Win, one-term governor; lose, might just win a second term

If Connecticut history is an accurate guide, Dannel Malloy declared himself a one-term governor when he presented the voters with a budget containing something to offend just about all of them.

It’s not easy to be a one-term governor; you have to do what you think is right, without regard for the consequences. This usually involves taxes, and proposing the highest tax increases in state history surely puts Malloy in the running. When he added give-backs from unionized state employees, thereby alienating his most potent support group, he’s looking like a sure thing.

This is not a criticism; it’s a compliment. In Connecticut, one-term governors are often successful governors.

In the past 50 years, Connecticut has had eight governors: John Dempsey, Tom Meskill, Ella Grasso, Bill O’Neill, Lowell Weicker, John Rowland, Jodi Rell and Malloy. Six of the eight, Dempsey, Grasso, O’Neill, Rowland and Rell, served more than a term. Meskill and Weicker didn’t.

For Weicker, of course, it was the unwelcome income tax that did him in. It remains interesting, however, that no Republican or Democrat seeking the office since Weicker’s successor, John Rowland, even bothers to claim he’ll repeal the tax if elected governor.

Meskill, who died in 2007, was the only true conservative of the three Republicans his party managed to elect in 50 years. He came to the office with an inherited deficit of what now would pass for a negligible $244 million and left with a modest surplus. But along the way, on Meskill’s watch, not Weicker’s, the first state income tax was passed by a Democratic Legislature.

“In the dead of night,” it was said.

However, the bill was quickly repealed in the light of day when public opposition became deafening. In its place, Meskill signed on to an increase in the sales tax from 5 to 6.5 percent and established a state lottery to raise revenue — for education, it was erroneously believed.

He also passed controversial “tough love” welfare reform measures derided as unduly harsh by liberals but actually anticipated workfare and the Clinton reforms of the 1990s. He also established the Department of Environmenal Protection.

The sales tax and welfare reform, along with the 229 bills he vetoed, might have scared enough voters to guarantee a re-election defeat, but when Meskill decided he needn’t return to Connecticut from a Vermont skiing trip when an ice storm struck, his political career truly went into the deep freeze. As Weicker would later on, he decided not to seek a second term.

The anger didn’t end with Meskill’s term, and when President Nixon made him a federal judge, the faculty of the UConn Law School, Meskill’s alma mater, accused him of being “insensitive to the rights of the poor and the disadvantaged and indifferent to civil and political liberties.”

But a year later, the president of the American Bar Association, which opposed Meskill’s appointment, apologized and called him “a hard-working, able judge.” He went on to have a long and highly respected career on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Like the single-termers, Malloy comes to the office in bad times, which is one of the requirements for being a one-term governor. And like his two predecessors, Malloy’s troubles are inherited. In his case, the inheritance goes all the way back to the sweetheart pension and benefits deal Rowland made with the state employees’ unions in 1997, a deal that won’t run out until 2017.

But it doesn’t matter much what his predecessors did or didn’t do. Governors historically get less blame for creating messes than for trying to fix them.

Unlike Weicker and Meskill, Malloy is blessed — or burdened — with a General Assembly controlled by his own party. Meskill, a Republican, and Weicker, a Republican turned independent, had Democratic legislatures to contend with, and they did. Some said too well.

That’s the other quality Meskill and Weicker shared. They were leaders, able to get the Legislature to work with them, despite strong political differences. Malloy’s challenge as a leader is even greater — trying to get supposed allies to do his bidding.

But if he fails, he could probably win a second term.

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