OPINION: Races to watch and opportunity missed
Oct. 5—Democrats have a chance to flip a couple of state House seats in southeastern Connecticut. Republicans, meanwhile, have likely blown a chance to seriously challenge a powerful incumbent Democratic state senator.
That assessment is based on my years of analyzing state and local elections in which, unlike national contests, there are no polls to provide guidance. In all three cases — the two vulnerable Republican House seats and that missed opportunity by the GOP — it is the gravitational pull of the presidential race and the resulting larger turnouts that make things interesting.
Republican state representatives Holly Cheeseman and Kathleen McCarty are facing rematches against progressive Democrats who are running spirited races. Both incumbents can expect close elections. One or both could lose.
Democratic state Sen. Cathy Osten, meanwhile, will almost certainly win a seventh term in the 19th District. Republicans blew the chance to make that one competitive.
Cheeseman and McCarty are moderates. They are conservatives on fiscal policy, but not radically so, willing to support spending for education and childcare, for example, and happy to bring home the bacon for public projects in their respective districts. They supported and continue to back the fiscal guardrails put in place in 2017, which have led to record surpluses and allowed for tax cuts.
They are, in other words, what was once your typical Connecticut Republican, until Trumpism shifted much of the state party rightward.
Cheeseman's 37th District consists of East Lyme and Salem and a portion of Montville. She faces the candidate she defeated in 2022, Nick Menapace, a Norwich teacher and a member of the Planning Commission in East Lyme.
Menapace has been doing much of his door-to-door campaigning on his bike, appropriate given his call to create "walkable neighborhoods connected by bike lanes and public transportation" so "that residents can easily access amenities and interact with their neighbors without relying on cars."
Cheeseman, competing for a fifth term, is 69, while Menapace is 37.
With 12,086 votes cast, Cheeseman won two years ago with 52% of the vote. So why might she be vulnerable this time? Turnout will be greater, and I suspect attract more young voters. Much of that larger vote could be anti-Trump and pro-Kamala Harris, to the benefit of lower ticket Democratic candidates, like Menapace.
In 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, there were almost 14,036 votes in the 37th District. Cheeseman survived a close race then against Cate Steel, winning just 50.7% of the vote. Since then, however, the district has slipped left. Democrat Martha Marx captured the 20th Senatorial District, which includes East Lyme, in 2022. Democrat Dan Cunningham won the East Lyme first selectman race in 2023. Both outcomes ended longstanding Republican control.
Could Cheeseman be next?
Rep. McCarty, 74, seeks a sixth term and faces a rematch with 37-year-old Nick Gauthier in the 38th District, consisting of Waterford and portions of Montville. Gauthier describes himself as a champion for the working class and for families. He could be expected to support greater state investment in childcare services, expanded mandatory paid sick leave and increased state support for local schools.
In 2022 McCarty defeated Gauthier with 52% of the vote. But he can also look to 2020, with its bigger turnout, for hope that McCarty is beatable. That year McCarty won by just 345 votes and needed the votes she received on the Independent Party line to prevail in her race against Baird Welch-Collins.
Then there is the state Senate race Republicans may be letting get away.
In the 19th District, Sen. Osten easily won a sixth term in 2022. But it is 2020, when Trump was at the top of the ticket seeking re-election, that should have sent the message to Republicans that they had a chance to oust the Democratic incumbent this time if they played it smart. They didn't, which seems to be an ongoing affliction for the state GOP.
Just to be clear, I think it would be crazy to dump Osten. She co-chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee. Osten helped design the fiscal guardrails that have significantly improved the state's budgetary health. And she has brought tens of millions of dollars back to the district. She is an excellent state senator.
But much of her district is Trump country. In 2020, when those Trumpers turned out, Osten won only three of the district's 10 towns, prevailing in Ledyard, Montville and Norwich but losing Columbia, Franklin, Hebron, Lebanon, Lisbon, Marlborough and her own town of Sprague. A big victory in Norwich was the key to her winning the district with 53% of the vote.
The strategy for 2024 for Republicans would have seemed obvious — recruit a popular, moderate Norwich Republican to run and erode Osten's Norwich vote. Alas, to the benefit of Democrats and the welfare of the district, Osten instead faces Jason Guidone. She will win. Hailing from tiny Hebron where he chairs the town committee, Guidone is Trumpian to the core. He decries "woke" schools and wants to return the focus "back to academics." He blames "illegal immigrants" for any number of problems.
Guidone will do well in Trump-leaning towns, but he will fall flat in Norwich. And just to be sure, Osten, a savvy politician as well as a savvy lawmaker, secured the Independent line, assuring votes will not be siphoned away from here there.
Add it all up and Democrats could expand their regional dominance in this election.
