Candidate Corey Cuts The Bull (& Swine)

A Hartford bartender walks into a New Haven bar on Halloween night.

He’s not there to serve drinks, or to judge the costume contest. He’s there to run for U.S. Senate.

On Wednesday night, that visitor was Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matthew Corey. He stopped by the East Rock barbeque restaurant Bull & Swine for the neighborhood bar’s Halloween costume party and State Street Spook Fest.

Corey, a Manchester resident who spent 16 years running the recently closed McKinnon’s Irish Pub in downtown Hartford, showed up because he thought that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski was going to make an appearance.

Stefanowski, who had put the appearance on his ​“bus tour” leading up to the Nov. 6 election, ended up not making the Halloween party. That left Corey to turn his night out in the Elm City into a campaign stop for his own uphill battle to unseat Democratic incumbent Chris Murphy.

Murphy is seeking to win a second term as Connecticut’s junior U.S. senator. He and Corey will face off for the federal legislative seat in next Tuesday’s general election.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll placed Murphy comfortably ahead in the race with 56 percent of the vote over Corey’s 41 percent.

In blue jeans and a grey-and-navy fleece, Corey went through two bottles of Budweiser at Bull & Swine as he pitched the working-class credentials and conservative perspective that he hopes to bring to Washington D.C. in January if he wins Tuesday’s election.

Although Corey closed his long-standing Hartford bar this past spring, he still runs a window-washing company called Advanced Services International, which he founded in 1994. Corey said that he has been washing windows in New Haven for 28 years, mostly on Long Wharf but also on New Haven City Hall.

“This is a walking campaign versus a working campaign,” Corey said, arguing that he doesn’t need to ambulate across the state as Murphy has done multiple times in order to understand the squeeze felt by Connecticut’s working and middle classes. That’s because the 54-year-old candidate lives that life every day, and has done so for decades, he said.

“Navy veteran, business owner, blue collar,” he said. ​“I’m one of them.”

This isn’t Corey’s first stab at national office. He’s challenged Hartford Democratic U.S. Rep. John Larson three times, as an independent in 2012 and as the Republican nominee in 2014 and 2016. He lost all three bids, earning nearly 34 percent of the vote in 2016.

In his 2018 challenge to Murphy, Corey’s using many of the fiscally and socially conservative talking points he used in his losing campaigns against Larson: he’s pushing for tax cuts, fewer federal regulations on small businesses, a low minimum wage, looser gun control laws, stronger protections against undocumented immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and a closer relationship between the private and public sectors in encouraging vocational and trade school education.

Unlike in 2016, he now has a national political role model he can point two with two years of what he sees as effective political leadership: President Donald Trump.

Corey praised the $1.5 trillion tax cut that Trump and Republican legislators ushered through Congress last year as a boon to Connecticut business and working people.

“I’d want to make the individual tax cuts permanent,” Corey said. The 2017 tax overhaul dropped the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and decreased income tax rates for individuals, particularly for the country’s highest earners. Those individual tax cuts, however, are set to expire in 2025.

Corey said he supports Trump’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices. He said he would like to see the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) amended to allow small businesses to band together to buy health insurance plans across state lines.

“I don’t support sanctuary cities,” he said, and he said he thinks that the U.S. should better fortify its border with Mexico against the migration of undocumented immigrants.

On foreign policy, he said, he thinks that the U.S. needs to hold Saudi Arabia accountable in some way for human rights violations in Yemen (as perpetrated with weapons purchased from the U.S.) as well as for the apparent murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But, he said, he is wary of doing anything that will encourage Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Back at home, he said he is open to having armed resource officers stationed at schools. ​“We need to put school safety first,” he said, ​“and gun control second.” He said he has no problems with law-abiding citizens buying military-grade weapons like AR-15s if they want to use those guns for hunting or other legal sports.

He criticized Murphy and other Democrats for politicizing mass shootings like Saturday’s massacre of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist, anti-Semitic gunman.

“Everything’s identity politics,” he said about the Democrats’ criticism of President Trump for inciting white nationalist violence with subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle dog whistles towards a racist right-wing fringe.

But when Corey started talking with potential voters at the Halloween party, no one wanted to discuss his stances on identity politics or gun control or international affairs. They wanted to talk about taxes.

“I’m in support of anything to incentivize the growth of small businesses in Connecticut,” said Albert Greenwood, a 35-year-old Guilford resident who co-owns Bull & Swine as well as a second State Street bar, Oak Haven.

Corey said small businesses are his bread and butter, citing his work as a bartender and a window washer. He pledged to lower taxes and reduce federal regulations if elected to senate.

Greenwood said he is leaning towards voting for Core. He is definitely voting for Stefanowski for governor, he said. ​“Ned Lamont wants to raise the minimum wage. That would crush small businesses.”

Craig Hotchkiss, an East Haven resident who co-owns Bull & Swine and Oak Haven with Greenwood, said he would like to see Connecticut’s next senator work towards lowering payroll taxes and income taxes and not increasing the minimum wage.

“Stay out of my business,” Hotchkiss said about one message he would like to send to the federal government. ​“Don’t tell me how much to pay people.”

Corey said he agrees. He said minimum wage jobs aren’t the solution to poverty. A better and more practical education is, he said, one that prepares students for jobs in manufacturing and other trades without requiring them to take on huge student loans.

Albert’s wife Sharline Greenwood, who works three jobs, including as a nurse at West Haven High School and as nurse at a home health care company, said she will support anyone who will help lower her and her husband’s tax burden and insurance costs.

“He’s honest,” Sharline said about Corey. ​“I’ll vote for the hardworker who understands what the middle class is going through.”

When asked what she thinks of President Trump, she replied, ​“I think he’s an idiot.”

But that won’t necessarily keep her from voting for Republicans this Tuesday.

“All I know is the middle class is hurting real bad,” she said. ​“Forget the president right now. We need to help Connecticut residents.”