Attacks ramp up in CT GOP primary for U.S. Senate. Are voters tuned in? – Hartford

Until recent escalating attacks on the front runner, Connecticut’s race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate had been oddly listless, waged by three candidates whose daily campaign schedules are not public.

A televised debate Tuesday night will provide the first and only opportunity for a broad audience to see Themis Klarides, the GOP’s socially moderate convention choice, engage two Trump loyalists, Leora Levy and Peter Lumaj.

A primary featuring candidates opposite sides of the great divide over abortion and Donald Trump once offered the possibility of defining the political identity of a state Republican Party in transition.

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But Republicans say they see little evidence their voters are closely following the mid-summer fight for a spot on the November ballot opposing Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat seeking a third term. The primary is Aug. 9.

A low turnout would limit its value as a bellwether of Trump’s standing among GOP voters in Connecticut or their tolerance for a moderate deemed by convention delegates as the strongest candidate in a general election.

In the Republican redoubt of Darien, Rep. Thomas P. O’Dea of New Canaan said there was ample foot traffic last weekend by the canopy the GOP sets up on Saturdays, a favored form of outreach by both parties in Fairfield County.

There was little buzz about the primary.

“A lot of people, at least there in Darien, were not aware of the August 9th primary,” O’Dea said. “And that’s a problem.”

The same is true in Bolton, an east-of-the-river Hartford suburb where the first selectman is Republican Pam Sawyer, who served with Klarides in the House and voted for her at the convention. There is no chatter about the fast-approaching primaries.

“It’s quiet, whisper quiet,” Sawyer said.

The race got a jolt last week from Levy attacking Klarides, the former leader of the Republican minority in the Connecticut House, in messages to supporters and a TV commercial that, together, drew gasps for their content, tone and timing.

[ GOP candidate Peter Lumaj calls for cooling off period this week in heated U.S. Senate race after death of fellow candidate’s mother ]

One missive claimed Klarides, who was largely the face and voice of the GOP during six years as the House minority leader, really was a Democrat in disguise.

The ad faulted Klarides for acknowledging systemic racism in condolences on Twitter to African-Americans after the police killing of George Floyd two years ago, and it falsely accused her of helping Democrats “cheat with mail-in ballots.”

The commercial, whose images included a grainy photo of a distraught Klarides taken under unclear circumstances, was released while Klarides had suspended active campaigning to mourn the death of her 89-year-old mother, Theodora, who was buried Friday.

“I don’t think that what she’s saying is accurate, even close, and I think even she knows it’s not accurate,” O’Dea, a deputy House minority leader who supports Klarides, said of Levy, an old acquaintance.

Lumaj urged an end to the attacks, at least until after the funeral.

Tim Saler, the national GOP consultant advising Levy’s campaign, defended the ad’s line that Klarides “accused America of systemic racism,” saying most Republicans would disagree that systemic racism exists in the U.S.

He offered no example of absentee-ballot fraud in Connecticut arising from passage of a law temporarily allowing voters to use COVID-19 as excuse to vote by absentee in 2020.

Klarides’ support was not an outlier: The bill passed by votes of 144-2 in the House and 35-1 in the Senate.

The new ad cast Levy, a longtime player in establishment Republican fundraising, as an outsider in the mold of Trump and asserted, “After 22 years in office, Themis Klarides isn’t one of us.”

A majority of delegates to the Republican State Convention, including many who hold public office or chair local Republican town committees, would beg to differ.

With 56.8% of the vote, Klarides, 56, easily won a first-ballot endorsement at the convention in May despite publicly acknowledging she did not vote for Trump in 2020. Instead, she said she cast a protest write-in vote.

Her predecessor as House leader, Lawrence F. Cafero of Norwalk, said he was heartened by the overwhelming convention and the refusal of delegates to turn against Klarides over her break with Trump and her support for abortion rights and gay marriage.

“It gave me some hope there still remains a healthy diversity within the party, and it’s not all going in one direction,” said Cafero, who had made Klarides his key deputy, raising her profile.

Klarides is a fiscal and law-and-order conservative, endorsed by the Connecticut State Police Union. But she voted for the post-Sandy Hook gun controls, the codification of gay marriage in state law and is a defender of abortion rights, all potential liabilities in a low-turnout Republican primary.

“I am pro-choice, and I’ve been pro-choice my [entire] career,” said Klarides, who represented a swing district in the Naugatuck Valley for 22 years. “And I support LGBTQ rights, because I believe everybody should be treated equally.”

Democrats flipped her seat in 2020, when Klarides did not seek reelection.

Levy, 65, of Greenwich, was a commodities trader in her 20s, turning to philanthropy and eventually political fundraising after marriage and motherhood. Her reward for being a prolific GOP rainmaker was a seat on the Republican National Committee in 2017 and a nomination by Trump as ambassador to Chile in 2019. The then Republican-controlled Senate never voted on her confirmation.

A supporter of abortion rights in 2012 and critic of Trump in 2016, Levy has since repudiated both positions. She now proclaims herself opposed to all abortions, except in cases where a pregnancy is a consequence of rape or endangers the life of the pregnant person. Her campaign borrows from Trump, calling her an “America First Conservative Outsider.”

Six years ago, Levy was backing Jeb Bush for president and dismissing Trump as contemptible.

“Trump has turned the Republican primary process into a circus for his own purposes and his own aggrandizement. He is vulgar, ill-mannered and disparages those whom he cannot intimidate,” Levy wrote in a Greenwich Time opinion piece. “It is the media who have done the American voters a huge disservice by falling for his sideshows and not covering the serious candidates.”

Today, she faults the media for asking questions about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and questions the legitimacy of the congressional investigation. She offers no assessment of the testimony from former Trump aides about his inaction during the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

“Your question should be about the legitimacy of the committee,” Levy said. “I’m not re-litigating the election. President Biden is the president, and if anybody doesn’t believe it, they just need to look at our economy and where our country is.”

Levy asserts Klarides deserves blame for Gov. Ned Lamont’s touting Connecticut’s support for abortion rights to out-of-state companies as a reason to do business here.

“There’s something very wrong about that,” Levy said. “And my opponent’s vote and support for abortion have enabled our governor to do that.”

Klarides had not yet arrived in the General Assembly when it codified the tenets of Roe v. Wade in state law in 1990, though she has applauded its passage. She no longer was in office when it passed a law in 2022 declaring Connecticut a safe harbor for abortion providers and patients.

Lumaj, 55, of Fairfield, is running for statewide office for the fourth time in 10 years. He dropped out of a Senate race before the primary in 2012, lost an election as the GOP nominee for secretary of the state in 2014, and failed to qualify for a gubernatorial primary in 2018.

With a master’s degree in law, Lumaj provides immigration services in New York, where he says he also invests in real estate with family. A self-described refugee from Communist Albania, Lumaj is a fan of Trump and free-enterprise who views Levy as a conservative poseur, Klarides as an establishment Republican, and Blumenthal and Democrats as threats to capitalism.

“The biggest threat to the Democratic Party right now is prosperity. If people prosper in the United States, the Democratic Party becomes obsolete,” Lumaj said. “There’s no values and they are trying to prevent people from…