The state of Connecticut gave 22% of its vote to Perot in 92, and 12% of its vote to Perot, Nader, Hagelin, and all the other third-party/independent presidential candidates running that year.  This is above the national average and marks Connecticut as one state we should not ignore.

    Chris Dodd is the incumbent senior Senator from this state.  He is a standard Democratic liberal, aside from his support of securities litigation reform and product liability reform.  He has not shown any courage when it comes to ARP issues where the Democratic party has failed, such as balancing the budget, paying off the debt, and entitlement reform.  Moreover, he was the chairman of the Democratic party all through the very corrupt 96 campaign when the whole scandal of foreign money entering Democratic coffers erupted and did little but stonewall throughout that election year on that matter.  A typical party hack, he is the sort of politician ARPers should love to defeat.

    There are several possible challengers to Dodd for whom the ARP should be ready to give support.  Republican Representative Chris Shays (another Chris!), Democratic Representative James Maloney, who has shown streaks of independence from Democratic orthodoxy, and Republican Representative Nancy Johnson are all Republicrats who have shown sympathy with ARP positions on our most important issues and who might be useful for our cause in the Senate.  In addition, there is one high-profile independent who might be persuaded to run on our banner, Eunice Groark, who ran on Lowell Weicker's A Connecticut Party as Lowell Weicker's Lt. Governor when the latter served as an independent Governor here.  Perhaps the A Connecticut Party should be wooed to join ARP as our Connecticut affiliate.  After all, Governor Lamm and Governor Weicker get along with each other and there might be real interest there in forming a coalition.

    Senator Joseph Lieberman, junior Democrat in the upper house from the Nutmeg state, is the sort of centrist the ARP should support.  He is known as a consensus-builder, a moderate, someone who is not afraid to buck his party's philosophical orthodoxy when he feels it is in the best interests of the country.  As someone who believes passionately in the need for a grownup center in our houses of Congress which will move the ball forward rather than left or right, I have always looked favorably on this Senator.

    This Senator is not perfect from our perspective.  He is a firm free-trader.  In 98 he received only a 36% rating from the Taxpayers for Common Sense, due to all the defense spending votes on which he voted to spend unneeded dollars.  He has been a passionate and consistent supporter of a major boondoggle, the Seawolf submarine, which is made in this state.  The area of defense spending, however, is his one weakness, from our point of view.  He can normally be counted among those with the best fiscal credentials, and in fact received a 56% rating from TCS the previous year, more in line with his usual scores, and well above the Senate average of 41%.  He voted for the Chafee-Breaux bipartisan budget in 96, which would have put limits on the growth of Medicare and, most courageously, would have put limits on increases in the cost-of-living index for entitlements, which most economists agree are inflated, overstated and in real need of being rethought.  He has taken some politically courageous stands on another of our core issues, entitlement reform.  He voted for an increase in eligibility age for Medicare recipients, as well as for means-testing, both positions firmly at odds with his party's liberal orthodoxy.  And of course he has been a long-time champion of campaign finance reform.  In most regards this Senator has all of the earmarks of the sort of public servant we are looking for.

    For all of the above reasons, I believe we can expect this Senator to show sympathy and be supportive of ARP aspirations and goals.  My recommendation therefore is that we field no candidate against him next year, and that we endorse him, work for him, and, in general, do what it takes to make him grateful to ARP.
 

    This district is NOT generally a friendly district as regards third party and/or independent candidates; but it has the distinction of having elected as its Representative one of the most distinguished centrists in the country today, and that is Chris Shays(R), who has supported fiscal responsibility, is an original author of the Shays/Meehan campaign finance reform bill (obviously!), and was one of the few Representatives to have the courage to vote for raising the retirement age of Medicare.  Congressman Shays is, in my opinion, a gold-plated Trojan horse, and it would behove us to give this man any assistance we can.  There is a chance, because of his vote against impeachment, that he may face a right-wing primary challenge in '00.  Conservative columnist Ann Coulter is already making threatening noises in that direction. Just this past week of May 24, 99, high school history teacher Jim Campbell also announced he would challenge Shays from the right in the GOP primary next year.  The bottom line is that there appears to be serious sentiment within the party to purge Shays.  I therefore recommend that we make our presence felt in this district, and make it felt early to counter that sentiment.  Whether that takes the form of ARP supporters in this district urging their allies to register Republican to protect Shays, or whether we simply do what we can to make volunteers available, is a choice which we can make later.
 

    We should support incumbent James H. Maloney(D), who was a strong supporter of the balanced budget amendment, and is a Shays/Meehan co-sponsor. And in his last time at bat, in 98, he received only 50% of the vote. This is a very tight swing district, and, if Maloney should face another squeaker race in '00, I am confident we could expect some gratitude from him for any help ARP could give, -- in other words, Maloney is another potential Trojan Horse.  We should do all we can to encourage his membership in our future Congressional coalition.
 

    We should give a pass to incumbent Nancy Johnson(R).  She is a supporter of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill.  In addition, as a pro-choice Republican, she is one of those who is most closely associated with that small but hardy band of moderate Republicans who are continually out-of-step with the hard-right scorched-earth GOP leadership currently running the House.  This lady was in political trouble in her district, primarily because there was some feeling that she did not handle the Gingrich ethics case as well as she could have as head of the Ethics Committee.  She weathered that storm well, however, winning by 59% of the vote in 98.  But she's out of the frying pan and into the fire now:  She was one of those House Republican moderates who voted for impeachment, putting her squarely at odds with this district, which, while giving third-party/independent presidential candidates percentages of support above the national average, nevertheless also gave Clinton a 14% edge over Dole in the last 96 presidential election.  Therefore I feel we need to pull out all the stops and endorse her and work for her and campaign for her, the whole works.  She could be critical to our strategy.  In a monumental piece of jealousy, the Perot Reform Party in 98 decided that Johnson would be one of its targets.  This was outrageous.  As one of those courageous Republicans who eschews the extremist ideology of her own party's right-wing leadership, she could play a critical role in establishing a rational non-dogmatic power center in government, -- the sort of common-sense results-oriented approach which ARP's platform exemplifies.  Perot's decision to try to bring her down I can only ascribe to the jealousy his forces have shown toward all figures who have threatened to take the mantle of centrist leadership away from Perot, be it Lamm, or Weld, or whoever.  If Perot tries this again in '00 we must not allow such an outrage to stand; we must challenge him by supporting Johnson in any way we can.