I Welcome Their Hatred
Eversource is spending to stop this campaign. Here's why that's a good sign.
This week a former Speaker of the House went on Capitol Report to defend Eversource, and the segment shows exactly how this corporation protects itself. When Eversource fights to raise rates and protect its profits, it does not win on the merits. It hires people with influence, and it puts them to work.
A recent appearance on WTNH Capitol Report with Tom Dudchik
On the segment, the former Speaker defended Eversource’s practices and treated this campaign as a threat to the corporation, which it is. Then he reached for a familiar dismissal, calling this an issues campaign as though caring about the issues were a flaw. The phrase is his, not ours: we have never described this as only an issues campaign, but as a campaign to win, and the issues are the reason we are winning the argument.
It is worth remembering how the story about this campaign has shifted. The first version was that we were not serious, then that we only cared about the issues, then that I would never make the ballot, and then that we would never raise the money. Each of those predictions has fallen in turn, which is a fair moment to ask how much the people who keep making them understand about politics. If the complaint from Eversource’s hired voice is that we talk about the issues too much, that is a complaint I am content to keep earning.
What the former Speaker would not do on that segment is engage the record. He repeated the line that Lamont and Republicans have been pushing, that Lamont delivered the largest middle-class tax cut Connecticut has ever seen, and that claim does not survive contact with reality.
Lamont did trim one of the middle income tax brackets, and the cut was small. What Lamont and his Republican friends will not mention is that middle-class families are paying more overall, not less, because the state keeps underfunding its towns and pushing the cost onto struggling families and seniors with fixed incomes. The most recent tax incidence study confirms the pattern: the wealthiest residents pay less than 8% of their income in state and local taxes, while middle-class families pay more than twice that share. Adjusting one bracket by a little does not change who carries a disproportionate amount of the burden.
This is how Eversource operates. It cultivates the people who hold power, it rewards the ones who leave office, and it counts on a governor who will not challenge their power. That is why Eversource wants Lamont re-elected. He has been a dependable partner to the utilities for eight years, and in all that time he has been unwilling to do anything that would bring energy costs down. There is a better model that already exists in our own state: roughly six Connecticut municipalities run their own public power, and their residents pay something like 30 to 40 percent less than everyone else. That public power option is what I am pushing for, and it is the opposite of what Lamont and Eversource have delivered, which is higher bills and protected profits.
It is also why it matters to send someone to the governor’s office who will hold Eversource accountable rather than shield them from actual oversight. Franklin Roosevelt fought the utility monopolies of his era, and when organized money lined up against him, he said plainly, “I welcome their hatred.” I feel the same about the opponents this campaign is making. When a corporation like Eversource decides you are worth attacking, it is because you intend to change an arrangement that has served their executives very well.
We are in the final stretch before we qualify, and the way we beat a billionaire governor and the corporation backing him is the same way we have built everything else in this campaign, with a lot of people giving what they can. If Eversource is paying former Speakers to come after us, the least we can do is make that a bad investment. Thank you for being in this with me.
Josh
Yesssssss! It takes courage to stand up to the powerful who benefit from the status quo. I want a fighter and Josh is gathering the grass roots 99% of CT residents who will need to have his back when he takes on these big money powers at the capitol January 2027! Not me- us! No one person can solve these problems alone.
Let us all hope that younger voters come out and break the chains of the Old Guard that protect corporations over people. This is our chance. But America seems to always vote against the best interest of the masses and for the predators. It's the trees voting for the axe.