Fedele is not the only GOP candidate

Gov. Jodi Rell, embedded as she is in the state budget mess, hasn’t said if she’s running for re-election next year. But if she doesn’t, her lieutenant governor has revealed he will be the Republican candidate for governor. Not “a†candidate, mind you, but “the†candidate.

If you, like most of our fellow citizens, wouldn’t know the lieutenant governor if you bumped into him at a ribbon cutting, his name is Michael Fedele and he is a wealthy Stamford businessman who served quietly in the state House of Representatives for a decade before he was handpicked by Rell in 2006 to be her number two.

Fedele’s overconfident announcement is worth noting only because it could be a sign that Gov. Rell, who still commands record-breaking approval ratings, is planning to call it a career after governing for part of John Rowland’s last term and one term of her own. Does Fedele know something the rest of us and his fellow Republicans don’t know?

Rell’s act as the nice woman who tells you on TV to vacation in Connecticut and wear your seat belt and get your flu shot may be wearing thin and those approval ratings could quickly drop in the wake of the state financial crisis she has not handled with any apparent skill. Another term as governor of a state that needs to raise taxes and cut essential services in order to survive may not be all that appealing or, for that matter, winnable for Rell.

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To add to the drama, about the same time Fedele was making his debut as the next Republican candidate, another Fairfield County politician allowed he’d be willing to step up, too, if an opening develops.

John McKinney, the minority leader of the state Senate, had been all but ordained by the national Republican party to challenge freshman Congressman James Himes, who became a GOP target by defeating the state’s last standing Republican congressman, Chris Shays. But McKinney saddened the party by taking himself out of the race, using the handy, old story about wanting to spend more time with his family.

But when asked by The Connecticut Post, which also broke the Fedele pronouncement, if he’d consider running for governor, McKinney said, “If I have an opportunity to stay at home, be the father I want to be to my kids and help people out in Connecticut in public office, that’s something I’ll look at.â€

If we want a governor who figures the job offers more time with the wife and kids, McKinney might be an ideal successor to Rell, who hasn’t been known for performing arduous tasks like coming to the office every day.

At any rate, McKinney, the son of late Fourth District Congressman Stewart McKinney, would, as a legislative leader, make a more likely candidate than “the†candidate, Lieutenant Governor Fedele.

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Lieutenant governors don’t make a career change unless something happens to the governor. In the past half-century or so, three of them have become governor but all three first succeeded governors who didn’t complete their terms. John Dempsey moved up when Abe Ribicoff was named to John Kennedy’s cabinet and later was twice elected on his own. Bill O’Neill replaced Ella Grasso when she resigned for health reasons and also went on to win two terms and, of course, Rell took over for Rowland when he moved from the governor’s mansion to that federal facility in Pennsylvania.

Like Fedele, McKinney isn’t about to challenge the governor if she chooses to run again. He did, in fact, raise a question about his own judgment when he volunteered that “our state is run incredibly well†by Rell.

But if Rell, at 63, decides she’s been running things incredibly well long enough, McKinney and Fedele have emerged from what looks like a very thin Republican bench. There were, after all, no congressional Republicans left standing after Shays’ loss, and he quickly let it be known the night he was defeated that his running-for-office days are over. Rob Simmons, the only other recent Republican in Congress, is otherwise occupied challenging Chris Dodd.

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Lawrence Cafero, the House minority leader and frequent spokesman for the hapless Republican position in the budget dispute, could be a third possibility. Last year, he formed an exploratory committee to raise a little money for an unspecified state office. At the time, he did rule out state treasurer, but he probably wouldn’t mind being governor, which, after all, is a state office and doesn’t require more than a nodding acquaintance with the state treasury.

So there you have it, the Republican trio of Fedele and McKinney and maybe Cafero, unburdened by name recognition, but ready to pick up the tattered Republican ensign and run if that nice woman in the governor’s office packs up her approval ratings and goes home to Brookfield.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.