On The Record; 808; Interview with William E. Curry Jr.

Oh. The following is a CBT be original. You know. I'm Bob Douglas and welcome to this week's edition of On The Record our special guest is state controller William Curry of Farmington who recently announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor. Mr. Curry was first elected comptroller back in 1990. He is a former state senator and he was the Democratic nominee for Congress in nineteen eighty two. Joining us this week is Keith found off who covers state the state capitol and state politics for the day in New London was the comptroller. Thank you.

Good to have you with us. My pleasure. You have declared for governor in the long grind it now begins. What do you say to the delegates who you are trying to woo out there. Why. Why Bill Curry is the best Democratic candidate for governor. For three years I've been the chief financial officer of the state. At times it's been like being in the engine room of the Titanic. We've gone through a new tax structure no budget periods temporary budget periods. More than anything I think it's the best insider's view of the innards of the bureaucracy. What works what doesn't where and how you can begin to fix it. As the only person in any of our three parties who's had substantial experience and administration the executive branch of government. I think that it's a special qualification. People like I feel across the state have an enormous anger over the performance of government.

If we don't give responsible expression of that anger they'll find somebody who gives irresponsible expression to it but they'll find somebody into the first order of business is getting the government a gut rehab showing to people by our actions not just by our words that we know how to run the ship. If we can turn the government around the government can then I think begin to help turn the economy around which is the number one thing that's on people's minds. This is now an inside the ballpark race. I mean you're out there they're trying to get delegates. There's a public campaign but it's the inside of the ballpark a campaign. How many are committed at this stage of the game where you're ahead your Democratic State Convention is next summer. What's the level if there is no doubt there are three candidates. You and two others at this stage of the game. I think we pretty much have it wrapped up now. And this campaign that we called is a very wide open. I would say that it is wide open right now and

I'm reluctant to do the horse race questions and I for one thing anything that I say in response is somewhat self-serving obviously and politics wouldn't be politics except for the unpleasant surprises. But the first week of this. I can tell you that the commitments that have been made to my campaign have far exceeded our expectation in timetable. I'd rather not just do that as a claim. But over that over the next few weeks we will actually do a public statement that support and I think people will be tremendously surprised and I hope energized by the amount of support that we've been able to garner so far. I'm thrilled with it. And if it keeps going at this pace we're going to be in very good shape. You work very hard Mr Currie to train yourself as a fiscal watchdog I think some of your ads in 1990 even portray you as sort of a snarling angry watchdog. Now the dog wasn't me. After that there was a dog in that ad but it was a Rottweiler

and I thought it didn't have very controversial animal at the time but go ahead. It's been no secret that you've had some clashes with the Weicker administration on some financial issues but some of the liberal members of your party have been somewhat annoyed by that almost saying that you've rocked the boat too much. Do you see any of that carrying over when you're trying to build support I think we'll find out over the next few months the degree to which that's true. My own values in this business of politics over two decades now I think I've been pretty constant. I think it's critical for people in my own party to recognize that it is no abandonment of their progressive traditions to acknowledge that this government needs a gut rehab. I also think that we have to be very careful to understand when we're fighting for our our convictions when we're just fighting for our opinions. Democrats like to cite the New Deal. There were two aspects of the New Deal I think that we ought to keep in mind. The first of which is that Roosevelt constantly proposed solutions that embraced the interest of all people

and didn't just move group by group didn't simply minister to the most disadvantaged or the worst victims tried to lift all of us up together. And the second thing was the extraordinary capacity they had net generation to look at issues with fresh eyes to challenge their own orthodoxy in a very purposeful way have done something in the last three years to try to to take the members of my own party through a discussion as to how in fact we can govern more effectively and how we can deliver on the basic problems this party the Democratic Party historically has been the Tribune of average working people. A part of people's dissatisfaction with government is about the way they see the shop ride. But another part of it is they look at the contracts politicians have made they ask whether we've kept them. If you're an average working class family in Naugatuck Valley or Britain or anywhere and you look at the last generation your state local tax bills have skyrocketed and they ask themselves are my streets safer. My schools improved. It is my job more secure. Is it easier to get health care from my parents or

education for my children. A part of their dissatisfaction with us is that they question whether we still have the guts and the vision to go to the mat for the things that count. To deliver in a way that improves the day to day quality of their own lives. So they want to see a government which is run better and they want to see our ability to go for systemic change. Its been a process in which to some politicians I know would be counterintuitive but I consciously begin that discussion within my own party and I think we'll see in this campaign that we brought that to a pretty fruitful conclusion. I think most those people are going to be with me and with me very energetically. In fact most already are. And I think that I've become clear some people at my announcement saw some of that. It'll become clear as time goes on we have to anybody who purports to be a political leader today. Has to extend himself or herself to create a new debate because all of the old categories are defunct and there is a new political debate which is struggling to be born right now. We have to have the courage to help help her that and help make it happen.

If I can just follow up. You know you're right when you're talking about some of the voter frustration as far as reform being needed in government. But as as powerful as that message was in 1990 when we were approaching a record state deficit it seems like employment and job development is dominating a lot more of the campaigns and the voters concerns this time out and I'm wondering if you see your approach changing in a gubernatorial campaign as in comparison when you were running for comptroller four years ago. There isn't any question and again when you're running for comptroller of the state the job itself shapes the debate. What people want to know about a comptroller is whether or not that person is willing to tell the truth as he knows it and then stand his ground. Whether you're willing to take on the difficult questions our pension fund obligations the degree to which we've we indebted to our children for our own present consumption our budgeting formatting the the budget of the state looks like a telephone directory written in Hindi. Our ability to make a useful management tool and set it out. Those are by the way.

Struggles in which I've had almost universal support from the other side of the aisle. I've taken this on and I think that's something people want to see us begin to do more and much more effectively bracket our differences and learn to collaborate and learn to have a debate which is more pertinent and more practical on the basic issue of the economy as I hope I made clear when I started. There isn't any question the number one job of anyone who wants to be governor of this state is to begin the revitalization the restoration the economic base of this state. I think government has to get its own house in order in order to begin doing that. As an example our own economic development programs in this state I think are utterly ineffective and that's been another disagreement I've had publicly with the administration over the last three years. All of our rhetoric favor small businesses but that's not where our money goes. We write we we write out checks that are almost bribes to large corporations to cross our borders or if they're already here to stay a little longer when in fact those kinds of corporations are today given the nature of our economy are just tenants.

The real stakeholders are the small and medium sized businesses the self-employed and they're the people whose who whom the basics are systems of government are not serving. Health care cost and I've had it for three years. I would just remind you the major issue I've pushed is a buying consortium sponsored by the state for small businesses and for the self-employed. We could bring their cost down 20 percent in more and we could have done that in 1991. That would make Connecticut a magnet for small businesses. We have to understand the nature of the problem. This is not just a recession. This is a change in the old industries that were the engines of our growth in the 1980s. Insurance banking real estate defense they'll come back but not in the form that we knew them. The engines of the next economy are these incubator businesses in our present small businesses. This is a change. New businesses have to arise. We have to create the conditions that make that possible. Health care reform is

one example. I'll give you one of the quickly and that is interest rates and access to capital. If you're a small business person in Connecticut right now you know the degree to which many banks particularly our larger banks have forgotten how to live how to lend you money. What good does it do them if interest rates come down to zero. If they can't walk in the door get access to the money. It really just adds insult to injury. Our ability to use our own present tools the economic development and innovations Inc in CDMA to be to re prioritize every dollar spent so that it favors them. But also our ability to look at all of the basic systems of interest allocation the private sector of health care of property taxes that are just a burden and a cost for every widget they make. We have to change that or we're not going to make it. And we have to change in the here and now. What checks have been written by the administration. That presumably were written to assist companies medium and large that you would not have signed you know that street is just an example I had.

And I give if you would let me just you wanted to Corporate a corporation moved a few miles over the border. It came into our tax base and that's a good thing it's unclear whether they're going to be employing people in Connecticut to any greater degree than 7 million dollars that was written to that firm to to to to move that operation. One for an outfit of that scale. It's unclear to me how much that money actually even meant to them. But secondly what that kind of money can being distributed among the people who are struggling to survive here and who every survey shows are the real source of the high wage high skill and permanent jobs that won't leave the next time somebody when when New York writes him a check for nine million. And. Our ability to take that kind of money and spend it more responsibly here I think we need to tasks I think we can change that dramatically.

You talked about health reform and your plan has been out there and has been discussed and you have worked hard in trying to explain it. It didn't go very far within the confines of the state legislature controlled by your party. Is there a problem there with the message or what do you perceive as a lot of pride as a problem. Let me say that. When I introduced that idea and in January 1991 it was one of the first ideas of its kind if not the first in the country. There weren't even the words to hit picks and alliances. Now that language was even available to people every legislator was hearing it for the first time. And I'm proud of that. But it made it difficult. It was a very simple idea. The program was voluntary not mandatory. A business or a town could join in if it served them well they could stay in if not they could leave. It was publicly sponsored but privately administered. And one of our own companies who got the contract would do it. It didn't fit the categories of any groups there were some groups that want to do Canadian style system and nothing but that there were other groups

on the other side of the aisle who wanted no change. It's the insurance capital of the world. And many of the CEOs of those companies came personally to lobby against this bill then three years later many of them were lobbying for almost exactly the same concept in states all over the country and both the Bob Dole Bill in the Bill Clinton Bill have those alliances at the center of it. It will be law here next year. When I first had that idea I brought it to the governor and said basically you take it. Because you're the governor and the Comptroller's never really played a role in this arena. Before I was there something very new and outlined we could see we could lower municipal health care bills 15 percent putting 100 million dollars in savings on the table without spending a nickel. And then we could do even more dramatic things for small businesses. THE GOVERNOR. It was an interest in supporting that proposal and in fact I lobbied against it as comptroller to take on the insurance industry and the governor and try to

move a new idea. We won this bill in four committees in the last session by lopsided partisan majorities in two or three interest groups were able to stop in the house calendar. We had close to two thirds of both houses committed so it takes that that I wasn't the only person in the country who succeeded in that I wasn't able to become the only person in the country to succeed in that kind of comprehensive reform from the office in which I am I just think that you might say I was taking on too much tonight. I think about that. I think one of the common if if I could on this which is in a sense unrelated that is the degree to which private money has subsumed public policy making in this state in this country as someone running for office you spend an extraordinary amount of time in fund raising. This is not good for us. The number of lobbyists and PACs now far outnumber the legislators themselves. How do we get around that. I think that we have to have an answer or some form of public financing that the first thing to understand is to let people see how important it is and

it's not that it favors one part of the other but both sides are mortgaged to the same status quo and the government is paralyzed when it comes to taking on issues like this. It's no accident where the last country in the world to be even approaching the question of universal health care. I think that there are some basic principles that are obvious and even playing field for challengers. Disclosure in strict limits the United States Congress actually passed a fabulous campaign finance reform bill in 1905 in the wake of Watergate it overcame all of its own extreme institutional reluctance to do the right thing in that area and did it. People forget that what happened was that there was a Supreme Court case Buckley vs. Vallejo that gutted the bill and the guts of the bill to me were limits on spending and what the court then one of the worst written decisions I've ever seen what they wrote then was that without public financing you couldn't have spending limits. There are a lot of ideas on the table right now for alternatives to cash free air time for the politicians who are willing to come out and defend what they say or if they're going to attack someone at least make the

attack themselves to be held accountable for it. Postage time not just for people who are in office and postage not just people in office but for challengers. I think that if I think that it's possible for us to come up with some some subsidies of elections that in fact involve things people want the politicians to have and in return have the strictest limits on how much money they can spend. I think that if we could open up the airwaves and open up the postal systems to have that kind of higher quality communication and trade off limits on spending to get three quarters of this money little out of his be taken out. That it would be an improvement that I would be more than willing to bring to the people of the state and to discuss. I don't have the detailed details the campaigns as we go but those are the basic principles that I think that I'd like to see an ability that. Are you at a point though where you might be willing to say that you're not going to accept perhaps a political action committee funds in a campaign. I'm not at a point of which I've received any so far but that's partly because the campaigns that we

called and I've struggled with this a little bit. There's a sense of whether you sort of unilaterally disarm and thereby make your own election impossible. Does a real commitment of the principle require that. I know that about mentioning my race in 1982 I was outspent three and a half to one and lost by two points. It was. It was like the Normandy invasion from the German perspective at the end of that campaign we were really shellacked and it was a formative experience in my life to you know usually we have to have a bit of our own pain before we understand larger principles. And my commitment to doing the reform is complete. And as governor it really would be one of the three or four highest priorities that I would begin to work on from from day one. I will at some point in this campaign announce it some principles that I think will distinguish our campaign in that way. But I'm not ready. I can't I haven't worked through at this point the ability to say we're going to go do this and let everybody else you know go on television and try to do this without it.

As was said earlier we have a lot of public recognition to get in the next few months. It's probably academic at this stage Well let me ask it anyways. If Governor Weicker had now decided had not decided to retire his governorship would you be running today. I don't know the answer to that. As you pointed out the governor and I have had our differences. The governor I think has very limited gifts for working with others. And our two offices Moreover weren't set up to work hand in glove. I'm supposed to be a watchdog. They're supposed to be dynamic tension. I'm also not blind to his strengths. He leaves a legacy for younger politicians in particular. That it's OK for a political written leader to read not just a poll but his own conscience and then act on it. And certainly when he leaves the stage all the rest of us are going to seem boring by comparison. But our differences over the approach to governing how you run the government itself over our

approach to economic development are certainly different. It's substantial enough. That I would have enjoyed the race. I also recognize that technically it would have been a very tough race tactically rather as a Democrat. There's no question that the governor had won the support of many parts Democratic constituency. So I know that it's a race I would have wanted to make. It's difficult in the hypothetical. Each one of those decisions of Barbara's Dick's Lowell's Nancy's had a political impact and you can't deny that it's there because it helps determine what you feel is possible. Delegate wise do you do you look at this practically two months from now maybe three months from now come January and February if you're not in a position to make a real move at the Democratic convention next year. Do you stay in the race. You have your comptroller seat of course. Other people have already announced for your job and more are coming presumably. But there is there a point of no return down the road. You

say I'm in this thing all the way. I am in this all the way. You are at that point now that that point the road came earlier and. You know no one in politics. Is eager to make black and white statement I want to live should be my crystal balls but on the fritz for some time now. So it's a little difficult to look out there and see what's coming. But this is a race I very much want to be and this is a race I very much believe that I can win and it's the job in which I very much believe I can make a difference. This is about as engaged I think it's ever been something you had mentioned how in 1990 the consensus is the governor drew a lot of support from a fractured Democratic Party and it was a tragedy. Could you assess what you think assuming this is quark is the candidate for a Connecticut Party. Her potential to do the same. Also if I can extend the hypothetical scenario if the Democratic nomination comes down to a primary.

Again it's so hard. And in each week there's a conventional wisdom and then it dissipates and people act as if they never participated in it. I am and let me say very quickly that again the horse race questions are difficult for all the obvious reasons. My sense is twofold. And this is not about my respect for her as an individual. I have great respect for every person who's in this race or thinking about entering it that I know of. My sense is that most of the people from both parties who became a part of the Connecticut Party coalition want to go home now. I think that most of the Democrats in that coalition certainly will feel much greater fealty to the nominee of the Democratic Party. I can already begin to see that happening. An independent governor is like lightning striking. People say doesn't strike twice. And then very often strike twice in a row. And so I think that the question my guest

today is that the question is now going to be whether or not and she can win the race but whether or not in a probable Third this is not an important question though and a probable third place finish from whom she draws the most strength. This may be wishful thinking on my part. I'm hoping that that the problem is the Republicans problem they're not our problem. I think that the profile of support there will be much different than it was for Lowell themself. He was clearly our problem not their problem. I think she's theirs not ours. In any case it certainly isn't a problem of the same magnitude. However the next time I'm out asked me again and I may have a different take on it if I can follow up. Hartford Current Yukon poll that came out in mid-October I believe it said that of all of the candidates and potential candidates excluding the governor Weicker. John Rowland had the highest name recognition but nobody had overwhelming name

recognition could you kind of size up the way you think you stand in that category in comparison with the other Democratic candidates. You know I just want to say I don't want to be self-righteous about this but there's a point and I realize it so many of my discussions with not just with reporters but political people with anybody who follows this there's a tendency to focus on the horse race questions and to look upon that question of how to get the money and how to get the visibility and who's What's the lay of the land. Politics is fundamentally about building constituencies behind ideas. And one of the reasons that the prognosticators journalists and policy alike tend to miss the boat when there's an admin musky or a Scoop Jackson loaded up with endorsements or visibility coming into a race that has missed the temper of the times who doesn't understand the real aspirations and anxieties and problems of people their day to day lives. Someone comes along who does that and it rewrites the map overnight. And I think that if you thought through what you believe in if you're fortunate in what you believe is constant with what people really need at that point

all the strategy and politics invisibility will flow from that. I really believe that as a practical matter and so in preparing for this campaign I've spent the most time thinking through those basic questions for myself. Watch and see. I think you'll find that as we bring that to people across the state. It'll it'll transform the race. Visibility resume none of those things enough for I think. And the good news by the way a lot of the credit for this being increasingly who to go to the voters who as of the last presidential election I thought for the first time in my adult life were paying more attention rather than less attention. I was going into diners and coffee shops and hearing people talk about an election. It seemed to me for the first time in a decade I think people's very sense of urgency. There's a chance I want to be too optimistic in this sense. Is it possible that it was very sense of urgency is going to bring all of us up to a higher standard now be a good thing. We only have a couple of minutes left. A couple of quick issues. When the legislature goes back in

February the feeling already is that they'll be an attempt to improve fine tune. Whatever verb you want to use the the state income tax to make it easier for Connecticut's working people middle class. How do you feel about that it should be legit for the repair bill. I like the incumbent governor I would have. Not only that I would not have needed it but I would have actively lobbied for it. This tax bill the again understanding all the difficulty of the situation but what we've been left with is a bill which falls to have lay on the working middle class in the state and which is not as elegant in its administration as it needs to be. And so there are a variety of ways in which I think we can continue to clean this thing up and be behind him on a percent. Another issue it's the gambling gambling issue apparently is going to be back in the legislature for better or for worse a push from people in the Bridgeport area apparently to try to get a casino down in Bridgeport. Your views on that

specifically in the you know what do we do about gambling now in Connecticut it is here we have the largest casino in the world just 45 minutes from here. And I think that's a very I think that last point that you make is very important. And when I was a state senator I opposed virtually every form of game when they came before us and even then those are my basic sensibilities on it. At the same time when you look at the situation in Bridgeport gambling they breed crime. Poverty certainly breeds crime. The kinds of jobs that are available to people frankly what people in my neighbor the north in Hartford growing up with they needed most were worked basic work skills disciplined and look to him Bill to show up at work and and and handle that your relations with the workers coworkers Ike it's hard to look at Bridgeport and not at least people going to consider an exception particular the fact that you know the barn door is open and there's dead highlight and tele track and dog track and as you said the largest in the world. So the court so I will give the Bridgeport situation one good hard

look before I make a decision I make the decision early in the campaign. Miss Curry thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. I'll see you on the campaign trail thank you. I guess what inquiry state controller announced candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor. And our thanks to Keith fana for the day in New London. And I'm Bob Douglas join us next time for another interview on the record.