Connecticut mothers disillusioned with Democrat rule in Connecticut are using their energy to block Democrat Governor Ned Lamont from a second term and help boost Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski to victory in November.
The mothers, who have formed a group dubbed “Moms for Bob,” are hoping their efforts will do for Stefanowski what parents did for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).
“In the beginning, I really thought Governor Lamont was trying to do the right thing,” Sarah Matthews, a mother of three who heads the Republican Party in Fairfield, told the Hartford Courant about Lamont’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the state.
“He was telling us what we needed to know, and I appreciated that,” Matthews said. “But now, it’s changed. … There’s a real overreach in state control.”
The Courant reported:
Matthews is part of a legion of Republican women enlisted by Republican candidate for governor Bob Stefanowski. Under the banner of “Moms for Bob,” the women are holding meetings in suburban coffee shops and living rooms across the state to convince friends and neighbors, including a vital block of unaffiliated voters, to support the Republican challenger.
As The Connecticut Star reported Thursday, National Public Radio (NPR) also observed the number of suburban Connecticut mothers who are shifting away from the Democrat Party because, among other concerns, officials from that party had turned a deaf ear to the issues of mask mandates in schools throughout the pandemic.
The moms interviewed by NPR said the move by Democrats in the state to lift the school mask mandate, which occurred abruptly just prior to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, amounted to “too little, too late.”
Republicans, the moms said, are the only officials who listened to their concerns and met with them.
Kelly Scinto, a Fairfield mother of four young children, told the Courant she grew frustrated with Lamont’s executive orders during the pandemic, especially the mask mandate, which the governor rescinded, as other Democrat governors did, just before Biden’s address.
“We have heard Lamont loud and clear with his taking away parental choice and putting it into the hands of the government instead of the parents with mask choice,” said Scinto. “I was really turned off by all of that, and I’m ready to support Bob and help in any way that he needs in order to get him elected in November.”
Scinto also said crime is another big concern, especially in light of the fact two of her family’s cars were stolen from their driveway.
“In our neighborhood, cars are stolen all the time,” she said.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) captured the sentiment of parents frustrated with the Democrats’ policies that undermined parental rights.
“Republicans believe that parents matter,” Reynolds said in her response to Biden’s address. “It was true before the pandemic and has never been more important to say out loud: Parents matter.”
In Virginia, Youngkin defeated former governor Terry McAuliffe (D) primarily as a result of his resolve to defend parents’ rights.
“Any Republican running in the midterms has a lens on what happened in Virginia,” Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, said, according to the Courant. “You’re going to see that playbook being used a lot. Reaching out to moms, especially moms of young children, is going to be a key message point.”
According to a “Gender on the Ballot” poll released Wednesday by Martin’s Institute and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, 53 percent of women “believe elected officials have let people down and not delivered results.”
The survey results found 59 percent of women are pessimistic about the economy, compared to 48 percent in 2021, and 50 percent of the women polled said their financial situation has grown worse since the start of the pandemic, an increase of 11 percent since the previous year.
Of the women surveyed, 77 percent believe the pandemic “will have long-lasting impacts on women and their careers.”
The survey of 801 online interviews with participants across the country, was conducted by the Benenson Strategy Group between February 10-15 among likely women voters. The margin of error for the dataset overall is +/- 3.5 percent.
Barbara Lee, president and founder of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, said in a statement women “will continue to shape our trajectory this election season.”
“Amidst global upheaval that has disproportionately impacted women, it is more important than ever that leaders understand the power of women voters and listen to their political opinions,” Lee added.
The “Moms for Bob” initiative in Connecticut takes off as an NPR/PBS NewsHour Marist survey of 1,264 national adults released in February found most of the issues women in Connecticut have expressed as areas of frustration with regard to state Democrats are the same ones that have led to 56 percent of Americans asserting Biden’s first year in office was a failure. Only 39 percent of the poll’s respondents said his first year was a success.
Inflation, handling of the pandemic, the Ukraine crisis, and violent crime were among the issues of grave concern the poll’s respondents gave as reasons for grading Biden so poorly.
However, when political affiliation is a factor, 79 percent of Democrats said Biden’s first year was a success, while only six percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Independents agreed with that assessment.
– – –
Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bob Stefanowski” by Patrick Trueman CC BY-SA 3.0.
