented degree of self-governance, almost completely independent of British influence, and merged the disparate plantations throughout the territory of Connecticut into one, significantly larger, unified colony whose territory stretched to the Pacific Ocean. Though the territorial grant was soon reexamined, the Charter’s lasting grant of virtual autonomy was so comprehensive that, following the American Revolution, Connecticans simply made a few small modifications (namely, removing all references to the Crown) and continued using the Charter to govern the state until 1818.

While maneuvering carefully and effectively to secure the relative independence of the English people of Connecticut, Winthrop’s attitudes toward the independence of other people was more complex. Winthrop was one of Connecticut’s earliest enslavers. In a 1661 will, the left his wife “use” of half the time of his enslaved man “Strange, alias Kabooder” – three days a week – during her lifetime. The remaining four days a week were Kabooder’s to do with as he pleased, and at Winthrop’s wife’s death, Kabooder’s time was to be entirely his own. The will also gave Kabooder fifty acres of land and a heifer or cow to be used to breed his own livestock. Even as Winthrop benefitted from the enslavement of Africans, he fought fiercely – even in the face of physical coercion and peril – to protect a band of Pequot people living near his settlement from continued enslavement to the Mohegan tribe to which they had been given as a reward for the Mohegan’s alliance with the English against the Pequots during the 1637 Pequot War. Winthop’s sustained resistance to continued subjugation and enslavement of the Pequots was instrumental in helping them remain together as a separate tribe, and resist the cultural genocide imposed on them as a consequence of that conflict.



No person played a more critical role in establishing the government, economy, and even physical boundaries of modern-day Connecticut than John Winthrop Jr, whose new life in the New World began today in Connecticut history.

To view the full story on the CT Historian's website, click here.