Gov. Fair Share?
Photo by Steve Kotchko
Posted 6/20/11
There is no question that Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy is a politician who enjoys being a bold agent for change. His first two-year budget plan called for a host of tax hikes and a hefty labor concessions package from state employees, all in the interest of ridding the state of a multi-billion dollar deficit.
Malloy’s budget was adopted with its main themes preserved, but instead of winning headlines for Malloy, it has put him on the defensive. State employees are still grumbling while voting on the concessions package, and a new Quinnipiac University Poll reveals that you can’t win the hearts and minds of voters simply by being bold.
The poll shows voters gave Malloy a troubling 38% job approval rating, up just three points from the last Q-Poll in March. Malloy’s senior advisor Roy Occhiogrosso tried to put a positive spin on that, stating: “You have only one direction to go—up. A slow steady climb should get him where he needs to be in a few years.”
However, Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz said statistically that three-point uptick is insignificant, and he noted that Malloy’s “negatives” also rose four points since the last survey.
The Governor himself was candid about the Q-Poll. “We’ve had a series of governors that managed for popularity and that got us no results,” he said. “We needed to make serious changes and send a clear message that we were going to take care of our financial problems,” Malloy added. “I came in saying I was going to manage for the long run.” Translation? Malloy refuses to be swayed by short-term poll results.
At the heart of public dissatisfaction with Malloy is his decision to enact an array of tax increases, at a time the public still feels uneasy about the economy. “His low approval rating is a reflection of how voters feel about his budget,” said Schwartz. “They think it relies too much on tax increases and not enough on spending cuts.”
Perhaps more damning is that voters simply don’t buy Malloy’s pitch that his budget is helping the state through “shared sacrifice.” As Schwartz explained: “They think the middle class is paying more than its fair share while those with higher incomes aren’t paying their fair share.” It is not good news for any Democrat to be viewed as more sympathetic to rich folks than to the middle class.
Malloy has trashed the “no new taxes” approach to deficit eradication taken by New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He claims that strategy savages cities and towns and will push property taxes up. Still, Cuomo has a 61% job approval rating in a Quinnipiac University Poll for New York.
The on-again off-again pattern of the supposed economic recovery going on in the United States and Connecticut is contributing to voter crankiness. The Q-Poll shows 67% of voters surveyed are unhappy about “the way things are going” in Connecticut, and 83% say the state economy is either “not so good” or downright “poor”.
While 60% of voters polled rated their personal finances good to excellent, a hopeful sign, about 45% of them say they are worse off financially than they were a year ago, and 52% don’t expect things to improve in the coming year.
The Quinnipiac Poll shows a majority of those voters surveyed don’t think Malloy has done a good job crafting a budget, they disapprove of it, and when asked to characterize their feelings, the largest group—43% said they feel “dissatisfied” but “not angry.”
So far, Malloy has shown himself to be a governor who is impatient to get things done, and a chief executive unwilling to make big changes in his proposals. His critics call that bullheadedness, his supporters say he believes in his strategy and will stick to it.
In polling, the common wisdom is that any elected official with a job approval rating below 50% needs to pay attention and work to turn that around well before the next election day. Remember, Malloy stands at an unenviable 38%.
Malloy can take heart that some elements in the latest Quinnipiac Poll provide nuggets of hope for any effort to build up his popularity.
The survey shows that it’s the Governor’s budget voters oppose, not the man himself, or his other stands on the issues of the day. In the Q-Poll, 48% of voters, the largest group, say they “like Dannel Malloy as a person.”
Also, while some critics claim Malloy pushed a very liberal agenda across the board, the Q-Poll indicates voters are right there with him on social issues. Asked about Malloy’s successful push to decriminalize personal marijuana use, a hefty 66% of the voters polled supported that idea. An even larger majority, 72%, said they back Malloy’s new law ordering companies to give service employees paid sick leave.
Malloy does not have to seek reelection until 2014, and Schwartz said there is plenty of time for the Governor to strengthen his job approval rating. Of course, that will be easier if the economy improves and state revenues rise—possibly making tax cuts possible. Also, the jobless rate, mired at 9.1% needs to go down. Malloy will call a special legislative session in the fall to find ways to “grow” jobs in Connecticut.