Lucy Gellman Photo
Malloy addresses the crowd.
Philadelphia—New Haven’s embrace of refugees provided a case point for Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy when he got his moment in the spotlight at the Democratic National Convention Monday night. While addressing Democrats gathered for their presidential nominating convention at the city’s Wells Fargo Center, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy invoked Connecticut — and then New Haven specifically — while making a pitch to delegates on both sides of the democratic aisle: It was necessary to vote for Hillary Clinton and present a unified front because Mike Pence, governor of Indiana and Donald Trump’s vice presidential hopeful, would be scarier in the White House than Donald Trump himself.
Addressing delegates (and a national TV audience), Malloy urged voters to consider what a Trump-Pence administration would look like, comparing his own record as a Democratic governor with that of Republican governors like Pence.
In Connecticut, Malloy said, “We’ve added 100,000 jobs — while raising our minimum wage. We passed criminal justice reform that gives non-violent offenders a second chance. We’ve lowered our prison population by thousands and thousands of individuals, while we cut our crime rate to the lowest in 48 years. After the Sandy Hook School tragedy, we passed common sense gun safety laws including universal background checks. We moved towards equal pay by making compensation more transparent. And we were the first state in the nation, five years ago, to pass paid sick leave … Not only are workers protecting their health-but also they’re protecting the health of the people they serve – and overwhelmingly the businesses they work for approve of paid sick leave.”
“Democratic governors across the country are leading the way,” he added.
Having begun with a story of his ability to overcome a learning disability, Malloy did not mention Connecticut’s own turbulent year with disability and social services funding and his cuts to mental health care services. Instead he then turned to Trump and Pence, calling their ticket “a contest to see who can discriminate the most.”
To drive that point home — to bring some remaining Berners over to team Hillary — he brought New Haven to the fore, citing how Syrian refugees barred from Indiana found a new home in the Elm City.
“Gov. Pence turned his back on refugee children and their parents. The first family of refugees he rejected are now welcomed residents in Connecticut,” he said. “The Trump-Pence ticket brings the worst of the Republican gubernatorial record to the national stage. And it shows why we need to fight back at a local level.”
In the case of that Syrian refugee family, Connecticut did fight back on a local level, IRIS’ Chris George welcoming them in a split-second decision with the governor that he said, at the time, seemed natural.
“They were wonderful,” Malloy had said at a press conference welcoming the family. “I assured them that I was not only welcoming them but I was proud to have them come to Connecticut.”