New London — Republican candidate for Governor Bob Stefanowski came to The Day’s building on Monday and shared his positions on affordable housing, the economy and voting rights, among other issues, with the editorial board.

Gov. Ned Lamont has held comfortable double-digit leads over Stefanowski in multiple recent polls. But the Republican has pointed to the 2018 election, which he lost to Lamont and which ended closer than polls predicted.

Economy and State Pier

Throughout the campaign, and on Monday, Stefanowski noted that the state’s budget surplus is owed to federal COVID-19 relief funding, not Lamont’s leadership.

Lamont told The Day last week that paying down pension debt at the current level would reduce taxes by $450 million annually for state residents. The state’s overall pension debt is around $41 billion. The Governor has criticized Stefanowski and Independent candidate Rob Hotaling for being too willing to spend the state’s rainy day fund. Stefanowski has said the surplus monies should go to the Connecticut taxpayer. He has said he hasn’t seen any real benefit from the budget surplus, while Lamont has cited improvements in DMV wait times, access to daycare and availability of capital for small businesses.

Of the state’s rainy day fund, Stefanowski said he wants to spend $2 billion on “giving the average family back about $2,000 dollars.”

“We could get through a recession with $4 billion of reserves,” he said. While he didn’t specify a number, he added that some of the rainy day fund could be used to invest in education.

Stefanowski repeatedly highlighted the difficulty people are having paying electricity bills, gas, rent, property taxes, and the like. He said the state should extend its gas tax holiday through 2023 and reverse the diesel tax increase that took place in July, which he blamed Lamont for. He would repeal the highway use tax on large commercial trucks set to take effect in the new year.

Stefanowski said that if elected, he would stop collecting 200 fees that collectively generate less than 0.25% of the state’s revenue. He said he would do away with “the corruption tax,” which, he says, includes the $230 million overrun at the State Pier, the misuse of COVID-19 relief funds by the city of West Haven and the school construction project in Groton, among other examples.

“There’s a sense up there that it’s their money,” Stefanowski said of Hartford.

He mentioned other taxes he finds onerous, such as a tax on vending machines, a tax on prepared foods and taxes on businesses that the state should waive, such as fees for licenses.

“Why are we burdening a business with taxes when they set up here?” he asked. “I don’t think it’s fair, and it really adds up.”

He accused Lamont of not calling a special session to address cost of living issues because it’s an election year.

In August at a news conference in New London, Stefanowski slammed Lamont for lack of transparency and cost overruns on the offshore wind redevelopment project at State Pier. News broke in August that a federal grand jury has subpoenaed six years of port authority records as part of an investigation into the quasi-public agency. He repeated his criticisms Monday. He said that if elected, “I would open up the files and find out what’s going on with that and the FBI investigation.”

Stefanowski went on to say that he would sit down with Ørsted and Eversource to try and renegotiate the deal.

“To me, when you set up a three-way partnership with Ørsted, Eversource and the state of Connecticut, and it’s supposed to cost $70 to $90 million dollars, and it costs $300 (million), if you decide to go forward, you split the overrun three ways,” he said. “At a minimum, we sit down and we say … we have a problem here. Rightly or wrongly, we massively underestimated the price.”

Stefanowski said to “imagine” what the state could have done with the money it paid toward overruns on the project, such as investing it in education or affordable housing. He clarified that he is not opposed to renewable energies such as wind power and that the state should be pushing renewable energies to bring jobs to Connecticut.

“Wind, solar, green hydrogen, there’s a lot of areas we could go,” he said. “Global warming is a problem. I know a lot of Republicans say it’s made up. It’s not made up. There’s something going on, I don’t know exactly what it is, but we need to address it, and we need to do it in a balanced manner, not by giving $230 million dollars away.”

Abortion

Lamont has repeatedly attacked Stefanowski for his stance on abortion. He has said Stefanowski is “scaring the women of Connecticut” on the issue, and that Stefanowski’s $5,800 contribution to the anti-abortion Republican candidate for U.S. Senator, Leora Levy, was proof of his statement. The Governor said that Stefanowski is supported by PACs that want to restrict abortion. He said Stefanowski’s running mate, Republican state Rep. Laura Devlin of Fairfield, supports the state’s safe harbor law but that Stefanowski “won’t comment on it.”

Lamont signed a bill into law from the most recent legislative session strengthening abortion rights and access in anticipation of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The legislation, a combination of two earlier proposals, protects out-of-state women from prosecution for getting an abortion in Connecticut and Connecticut medical providers from legal actions taken against them from another state.

On Monday, Stefanowski commented on the safe harbor law.

“It’s a law, just like abortion has been codified. I’m not going to change it. My Lieutenant Governor voted for it, I trust her judgment,” he said. “I support it in that I’m going to enforce it. I think I would’ve voted for it, but I wasn’t part of the process … But come on, he’s picking at gnats right now.”

Stefanowski has said he would protect a women’s right to choose and that laws on abortion would not change while he was in office.

“I thought long and hard about this, to call a sitting Governor a liar, but he is. I was pro-choice in 2018. Roe v. Wade is codified in Connecticut state law. I think that’s a good thing,” Stefanowski said, referring to Lamont’s criticisms. “He’s lying, and you know why? He doesn’t want to talk about how crime is out of control … He doesn’t want to talk about affordable housing. He doesn’t want to talk about inflation.”

Qualified immunity

Stefanowski has said he wants to repeal parts of the police accountability law passed two years ago -- most significantly, qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity partially protects police officers from being sued. It was limited by the police accountability law passed in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The law makes it so officers can be held liable if they’ve knowingly violated a person’s rights. Democrats, including Lamont, have resisted calls from the right to reinstate it.

Stefanowski claimed that the the limiting of qualified immunity is to blame for the reduction in the state police force. He said he is in favor of body cameras, a provision included in the law. As for how he would convince a Democratic majority to reinstall qualified immunity in full: “I hope legislators do the right thing.”

He said Devlin is going to help his administration with legislative maneuvering, as she has represented her district in Hartford for eight years. He acknowledges that it would be difficult, but he will aim to build a relationship with the legislature, and, “I’m going to try.”

Affordable housing

In a September debate, Stefanowski argued the state should repeal a law — 8-30g — that seeks to bolster the number of Connecticut’s affordable housing units. He said it threatens local zoning control. He described how he would improve Connecticut’s affordable housing in 8-30g’s stead.

“8-30g doesn’t work. I think it’s 130 of 169 towns don’t comply with it right now. It was put in place before the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Stefanowski said. “I don’t think threatening towns by if you don’t get to 10 percent, you’re going to lose your transportation funding” is a good idea, he went on. “I think we should repeal and replace it. We have hundreds if not thousands of unused buildings on the books in the state of Connecticut; why can’t we redevelop some of those and create public housing?”

The affordable housing conversation differs between places such as New Canaan and Bridgeport, Stefanowski said, and he sees “both sides.”

“For some people ... they don’t want a 15-story skyscraper next to their largest single investment,” he said. “We need to upgrade the housing in the cities … People should have the flexibility to leave if they want to, but not be forced to go to some other town.”

Voting rights, election denial

Stefanowski said President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. “We’ve got to move on. If Donald Trump had anything to do with January 6th, he should be held accountable.”

The Republican candidate said he is “middle of the road,” and he’s a “reasonable guy,” not the radical he is portrayed as in attack ads against him.

“If I’m at a Republican Governors Association meeting and people are debating whether Joe Biden won, I’d say, ‘What are you guys talking about?’” Stefanowski said. “It’s not real popular with the far right for me to say, ‘President Biden won the election and Trump should be held accountable.’”

Stefanowski said the state should make voting “as accessible as we can.” He is in favor of early voting. He would support no-excuse absentee voting if the state passes a signature verification law, and if it cleans up its voter rolls.

“Once we do that, we should provide as much access as we can,” he said.

Asked how Stefanowski would pivot from talking about what’s wrong in Connecticut during the campaign to talking up the state for business suitors, he said he’s laid out plans on how to fix what is ailing the state. “That’s one thing I’ve learned between last time and this time. It’s not just pointing out the problems, it’s pointing out how you’re going to fix them.”

Guns and education

If elected, Stefanowski would “certainly look at” new gun regulations, but, he added, “our gun laws right now are the toughest in the nation.”

He advocated for mental health funding and increased school security, saying it’s “politically expedient to go after law-abiding gun owners.” He thinks the state should “look at” violent video games, calling them “killing simulators.”

Stefanowski floated the idea of paying teachers more so as to fill vacancies. He said teachers “have to teach the history of America,” and acknowledged some of it is good, and some of it is bad. But, he said, “The place I push back is telling whether a kid is privileged or un-privileged, so that they kind of have this original guilt.”

“We should be teaching kids how to think, not what to think,” he added.

Stefanowski brought up a Greenwich school administrator saying he won’t hire Catholics. He said he didn’t know if this type of an event was an isolated incident, but, “There’s probably a lot of stuff going on out there.”

Payday loans

Stefanowski has been denounced for his past position as the CEO of a payday loan company — the company’s high-interest loans are illegal in Connecticut.

“I’m proud of what we did there,” he said Monday. “There’s about 20 percent of the world’s population that has no access to banks.” He said that the company graduated customers “to normal banks so that they have access to money” at “banking facilities.”

While Stefanowski understands “why they’re hitting me on it because the industry has a bad reputation,” he said he is “proud” of his time at the company.

s.spinella@theday.com