Gov. Ned Lamont faced pointed questions about what his administration is doing to thwart President Donald J. Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and liberal dissent during a town hall event in Stamford on Thursday.
In response to the grilling, Lamont rejected the idea that he’s simply playing along with Trump — though he said he is not seeking to pick fights, either.
“You may not like the fact that I don’t shout and get as angry at Donald Trump as you’d like me to, but I think we’ve made more of a difference in pushing back on him than just about any state in the country,” Lamont told the crowd.
“We have fewer of our folks being deported,” Lamont continued. “We have more of our kids going to school. We have more of our folks feeling safe going to hospitals. But I can’t sit on that, because tomorrow that son of a bitch could do something to change the world.”
The town hall was hosted by the Stamford chapter of Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group. It was held at the Stamford Government Center in downtown.
Lamont, a moderate Democrat, is widely expected to announce his campaign for a third term in the coming months. If he runs, he will face a more liberal challenger, state Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, in the Democratic convention next spring.
Elliott’s name did not come up during the 90 minutes of questioning Thursday.
Aside from Trump, attendees largely wanted to know what Lamont was doing to protect immigrants, lower costs for health care and child care, and to address the state’s chronic shortage of affordable housing.
During the event, a pair of organizers with the advocacy group Sustainable Streets Norwalk held up signs urging Lamont to sign H.B. 5002 — the omnibus housing legislation he vetoed earlier this year.
Lamont continued to defend that decision, citing some of the concerns raised by local officials over a controversial proposal to assign towns a certain number of housing units they need to plan for and eliminating mandatory parking minimums.
He also said he was not ready to commit to adding a reworked housing bill to a special session that will likely take place later this year — even as he hinted that a deal may soon be forthcoming.
“There are some other things that I thought would have made the bill better,” Lamont said. “They’re not big things. I think we got them resolved, by the way.”
Matthew Silber, one of the organizers who confronted Lamont over the veto, said afterward that he was “disappointed” by the governor’s response.
“It seemed like he kind of kept walking back why he was opposed” to the bill, Silber said. “Towns have had the opportunity to take the lead for a long time, and they haven’t done so.”
Other speakers at the town hall urged Lamont to take additional steps to protect immigrants from being pursued and arrested by federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of the measures they called for was strengthening Connecticut’s Trust Act to include more courthouse protections and provisions preventing immigrants’ data from being shared with federal authorities.
Melissa Murray, a leader of the Indivisible chapter in Norwalk, said the group has delivered three letters asking the governor to call a special session to take up revisions to the Trust Act. Prior to Thursday’s town hall, she said she had yet to receive a response.
“I thought he’s been a great governor,” Murray said. “I like him a lot, but I do not see the urgency.”
Lamont declined to offer any promises that the Trust Act would make into a special session this year, though he noted that the Connecticut Supreme Court has already prohibited ICE from making warrantless arrests within state courthouse. He also apologized to the Indivisible groups for not responding to their letters.
“If we get a court order from the federal government, sometimes there’s a limitation on what we can do and who we can keep out of different facilities,” Lamont said. “But we’re trying to be as aggressive as we can, to do what I can to keep people safe.”
Lamont did offer one concession to the crowd in response to a question about his decision to follow Trump’s proclamation to lower flags to half staff following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Lamont said he saw the gesture as making a point about political violence more generally, and he noted that nearly every other state had followed suit.
Still, he added, “I have second thoughts about it today.”
