Connecticut hasn’t elected a Republican senator for 30 years, or maybe 60 years, if you don’t want to count Lowell Weicker, and there are surely Republicans who don’t.
Weicker was elected as a bona fide Republican senator three times from 1970 to 1982 but wasn’t exactly a party favorite during much of his Senate career, which ended in 1988 when Republican defectors helped elect Joe Lieberman. Weicker then left the party and was elected governor as an independent in 1990.
If Weicker won’t do, you have to go all the way back to 1952 and the election of Prescott Bush, the grandfather and father of Republican presidents, to find the last “real” Republican Connecticut sent to the Senate.
But not so fast. Even though he founded a Republican presidential dynasty, old Prescott was a little to the left by today’s ideological standards and would have trouble with a Republican primary base today.
When Bush was defeating Democrats of the caliber of Congressmen Abe Ribicoff and Tom Dodd, some in the GOP opposed him because he was a birth control advocate and treasurer of the first nationwide campaign by Planned Parenthood, the same organization just denied funds by the Republican House of Representatives. He was also a civil rights activist and a card carrying member of the United Negro College Fund. As a senator, he voted to censure the right-wing saint, Joe McCarthy. Pretty progressive, Prescott.
But he and a forgotten one-termer, William Purtell, also elected in the 1952 Eisenhower landslide after filling a vacancy, were the only GOP senators until Weicker came along. Since then, the Republican Party hasn’t been able to produce better Senate candidates than Brook Johnson, Jack Orchulli, Gary Franks, Phil Giordano, Alan Schlesinger and Linda McMahon.
McMahon was, in fact, one of the more formidable Republican Senate candidates in recent years but she had to spend $50 million to finish 10 percentage points behind Dick Blumenthal. The losing margin for the others averaged more like 30 points.
The betting is she’ll be the candidate next year because the party will feel she deserves another shot after spending all that money. But being a rich Republican without other credentials isn’t quite enough in a state where your party’s affiliation ranks a poor third behind unaffiliateds and Democrats.
She’ll have some competition. Former Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele said on Channel 3’s Face the State that people have been calling to tell him he should run. Did you ever wonder about these people who are always calling not very strong candidates to tell them to run? After a while, do they call back and tell them to stop?
The Republican field might also include Rob Simmons, whose burden seems to be he’s the only Republican who makes sense as a candidate. Simmons, 68, is roughly the same age as the retiring Dodd, 66, and Lieberman, 69, so this would be his last hurrah.
You can probably add state Sen. Scott Frantz, another rich guy from Greenwich. (There’s an inexhaustible supply of Republican rich guys from Greenwich.) In 2006, he and his wife hosted one of those Greenwich fundraisers for Prescott’s grandson and raised $800,000 for W’s re-election, something he might not want to emphasize, should he run.
Frantz has a mysterious “Draft Frantz” website for which no one wants to claim credit, with a page of anonymous, but ardent, supporters, identified only by towns. Litchfield, Conn., says, “Scott, you are our only hope.” Palm Beach, Fla., not sure what Scott might run for, gushes, “I cannot think of a more qualified candidate for state senator — or PRESIDENT!!!” and West Hartford, Conn. asks the musical questions, “If not Scott, then who? If not now, then when?”
And in the wings, we have yet another Greenwich rich guy, Tom Foley, the almost governor who was a candidate for senator for a brief time last year before McMahon apparently convinced him governor would be the wiser choice.
What we don’t have is a relatively young, moderate Republican with election experience who could thoughtfully articulate his or her views on real issues, challenge a Democrat’s ideas and actually appeal to independents and a few Democrats.
Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.
