Gov. Ned Lamont, challenged from the left as too miserly on spending and from the right as someone suddenly gone wobbly on fiscal discipline, happily cast himself Thursday as a sensible, centrist leader who has managed to pay down crushing debts and boost state aid for education.

On the day after the close of the 2026 legislative session and a pivot to campaign season for him and state lawmakers, the Democratic governor noted Connecticut’s long run of balanced budgets since he took office in January 2019 and its recent success in economic growth.

The second change is related to the first, he said.

“People weren’t sure we had our fiscal house in order. They didn’t know what the next year was going to bring,” he said. “We were lurching from deficit to deficit. We had the greatest unfunded pension liability around. A lot of people said, ‘All other things being equal, maybe I’ll go somewhere else.’ I think that changed. That was a big deal.”

Lamont made his comments during a post-mortem on a three-month session that produced a budget with little drama and legislation that the Democratic Governors Association began highlighting minutes after reporters exited the governor’s corner office in the state Capitol.

The DGA list: Free school breakfasts, no sales tax on school supplies, lower electric bills, expanded affordable childcare, universal absentee voting, a ban on guns easily converted to machine guns, standing up to Trump administration “abuses” and “historic investments in public education.”

Republicans fault him and the Democratic supermajorities controlling the General Assembly as doing too little to address the high cost of living in Connecticut.

Lamont is being challenged for the Democratic nomination by Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden, a liberal expected to win at least 15% of the delegate vote at the Democratic convention May 16, the threshold to qualify for a primary in August. Uncertain is whether he will qualify for the public financing necessary for a credible campaign.

As of March 31, Elliott was slightly more than $130,000 short of the $335,500 necessary to qualify for a $3.75 million primary grant under the voluntary Citizens’ Election Program. He says he now is $83,211 away from qualifying.

Lamont sidestepped a question about debating Elliott.

“That’s a hypothetical,” he said. “Let’s take one step at a time.”

But Lamont was ready to respond with numbers in the recently adopted budget about providing services while reducing pension debt by another $1.1 billion: $300 million for affordable childcare, $200 million for K-12 education and $100 million new municipal aid.

Five of the 11 Republicans in the Senate and 27 of the 49 Republicans in the House voted for the budget. Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, one of three GOP candidates for governor, was not among them.

Two of the three Republicans campaigning for the GOP gubernatorial nomination were to debate Thursday night: Fazio and Newsmax host Betsy McCaughey of Greenwich. Erin Stewart, the former New Britain mayor, has declined, but she took a shot at Lamont’s post-mortem.

“If ever there was a perfect example of how disconnected Ned Lamont is from reality look no further than this sham of a press conference,” Stewart said. “Are utility bills lower? No. Are taxes lower? No. Are schools any better? No. Connecticut remains locked in a spiral of high costs and low opportunity. But hey, if you live in Ned Lamont’s world everything’s just swell.”

Lamont trumpeted the Republican support for the budget and the constructive contributions of House Republicans.

“We came together, took the best ideas and came forward with a budget that has strong bipartisan support,” Lamont said. “It was a budget we got done on time. I don’t take that for granted. Washington can’t get a budget done on time.”

Elliott has not softened his criticism of Lamont as too concerned about paying down debt and less concerned about the needs of the working poor. But he voted for the budget.

Lamont said it is “a budget built to last.”

“I wanted to make sure the promises we made are sustainable. That’s not always the case, especially not in an election year. Sometimes there’s a lot of ‘Let’s promise it now. We’ll figure out how to pay for tomorrow.’”

Lamont made an unannounced tour of the House the previous night, pressing the flesh and thanking legislators of both parties for another balanced budget delivered on time. 

It was an example of how there is little to differentiate a campaign event from an official one — such as was the case in his office Thursday morning.

Insisting he was a reluctant campaigner, he was as asked if he would deny the press conference had a political bent.

“This is substance, baby,” Lamont said, smiling broadly. “This is substance.”