Gov. Ned Lamont’s adjusted gross income averaged more than $16.2 million between 2025 and 2021, while GOP challenger Ryan Fazio averaged $109,634 over the past three years, according to tax records released Friday by their respective campaigns.
Lamont, who has declined his $150,000 governor’s salary throughout his eight years in office, made nearly 90% of his earnings, an average of $14.1 million per year, through capital gains. The remainder involves a combination of dividends, interest and social security payments.
Both campaigns allowed reporters to inspect select documents from their federal income tax returns on Friday. Lamont’s records covered the last four tax years while Fazio’s involved the last three.
The governor also shared a summary sheet that disclosed state income taxes paid and charitable contributions made.
“Releasing the governor’s tax returns, as he did in 2018 and 2022, is about continuing to be transparent with Connecticut, as he has always been, and it is something he believes all candidates should do,” Rob Blanchard, senior adviser to Lamont’s campaign, said Friday.
Lamont’s adjusted gross income ranged from $35.2 million in 2024 to slightly less than $6.1 million in 2022. Over the four-year period his records covered, he paid yearly averages of almost $3.9 million in federal taxes and more than $1.1 million to Connecticut.
Lamont reported charitable contributions averaging $481,750 per year between 2025 and 2022. According to his campaign, recipients included: GLAAD (formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation); the University of Connecticut; Yale University; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Foundation; Girls with Impact; 4-CT; and Filling in the Blanks, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting childhood hunger.
The governor opted out of public financing and has largely self-funded his campaign, as he did in his two successful runs for governor in 2018 and 2022 and in his loss in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
As of Aug. 31, Lamont had contributed $10.2 million to his campaign. But much of his attention during the summer was focused on defeating Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden in an Aug. 11 primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
And twice in September, Lamont contributed $2.6 million to his campaign.
Fazio, who is using public financing, reported incomes of $134,601 in 2023 and $143,319 in 2024. That reflected his earnings as a business analyst for Capital Services and as a state senator from Greenwich. He took time off from business consulting in 2025 to begin his campaign for governor and reported earnings of $50,984.
Fazio paid an average of $12,693 in federal income taxes between 2025 and 2023. He didn’t disclose information on state taxes paid or on charitable contributions.
The GOP nominee, who received his $18 million Citizens’ Election Program grant on July 15, spent $9.6 million of those funds between July 1 and Sept. 30.
State Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.
