Connecticut’s consumer crusader changes office, keeps job

A year from now, when the nation will be enjoying another presidential election and all that goes with it, we in Connecticut will have an added treat as the state’s senior senator, Dick Blumenthal, will be seeking a second term. At least we think he will.

It does seem like only yesterday when we were so enriched by the first of two senatorial contests starring Linda McMahon and the Democrat who beat her, but it was actually 2010 and 2012, and so Blumenthal will presumably be running again next year and Chris Murphy will be up two years later, in 2018.

The only difference is the two Democrats will be incumbents, with records to run on, such as they are, and their opponent will be a Republican who most assuredly won’t be Ms. McMahon, but you never know. Just kidding. What we do know is there won’t be a long line of Republicans seeking the honor of running against one of the state’s most successful politicians ever.

He was a hugely popular attorney general, and he’s been an attention-getting senator, not because he’s accomplished anything of note, but because he he has continued to play the role he perfected in 20 years as state attorney general. 

He’s still Connecticut’s Consumer Crusader. 

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And at a time when members of Congress haven’t done much of anything, that will do for reelection purposes, thank you.

Blumenthal even admits it. “One lesson to me is that legislation is only one lever to fight for benefits for the people of Connecticut,” he said an an analysis of his first four Senate years by Ana Radelat of The CT Mirror.

“I can use my position to shine a light on problems.” 

And that’s exactly what he did when he was the attorney general known as “Sue ’Em All Blumenthal,” shining lights and filing lawsuits against insurance companies, cigarette manufacturers, polluters and other bad guys. As The Hartford Courant once editorialized, Blumenthal had “elevated activism to an art form, figuratively beating the ambulance to the accident almost every time.”

When he wasn’t racing ambulances, he was attacking ATM fees or power plants from other states for dirtying Connecticut’s pure air and going after every real or imagined evildoer he could find. When he left the office after two decades, his approval rating was around 80 percent. Any questions?

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Senator Blumenthal has seen no reason to abandon this flashy tactic merely because he’s no longer a state attorney general.

His targets remain popular ones, like football players who beat up girl friends or wives. But they often work, as when an embarrassing hearing on domestic violence in the National Football League inspired the league to donate $25 million to set up a nationwide domestic violence hotline.

The AG who never saw a consumer issue he didn’t embrace has become the crusading senator, advocating for better care in veterans hospitals, seeking penalties against auto manufacturers selling defective ignition switches, accusing electronic cigarette companies of aiming their ads at kids and generally doing equally good for the consumer and the advocate. 

Finding himself in a first term with colleagues equipped with even more attention-getting skills, some by being substantive, like Elizabeth Warren, and others by being Ted Cruz, Blumenthal could have played the traditional freshman role of being seen but not heard. But while he wasn’t a would-be president, he hadn’t lost the ability to interest the media. He always had something to say, and there was no real work involved.

He seems to be everywhere, managing to appear at Connecticut events as frequently as he did when commuting from Fairfield County to Hartford. At the same time, his Senate attendance and voting records are among the best.

He is also a demon co-sponsor of bills. 

In the 113th Congress, the senator introduced 63 bills on his own and five of them eventually passed, a respectable record in a Congress that saw very little legislation.

But he outdid himself in co-sponsoring, putting his name on 398 of the 658 bills that were voted on in the Senate. That’s well over half. Only one senator, Mark Begich, the Alaska Democrat, co-sponsored more, 449. Senator Begich was defeated in November, a fact Blumenthal might ponder as he runs for a second term. 

One can overdo.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.