Shays calls Senate campaign a ‘revolution’ Says McMahon ‘can’t win’

Written by Ken Borsuk, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 02 February 2012 12:00

For Christopher Shays, his return to politics is just the first step in what he hopes will be a revolution of thinking.

But in making official his entry into the Republican race for the soon to be vacant seat of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), Mr. Shays has not suddenly turned into a radical calling for riots in the street. Instead he wants a revolution of priorities and approach, one that he says will return America to its greatness.

“We want people to join something special,” Mr. Shays said in an interview this week with the Post. “It’s a revolution to get our country back on track and our fellow Americans back to work. We have people who have no jobs and have lost their homes. They’ve also lost a sense of dignity by not having jobs. They don’t have the same sense of hope they had in the past. They don’t see this incredibly dynamic country, through its leaders, talking truth and making tough decisions.”

Mr. Shays said that the revolution would come by politicians talking honestly with the people they represent and not flinching from hard choices. To him there are too many politicians putting their personal and partisan political agendas before the needs of the country. This was an issue while he was in Congress for more than two decades, but he said it has only gotten worse in the last four years and has inspired his decision to run for the Senate.

“However bad Congress was when I was there, I saw it had multiplied by four,” Mr. Shays said. “It became almost a caricature. I can’t think of any tough decision any House or Senate members are making right now. There’s no guts there. There’s no straight talk anymore. I don’t want to be arrogant and you don’t want to get in people’s faces, but I’m hungry for some politician to just talk truth.”

Mr. Shays had served as Connecticut’s 4th District congressional representative to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 to 2008 when he was defeated by U.S. Rep. Jim Himes of Greenwich. But instead of attempting a political comeback by going for his old seat, Mr. Shays is seeking statewide office for the first time. He will be battling it out for the Republican nomination against former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2010 and is back again and leading the Republican race.

Mr. Shays said he feels he can make more of an impact in the Senate and pledged that he was in this race for the long haul. The Republican Party’s convention is set for May, but regardless of the outcome and which candidate gets the endorsement, Mr. Shays is committed to running a primary for the nomination.

“I’d like to win the convention, but I am so committed to a primary,” Mr. Shays said with a smile. “I think I have a good shot at winning the convention, but in the end there’s going to be a primary.”

Calling for a balanced budget

In discussing his priorities for the campaign, Mr. Shays said he would focus on an ambitious plan to balance the budget within the six years of his term. Plans like the Simpson Bowles Report and one put forth last year by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan have both been sharply criticized because of large cuts to spending and programs like Medicare. But neither are as ambitious as Mr. Shays plan, which calls for a balanced budget in far less time than the alternative plans.

In his plan, Mr. Shays the retirement age will be raised pushing back the time when people may collect Social Security, preserving it for future generations. That kind of thinking is far from universally accepted, but Mr. Shays insists it will be necessary as will cuts in Medicare.

For Mr. Shays there are three ways to get the deficit down: Spending reductions, economic growth and creating more revenue. He points to the Republican-led Congress, working with Democratic President Bill Clinton, which was able to provide a balanced budget in the late 1990’s as proof it can be done.

“If you reduce government spending by 1% for six years you would basically balance the budget,” Mr. Shays said. “It’s not out of reach.”

Mr. Shays is also advocating simplification in the tax code and ending what he sees as over-regulation. By bringing in simplification to paying taxes, Mr. Shays offered his belief that some would be willing to provide more revenue because simplification can also create cost savings.

When it comes to regulations, Mr. Shays said that if elected he would advocate for no Senate committee to be able to report on legislation until all regulations in their departments are reviewed.

“We have regulations on the books that go all the way back to the turn of the last century,” Mr. Shays said. “They need to be changed.”

Natural gas for energy independence?

Part of his platform is gaining energy independence as Mr. Shays cites a figure that the United States is spending $1 billion a day on foreign and fossil fuel. He said that natural gas is a tremendous source of energy independence that is right here in the country waiting to be tapped into. However, the best way to get at that gas is through a controversial practice known as “fracking” rock, a method that environmentalists have harshly criticized. Mr. Shays acknowledges these concerns, but says it can be done safely and effectively.

“If we’re going to have energy independence and we’re going to fracture the Earth to get the natural gas, I want to make sure there’s a government regulation to make sure natural gas isn’t coming out of someone’s water outlet,” Mr. Shays said. “Regulations obviously are required. I don’t want Ohio and Indiana with their huge coal-powered electric generation to not pay attention to cleaning the coal. We’re right in the path. When I was in the [Connecticut General Assembly] the air quality in Stamford was terrible but it wasn’t from us. It was coming from Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania. That’s why the federal government steps in. We can’t tell Ohio what to do in Connecticut but the federal government can.”

To get at the natural gas, Mr. Shays said there will have to be an investment in infrastructure by energy companies, something he also sees as a priority for the country. He said the current infrastructure is “almost at a third world status” and that something must be done with roads, bridges, seaports and railways. While some of that will require government spending, Mr. Shays said most of it can be accomplished by the private sector. And where there is government spending, Mr. Shays said he would vote against any infrastructure package that included wasteful spending such as the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.

Mr. Shays says this is all part of a message people need to hear even if others don’t want them to.

“If we tell the American people the truth, they’re going to do the right thing,” Mr. Shays said. “But they need to be told the truth.”

Harsh words for McMahon

Mr. Shays has promised an “interesting race” with Ms. McMahon, who is the clear front-runner right now in a Republican race that also includes Hartford attorney Brian K. Hill.

On the eve of making his campaign official last week, Mr. Shays spoke at the CEO Trust Leadership Series. The event, hosted by Citrin Cooperman, was held in Stamford near where Mr. Shays once lived and campaigned for his first election to the state’s General Assembly. Mr. Shays was there to speak about his philosophies of leadership to local CEOs and business leaders, but talk quickly turned to the campaign and his return to politics four years after his congressional defeat.

By a quirk of numbers, some polls have shown Mr. Shays running a far more competitive race with presumptive Democratic front-runner U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy (D-5) than Ms. McMahon, while at the same time those polls have Mr. Shays trailing Ms. McMahon in a potential primary race. Ms. McMahon has rounded up dozens of endorsements from Republican town committees and municipal leaders throughout the state, some of whom have been longtime allies of Mr. Shays. He said that his message to those people is that they “jumped in too soon.”

Mr. Shays said he understands why there is support for her given that she has “carried the flag” for the state Republican Party for the past two years. While he refuses to say anything is “impossible,” he told the crowd at the CEO Trust Leadership Series that he has “no comprehension” of how she could beat Mr. Murphy given the high negatives she faces in polls.

“There is this view that her money beats my experience and I have the view that my experience beats her money,” Mr. Shays said last week. “It’s going to be a wonderful thing to see what happens.”

In his interview with the Post, he elaborated on that statement saying the negative numbers will make her unelectable in November against Mr. Murphy or former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.

“The bottom line from the Republican standpoint is she can’t win and I can,” Mr. Shays said. “Her negatives are greater than her positives. A poll [noted Republican pollster] Frank Luntz did, 57% said they wouldn’t vote for her. She didn’t lose [in 2010] because of campaign strategy. She lost when people saw the business she was in and realized she was clueless about what is happening in the public policy arena. … In a Republican year she lost by 138,000 votes. She lost by who she was. That hasn’t changed. Her business is still the same business and her experience is still the same.”

He later added, “If she didn’t have her money, do you think she could have ever even gotten one vote? She basically convinced people last time around, ‘I will spend whatever it takes to win’ and Dick Blumenthal proved in the general election that you can’t buy a general election.”

By bringing that case directly to the people and pointing to his decades of experience, regardless of what happens in May’s convention, Mr. Shays said he is well positioned to win a primary in August. He said Ms. McMahon’s support is “broader than I would like, but paper thin.”

Pledge to be an independent mind

In looking back at his defeat in 2008, Mr. Shays said he feels he never had the chance to complete what he had set out to do. Had he won that year, he said he only would have served two more two-year terms, meaning he had planned to retire before the 2012 election.

“You develop skills and talents over time and you develop relationships,” Mr. Shays said. “I was looking forward to using them. I wanted to bring attention to the issues I feel deserved it. I believe I can in if elected to this new role.”

Mr. Shays said no matter if the Republicans are in the majority or minority of the Senate, if he is elected he would support filibuster reform. Republican use of the filibuster in the Senate has essentially left the Democratic majority needing 60 votes for any measure to pass, and Mr. Shays said that is a practice that needs to end no matter who is in charge. He also said he wants to end the practice of anonymous holds where a senator can stop something without having to reveal who is doing it.

“I asked a Republican colleague in the Senate how he liked it and he said, ‘I love it. You can kill anything because of unanimous consent,’” Mr. Shays said. “I thought, ‘What a sad commentary’ that this is the thinking there... The Senate isn’t working anymore. It’s broken.”

During his later years in Congress, Mr. Shays got heat from his own Republican caucus on his stances and drew the ire of Democrats for his strong support of the Iraq war. If elected to the Senate, he pledged to have the same independent stances that his supporters feel defined him as a congressman.

“I think probably there will be times when the leaders on both sides of the aisle would wish I wasn’t there,” Mr. Shays said.

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