Paul Bass Photo
Tim Herbst in the Shubert Theater post-debate spin room during the primary campaign.
When Tim Herbst knocked on doors on the shoreline this fall to help a Republican state legislative candidate, he learned that Democrats had beaten him to it. Three times.
Herbst was knocking on doors to help Republicans win state office in November. His party ended up taking a beating. Democrats won all statewide offices in the election as well as new near-super-majorities in both legislative houses.
That happened, Herbst concluded, because Connecticut Democrats spent years developing local teams of campaign workers who could pull the vote. Connecticut Republicans waited way too long to try to do the same.
People in both parties had originally seen 2018 as potentially a Republican year, at least in the governor’s race, because of incumbent Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s unpopularity. Instead, Democrats upped their margin of victory in that race for the third straight time.
“We lost this election on the ground game,” Herbst said during an appearance Wednesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
The Democrats began assembling its grassroots team in 2016, Herbst noted. The Republicans waited until after the five-way Aug. 14 gubernatorial primary.
“You don’t wake up on Aug. 15 and say, ‘We’re going to put a ground game together,’” he remarked.
Herbst, a zoning and land use attorney who served as Trumbull’s first selectman through 2017, was one of the five candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which Bob Stefanowski won. (Stefanowski went on to lose the general election to Democrat Ned Lamont.)
Since the November election debacle, Herbst has been thinking about what went wrong for Republicans — and what the party needs to do to rebuild. Right now Democrats control not just all statewide offices and the legislature, but also all five U.S. Congressional seats.
Herbst disagreed with GOP lieutenant governor candidate Joe Markley, who in a previous “Dateline” interview blamed the gubernatorial loss to overreliance on a Virginia consultant who didn’t understand Connecticut.
“I don’t think it’s fair to lame Chris LaCivita for Bob’s loss,” Herbst argued. Rather, the party’s problem stems from a longer-term failure to recruit more strong underticket candidates (“We have a lot of big egos; everybody wants to be governor”), or to nurture local municipal town committees to develop vote-pulling operations for the strong candidates who do run, like attorney general hopeful Sue Hatfield in 2018.
Herbst blamed many (not all) in the party’s 72-member state central committee for failing to connect with those town committees. Rather he said, too many of them “treat” their committee responsibilities “like a monthly dinner club. That needs to change.” He also criticized some committee members as “mercenaries” who use their position to land paid consulting gigs with candidates. “We have a lot of people who make decisions based on what is good for them” rather than for the party, Herbst said.
To succeed in Connecticut, Herbst argued, the party also needs to distinguish itself from its DC brethren: “We need to be Connecticut Republicans.” He advised paying more attention to Connecticut’s cities (“28 percent is better than 18 percent”) and offering a coherent alternative to Democrats by stressing limited government, personal responsibility, lower taxes.
Herbst, who’s 38, said he does not have interest in running for state party chair.
Click on the above video to watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” with Tim Herbst.