I thought last week that Connecticut Democrats might need to scramble to Code Blue and rustle up a new gubernatorial candidate, as the flames of scandal continue to creep up the trousers of Gov. Ned Lamont's expensive suits.

But then this week I met Republican challenger Bob Stefanowski for the first time, and I came away convinced that Democrats' best hope to win in November is to quickly recruit a new candidate for governor.

Not only does Stefanowski seem to be a much better prepared candidate this year, but he also has a lot of wind at his back, the benefit of the growing Lamont scandals.

By this summer, as Stefanowski fills Connecticut airwaves with advertising from his promised $10 million self-funded campaign, high-ranking refugees from the Lamont administration could be raising their hands and entering pleas in Superior Court.

I should say up front here that I desperately want to vote for a Democrat for governor in November, almost any Democrat besides Lamont, who, it seems to me, is a Democrat in name only.

And yet I found Stefanowski surprisingly refreshing, as he calmly whacked away at Lamont and his record, the governor's lack of transparency, his blind eye toward ethics and the two high-ranking minority women in his administration, now gone, who claimed they were victims of discrimination.

"We need to get integrity back," he said.

Ouch.

Most important for me, Stefanowski had all the right answers to my Trump questions.

I don't think I'm alone among Connecticut Democrats and independents who would never vote to elect a Republican for governor who buys into Donald Trump's corrosive approach to democracy and the lie that the election was stolen from him in 2020.

Stefanowski told me in no uncertain terms that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States, even if he doesn't think Biden's doing a very good job.

He said what happened Jan. 6 in Washington should never happen again, and that anyone found responsible — "regardless of the level" — should be held accountable.

"I don't like the personal side of Donald Trump," Stefanowski said. "I do agree with a lot of his policies."

Stefanowski has abandoned the centerpiece pledge of his 2018 campaign, the preposterous notion of eliminating the income tax, and seems to have a more realistic focus on taxes he might be able to tame.

He says he would support audits of every state agency to find waste and would start with building budgets from the ground up instead of factoring in increases to existing spending.

He hits his candidate stride talking about Connecticut's crushing energy costs and what he calls the second highest tax burden in the country.

"You have energy prices that are in some cases higher than car payments," he said. "We have to make the state more affordable ... There's a lot to fix."

As for the Lamont scandals, which he notes could involve tens and maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in school spending, he says the legislature needs to create some kind of body to investigate.

Connecticut residents deserve to find out what happened and should not have to rely on the sealed investigation by federal authorities.

He's right about that. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen, though.

The Republican candidate also complained that the office of Attorney General William Tong refuses to take his phone calls about the need to investigate public allegations of discrimination by two high-ranking women in the Lamont administration.

I'm sure Tong thinks of Stefanowski's calls as a campaign stunt, but he and state Democrats ought to understand that the Republican candidate is very convincing in making it look like the attorney general and governor are in cahoots in trying to bury discrimination complaints at the highest levels of the Lamont administration.

Stefanowski still could face challenges from within his own party and maybe a primary.

But I worry that Republicans may be more savvy than Democrats in seeing that Stefanowski is likely going to be a much more challenging candidate in a rematch than in the first race, in which he made a losing but respectable finish.

Meanwhile, if Democrats don't choose someone else soon, the flames of scandal might have consumed the governor's entire suit by the fall, with Lamont's hair on fire.

Time to call a Code Blue.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com