A union-funded third party is trying to push Connecticut’s Democrats further to the left, at a time when the state is already buckling under the weight of liberal fiscal policies.
Leaders of the Connecticut Working Families Party declared victory after all five legislative candidates they supported won their races in this week’s Democratic primary.
The party supported candidates who opposed this year’s state budget fix, which included $1 billion in cuts. The Working Families Party wanted state lawmakers to increase taxes, even though in 2015, several prominent businesses, including GE, announced they were moving jobs out of the state after lawmakers hiked taxes.
One of the candidates the party supported this week was Josh Elliott, who won against a more mainstream Democrat in Hamden, Conn. The party spent $10,000 on the race.
Elliott announced in April that he would run in the Democratic primary against state House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, a chief defender of this year’s no-tax increase budget. Sharkey later decided not to seek re-election. This cleared the way for House Majority Leader Joe Aresimowicz, who works for the union AFSCME, to run for speaker.
The Working Families Party was active in just four states three years ago, including Connecticut and New York, where it helped elect Mayor Bill de Blasio. The party has since expanded to nine states and the District of Columbia, and is looking to expand further.
While it’s been called the “Tea Party” of the left, in significant ways the Working Families Party is different than the Tea Party – in large part because of the benefits that come from organizing as a political party in states where they can cross endorse candidates in major parties. The Working Families Party has also escaped much of the media scrutiny focused on the Tea Party.
The Working Families Party has been particularly active in Connecticut, where last year a state senator was elected in a special election while running solely on the Working Families Party line. The party also helped Gov. Dannel Malloy across the finish line in his 2010 race, when he needed the more than 26,000 votes he received on the Working Families’ line in order to win.
The party has also made inroads at the municipal level. They are now the minority party in Hartford, a city that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Almost all of the money raised by the Connecticut Working Families Party comes from labor unions. In 2014, when there was a gubernatorial race, local unions contributed almost $100,000 to the party’s election committee, representing 73 percent of the party’s total take. So far this year unions have given the committee $44,000, or 66 percent of total money raised. All of Connecticut’s representatives on the national party’s advisory board are union leaders.
Public sector unions are the most powerful special interest in Connecticut and hold significant sway at the statehouse. By funding candidates directly, and running candidates – or threatening to run candidates – against more moderate Democrats in primary elections, the Working Families Party is expanding the unions’ clout.
The results of public sector union dominance in Connecticut are clear. The state lags behind other states in the New England region and behind the country as a whole in job growth and overall economic growth. Its population has also declined the past two years in a row.
The state has also struggled for the past several years with significant budget deficits. To close those deficits, lawmakers raised taxes by $4 billion over four years. But even that wasn’t enough. In 2015, lawmakers both raised taxes and cut spending on social services.
This year, after it became clear that past tax hikes had led to significant out-migration of wealthy residents, state lawmakers closed the budget gap just through cuts – although Republicans complained that the cuts were short-term fixes, and didn’t deal with the long-term cost drivers in the budget, most of which have to do with state employee pay and benefits.
The cuts led to the layoffs of almost 1,000 state employees.
Progressive Democrats, the Working Families Party, and union leaders complained loudly. They wanted lawmakers to raise taxes instead of cutting the budget.
Meanwhile, they have stood solidly in the way of reforming the pay and benefits of state employees, even though Connecticut’s state employees are the most expensive in the nation. A Yankee Institute study authored by AEI’s Andrew Biggs shows that Connecticut state employees earn an average of 25 to 46 percent more than their private sector counterparts – hardly the struggling working class Working Families claims to work for.
This same budget fight will play out in next year’s legislative session, since there are already projected deficits of $1.3 billion in 2018, and $1.5 billion in 2019.
The unions that back the Working Families Party want lawmakers to close those gaps with tax hikes. They claim the hikes should fall only on the very rich – but the deficits are too large. There is no way they could be filled with tax hikes on the rich alone.
Connecticut residents already face a heavy tax burden – but the unions say it isn’t heavy enough. And they are working hard to elect people who agree with them.
Suzanne Bates
Suzanne Bates is director of policy and legislative outreach at the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a free-market think tank based in Hartford, Connecticut. Read her past columns here.
http://workingfamilies.org/ 
