Powell: Trump aids Larson's campaign; and Lamont's disaster at PURA

By CHRIS POWELL

Barring some accident, scandal, or health problem, U.S. Rep. John B. Larson probably can count on President Trump to carry him through next year's Democratic primary in Connecticut's 1st Congressional District.

Larson well could have figured that any Democrat who complains angrily enough about the president can induce Trump to put him on a sort of enemies list, and it happened the other day. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused 29 Democratic elected officials of fomenting violence against federal immigration agents. Larson was one of them for remarks he bellowed at a rally in Newington in August likening immigration agents or their tactics -- it wasn't clear -- to the Nazi SS and Gestapo.

Larson is being challenged for renomination from the extreme left of his party. First there is former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who, after the George Floyd incident in Minneapolis, capitulated to demands to defund Hartford's police and complains that Larson, at 77, is too old. Then there is West Hartford state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, who advocates legalizing late-term abortion and says there is an "infinite" number of genders.

Defunding the police, maximizing abortion, and glorifying gender dysphoria are major objectives on the Democratic left, and Larson has neglected them, but disparaging Trump tops them all. Trump won't be denouncing Bronin and Gilchrest; he probably has never heard of them. But in effect Trump already has crowned Larson as the only Democrat in the 1st District who is a threat to the administration, and Larson seems ready to bellow every day until the primary to dispel Bronin's insinuations that he's about to keel over.

The problem with Larson's strategy to win a Democratic primary by running against Trump is that it undermines the main argument for giving him a 15th term -- enacting his comprehensive legislation to strengthen and expand Social Security, which is, he notes, the country's foremost anti-poverty program -- not welfare but pension and insurance benefits earned by working.

The political margin in the U.S. House of Representatives is small and if the historical pattern holds, the Democrats will regain the majority in next year's election and be in position to pass Larson's bill or something like it. The Senate may remain narrowly Republican but Republican senators might not want to seem to oppose saving and improving Social Security.

While the president has proclaimed his desire to improve Social Security, he has done nothing about it. What would he think of Social Security legislation whose enactment would be a triumph for a congressman who had saved himself politically by disparaging him? Would Trump put the national interest first and personal resentment aside?

Building a legislative majority in a bitterly divided country isn't likely to be done by screaming, no matter how much it helps win primary elections and how righteous it makes one feel. Do 1st District Democrats want substantial results or vituperation?

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Maybe Governor Lamont can put the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority back together before many people understand how disgracefully it exploded after compromising the state's electrical grid and inflating electricity rates. But the disaster is his own fault.

First the governor let the conflict between his chairwoman of the authority, Marissa Gillett, and the state's two major electric companies, Eversource and United Illuminating, become a war of lawsuits and recriminations.

Then he reappointed Gillett despite indications she was dissembling about her management of the agency. The other day she and her chief of staff were exposed as having lied to the legislature and the public about their scheme to freeze the authority's two other members out of authority business. So Gillett resigned abruptly and posed as a victim. Her chief of staff remains in office.

Now the authority has only two of the five members it is supposed to have, since the governor long refused to fill two vacancies, maybe because Gillett didn't want more people looking over her shoulder.

Can the governor find three nominees of greater integrity, and in a hurry, so the agency can work in the proper way?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net) His other columns are here.