What the headline should read is "Done with his headfake for Independent and Republican voters, Lamont promises to return to his base Democrats" *

After vetoes on housing and labor, Lamont tries to make amends

[An unnecessary gesture except to signal who he is and where his sympathies lie: who are these people going to vote for, a Republican? Pshaw.]

Gov. Ned Lamont has turned to repairing relationships frayed by his vetoes of an omnibus housing bill and a measure that would have provided jobless benefits for strikers, both priorities of various elements of the Democratic coalition and its party’s legislative leaders.

…. A call to [ House Majority Leader Jason Rojas] was one of the first Lamont made after the veto Monday. Another went to Ed Hawthorne, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, the labor federation that worked successfully with the Democratic governor on a significant list of first-term labor victories.

The challenge now facing Lamont became clear in two very different conversations: one with a legislative leader who sees and is ready to grasp the building blocks of a housing deal; the other with a union man who sees Lamont unfeeling about workers and immovable on an issue that has come to the fore for labor.

“I was very frank with him,” Hawthorne said in an interview Tuesday. “The state elected Democrats, and Democrats put two bills on his desk that would have made a difference to working people. And he sided with Republicans.”

Lamont cast himself as a labor ally, a Democrat horrified at the Trump administration’s efforts to cripple the influence of public sector unions in the federal workforce and its removal of labor-friendly members of the National Labor Relations Board.

“I think about labor rights, and I think about what the Trump administration is doing to the NLRB and the rights of our workers to organize, rights of our workers to stand up to themselves. We’re trying to do everything we can,” Lamont said Tuesday at a public event at the state Capitol.

In his veto message the previous day about Senate Bill 8, which would have provided jobless benefits to strikers in Connecticut, the governor enumerated the first-term victories he helped deliver for the labor movement.

They included a higher minimum wage, a nearly universal mandate for paid sick time, paid family and medical leave coverage, expanded collective bargaining rights for public employees, and protections for workers who leave captive audience meetings. 

…. Hawthorne acknowledged the governor did those things, but he noted that federal labor law largely preempts states from enhancing the standing of unions to organize workers or negotiate contracts. One notable exception, Hawthorne said, is a state’s ability to remove the prohibition on striking workers collecting unemployment.

“When we asked him to sit down to talk about the [strikers’] bill, the response was, ‘Think of something else,’” Hawthorne said. “But everything else was preempted by federal law.” [“So we needed something to show our dupes”, he means — Ed]

The governor, who was elected in 2018, reelected in 2022 and is considering running again in 2026, also has a what-have-you-done-lately problem with labor.

“There’s first-term Ned Lamont and second-term Ned Lamont,” Hawthorne said. “He mentions the minimum wage — first term; paid family leave — first term; expanded collective bargaining — first term.

Like Connecticut’s gun-confiscation advocates, these people will take what they can get, and keep coming back for more. The Long March continues.

*(Yes, the omission of a comma is intentional)