GOP debate generates heat

New London - Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele came into Wednesday night's debate badly needing to make up ground in the race for the Republican nomination for governor.

As the lieutenant governor lit into frontrunner Tom Foley and fellow candidate R. Nelson "Oz" Griebel from the opening moments of the debate on the stage of the Garde Arts Center, his strategy was clear: punch. Then punch again.

Fedele jabbed Foley with an early reference to his arrest record, counter-punched when he was criticized for having backed tax hikes, and on two occasions dramatically raised documents - a task force report and a Securities and Exchange Commission filing - that Fedele said showed Foley to be misleading voters about his record on taxes and on layoffs at a business he once owned.

But Foley and Griebel gave as good as they got, sometimes echoing each other as they hammered Fedele for his work in the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who retains a high approval rating even as her party pledges to move away from her positions in order to more deeply slash state spending and take the fight to legislative Democrats.

Fedele opened the debate declaring that he had urged Rell to veto the compromise budget that she allowed to become law last fall, which balanced the state's books only with heavy reliance on borrowing and federal stimulus, as opposed to the deeper spending cuts sought by many in the legislature.

"For all the reasons that Governor Rell said that budget was not correct," Fedele said, "... I would have vetoed that, and I expressed that to the governor."

"I certainly hope Lieutenant Governor Fedele accepts more responsibility than that for what's happened in the current administration," Foley replied, noting that Fedele had gone on record in support of Rell's unsuccessful proposal to raise income taxes in the 2007 fiscal year in order to channel roughly $1 billion of new aid to local school districts.

"You're the second-highest elected official in the state," Foley said. "For you to say you had nothing to do with this and you're not accountable I find a little disingenuous."

"I don't see how you can separate yourself from the Rell administration by saying all you were was an adviser," Griebel chimed in, simultaneously raising the other issue that most separates Fedele from the rest of the Republican field: campaign finances.

Fedele is a participating candidate in the Citizens Election Program, which is providing public grants to candidates for the statewide offices for the first time, in exchange for strict limits on the amounts they can spend on their campaigns. Neither Foley nor Griebel is participating in the system, and they have both criticized Fedele for taking part, with Foley wasting few instances to remind reporters that Fedele, a successful businessman from Stamford, is "a man of means."

Teasing Fedele over the issue from the podium, Foley referred to a YouTube video his supporters have passed around in recent days showing Fedele and his wife emerging from the lieutenant governor's Ferrari during a fundraiser in the parking lot of the Capitol.

After Fedele protested that the event in question was a fundraiser for the Children's Medical Center at Hartford Hospital, Foley pressed.

"You do own a Ferrari?" Foley said.

"You do own a plane, don't you?" Fedele shot back.

As the sparse crowd in the 1,500 seat theater began to chuckle, Griebel leaned in to offer what passed among the three for the populist punch line.

"I own neither," he said, to laughter.

Wednesday's debate was co-sponsored by The Day and WTNH News8, and was the second of the Republican gubernatorial campaign to be carried live. A scheduled debate among the Democratic candidates seeking their party's nomination, Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy, was canceled after Lamont's campaign withdrew from the event.

The debate was moderated by longtime WTNH anchor Ann Nyberg, while the channel's chief political correspondent, Mark Davis, and The Day's editorial page editor, Paul Choiniere, questioned the three candidates.

Foley entered the debate and now approaches the Aug. 10 primary with a strong lead over his rivals.

In the most recent poll of the race by Quinnipiac University's polling institute, in mid-July, Foley held nearly a four-to-one lead over Fedele and Griebel, with 48 percent support among Republican voters, compared to 13 for Fedele and just 7 percent for Griebel, the former head of Bank Boston in Connecticut, and now the leader of the Metro-Hartford Alliance.

Fedele has tried to cut into that lead by emphasizing the media reports that have disclosed Foley's two past arrests on motor-vehicle-related charges. In those incidents, he was charged with assault and breach of peace, respectively, though charges both times were dropped. Recent reports revealed that he had not disclosed the arrests on vetting forms when accepting his U.S. ambassadorship, which Fedele noted in an early jab at Foley.

"Tom's comments about my participation in the governor's administration are probably as accurate" as his disclosures on those federal forms, Fedele said, prompting a handful of "oohs" in the auditorium.

Fedele also brandished an SEC filing to undercut one of Foley's complaints. Fedele has run commercials noting that the Bibb Co., which Foley once owned, shut down a textile mill in Georgia in the 1990s.

Foley has said he "no longer had anything to do with" the company when those layoffs occurred in 1996, but Fedele held up the SEC filing which shows Foley remained on the company's board of directors in June 1997. Foley conceded he retained 7 percent ownership of the company then, but had no role in decision-making about the plant's shutdown.

Fedele also noted that Foley had served on Rell's Commission on Education Finance, which recommended in 2006 that the state raise $1 billion to plug into local schools, which begat the same 2007 tax hike proposal from the administration that Foley criticized.

Foley countered that he was no longer in the country when the report was finished - he had already left, for his ambassadorship in Dublin.

t.mann@theday.com