Michelle Turner Photo
Mary Glassman had a double pitch for college students in a visit to New Haven: Elect me governor. And stick around after graduation.
She suggested she could help lure them to stay in part through a new “research corridor” connecting Yale and UConn, and through better mass transportation.
Glassman, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, Monday night was the latest statewide candidate to address the Yale College Democrats at the university’s Branford College. As a candidate who’s using public financing rather than pouring millions of her own dollars into the race, she said, she’s trying to wrest the nomination from the “rich guys from Greenwich and Stamford”.
Seventeen students showed up.
“How many of you are seniors?” Glassman, who’s currently first selectwoman of Simsbury, asked them.
One student raised a hand.
“OK, when you graduate, how many of you are considering staying in Connecticut?”
Two raised their hands.
“Here’s the challenge that we face in Connecticut. We lose more young people from this state to other states more than anywhere else in the country. That’s a real, I think, warning bell for our state, because our state is facing huge challenges fiscally. And the only way out of it is by keeping young people in our state to find jobs, build homes and raise their families.”
Born and raised in what she described as “a blue collar town” and a poor community north of Hartford, Glassman said she was the only girl in the family, and the first to go to college. After she graduated from University of Connecticut, she returned to New Britain to work as a reporter, part of a team that exposed municipal corruption, she said.
Wanting to better understand the language of government, she returned to study law, she said. ” It was $500 per semester,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise.
She tied that experience into her campaign pitch, which she delivered with her daughter Amanda (pictured to the left of her in the above photo) sitting alongside the other students. She laid out a plan to keep young people in Connecticut.
Education and opportunity enabled her to go to UConn and remain in the state, she said. Her first priority is to give kids a quality education, starting with pre-kindergarten, she said.
She argued quality education leads to job growth: “The other guys talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. But you can’t get a good job if you don’t have a good education.”
As soon as young people graduate high school or college, they leave the state for good, she said. While jobs must be created to hold young people in the state, Connecticut needs to have more affordable housing, too, she argued. “Connecticut lacks affordable housing for the handicapped, their families, the elderly. Young people take jobs, but can’t find affordable housing. So there is a real disconnect.”
There’s no state agency which oversees housing. It was eliminated, Glassman said, by the previous administration.
She said transportation is another key to keeping people here. “We are strategically located between New York and Boston, and yet, you can’t get there [New York or Boston]. You can’t take a train, you can’t take a bus.”
As an assistant to the the speaker of the State House of Representatives back in 2001 – 2002, Glassman recalled, worked on a transportation strategy bill, which included high-speed rail. She said a gas tax would have paid for developing the faster trains.
“And it would make Connecticut a cool place to live,” she said. Slight laughter filled the room. “You’d think it would be cool.”
The other way Glassman said the state could retain young people is to set up a “research corridor” with UConn and Yale serving as the base. North Carolina’s research triangle could serve as the model. The governor needs to sit down with presidents of both universities to make it happen, she said.
“This is all can be done with a stroke of the governor’s pen,” she argued.
The administration of current Gov. M. Jodi Rell (who’s not running for reelection) proposed a UCOnn-yale nanotechnology center a few years ago, but then never funded it. Read about that here.
Glassman also told the students that public financing is allowing her to run. The state’s system allows candidates to receive public matching dollars if they limit the size and types of contributions they take in. Some of the leading gubernatorial candidates, like Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Tom Foley, are opting out of the system.
To qualify for the matching dollars, Glassman said, she has to get 2,500 people to donate $100 each. With that money, she said, she would be“beholden to no one.” She said as of seven weeks ago, her campaign was halfway to the goal.
She said she wasn’t concerned about her Democratic rivals who have overflowing campaign coffers.
“Look at Scott Brown in Massachusetts,” she said. “He didn’t have a lot of money.When you have a candidate who can run with a vision, its not about money.”
“People are desperate for leadership with a vision,” she said, “and shopping for candidates.”