Journal Inquirer
By Chris Powell
While he is the least experienced in state government among the major candidates for the Republican nomination for governor, former Ambassador Thomas Foley may have just become the most relevant.
Interviewed on WFSB-TV3’s “Face the State” program the other day, Foley, another Greenwich businessman, gave indications that he has been taking Connecticut 101, that he may be a fast learner, that he might think for himself, and that he might say what he thinks. Most notably, he endorsed repealing binding arbitration for teacher union contracts, thereby becoming the first candidate for governor to make “mandate relief” more than a platitude.
Foley had been criticized for lacking specifics, and at a press conference a day prior to his TV appearance he had seemed to botch an attempt to get specific, first lamenting state mandates for medical insurance policies and citing two such mandates (wigs for chemotherapy patients and psychological treatment) and then declining to say whether he would repeal those mandates or any others particularly. But he did get specific about privatizing services to the mentally retarded and mentally ill and noted the unaffordable expense of state employee pension benefits. Then on the TV program he cited the reports of two old state study commissions — the Thomas and Hull-Harper commissions — as opportunities to economize that had been missed.
Foley was also specific in favoring Sunday liquor sales and opposing tolls on state highways, issues some of his more experienced rivals have evaded or gotten wrong.
Foley even had a plausible if not quite persuasive answer about his lack of experience in state government and the state’s public life — that the governor’s job is executive, not legislative, and that his executive experience in business would serve him well. While Foley has a long way to go to show that he knows where anything outside Fairfield County is or has an idea about the history of state issues, this is shaping up as a promising year for outsiders…
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