With only days remaining before Tuesday's primaries, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Tom Foley still remain in the lead in races that are getting steadily closer.
Lamont is leading former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy by 5 percentage points among likely Democratic voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. Foley is up by 15 points over Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele and 28 points over longtime business executive Oz Griebel of Simsbury.
"Lamont still has the edge, but with 14 percent of the votes undecided and 43 percent who still could change their mind, it is close enough that Malloy could pull it off,'' said Douglas Schwartz, the poll's director.
Malloy is deploying a come-from-behind strategy as he pulls closer to the front-running Lamont, who has led in the polls for about six months. The two combatants have been broadcasting a series of negative campaign commercials since Malloy started the slugfest on Friday, July 23.
Lamont did not initially respond on television to Malloy's sharp charges, and he has admitted that lack of action - for nearly a week - cost him in the polls. Some of Lamont's supporters believed that the latest Quinnipiac Poll would show essentially a dead heat as the race moved toward its finale. Lamont, however, began responding on television starting last Thursday in an effort to combat Malloy's surge, and he has continued the response with a steady stream of commercials.
Malloy has repeatedly shown ads that charge that Lamont reduced the workforce in his cable television company by 70 percent while taking a salary of more than $500,000. But Lamont counters that the company sold off a portion of the business, and those workers largely gained new employment with the cable outfit that purchased the business.
U.S. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman raised the same charges about Lamont's business during the 2006 campaign, and Lamont's then-campaign chairman, former Stamford state Senator George Jepsen - the former chairman of the state Democratic Party - said it was a distortion of Lamont's business career that was false.
"Despite a two-week barrage of Dan Malloy's false, negative ads and his repetition of four-year-old lies about Ned and his company, Connecticut voters still know that Ned Lamont has the best experience to create jobs and help their families,'' Justine Sessions, a spokeswoman for Lamont, said in a statement.
She added, "While Dan's campaign grows more desperate and erratic every day, we're sticking to our strategy and talking to the people of Connecticut about the issue that they care most about: jobs. We've got a robust field operation that will turn out our voters on election day, and with just five days to go, the only poll that matters to us is next Tuesday.''
Malloy's campaign manager, Dan Kelly, said, "This race is tightening because as people really begin making up their minds, they're moving to Dan. They know he turned around a city, and they think he can turn around a state. They know Dan Malloy has the right kind of experience to be governor.''
He added that Lamont "is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars a day into this race - about $8 million so far - and people are beginning to reject it.''
Malloy is financing his campaign with public funds under the state's landmark campaign law, and he has received $2.5 million for the primary.
The Lamont campaign says that Malloy has been distorting Lamont's jobs record at the same time that he has been distorting his own jobs record, too. Malloy has repeatedly said that he helped create 5,000 jobs in Stamford, but state labor statistics show that the city has lost more than 13,000 jobs since reaching the peak employment level in 2000. The unemployment rate increased by more than 58 percent in Stamford during Malloy's 14 years as mayor.
Some progressive Democrats say Malloy has been misrepresenting his jobs record for years - dating back to complaints during the 2006 campaign by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano about Malloy's statements about creating 5,000 jobs.
Lamont has also questioned Malloy's ethics, noting that the then-Stamford mayor underwent a criminal investigation for 17 months by 8 investigators regarding city contractors who worked on his home in the affluent Shippan section of Stamford. Malloy, however, was never charged in the case, which concluded in 2005. He received a letter from the chief state's attorney that there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on his part. Lamont, though, says that he would never let state contractors work on his house if he becomes governor - and that it is an issue of ethics, not legality.