In baseball parlance, failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio is a three-tool player: smart, well spoken, and good looking.
The words brave or possibly naïve could be tossed in because the 36-year-old state senator from Greenwich had to know his campaign against a two-term, wealthy and generally well liked, if not inoffensive, Democrat, Ned Lamont, was a very steep climb.
Add to Fazio’s challenges, a president who started an ill-advised war spiking fuel and food prices who later barnstormed the country dismissing voters’ concerns and waxed poetic about his vanity construction projects of a ballroom and an arch. Given all that, the young Republicans’ 19-point loss seems a little less dire.
What I can’t understand is why Fazio’s TV campaign was so silly.
I’m six months into a return to Connecticut after 26 years away as a husband, parent and an investigative, politics and policy reporter on TV in Philadelphia. Before that, I did similar work for 16-years at Connecticut’s WFSB-TV.
When the moving truck lumbered up to our lovely, little cape on Connecticut’s shoreline, I didn’t know Fazio from the muscled model Fabio.
What I learned from his TV ads was that not only does he resemble Clark Kent of Superman, but he also wants to play him on TV. In the early days of the campaign, running in heavy rotation, Fazio was depicted as Superman, without the costume and cape, swooping in to save an older couple from what the ad claimed were, “politicians like Ned Lamont who are robbing taxpayers.” (A claim that held up poorly in the wake of his big loss.) Fazio tosses the thieves aside and saves the day. That was followed by the candidate rushing into a hospital room, defibrillator in hand, to jolt a taxpayer —suffering from “taxes off the charts” –back to life with a promised tax cut.
In a state known as, “The Land of Steady Habits” with great wealth but struggling big cities, Fazio’s ads appeared silly, even cynical and fell well short of serious argument in a time of sharply rising costs and deep economic concerns from advancing AI.
Connecticut has a storied history of sharp political ads impacting a big race. Joe Lieberman’s 1988 sleepy bear in a cave TV spot is credited with helping him to narrowly defeat Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker of Watergate fame. I was here and remember the commotion when the animated commercial hit the airwaves in a state not accustomed to it.
In this election cycle, the so-called “protein ad” in the still undecided Mississippi U.S. Senate race may yet lead to a historic victory for Democrat Scott Colom over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The Talarico Campaign of Texas is credited with sharp, successful ads leading to victory.
The Fazio campaign did release television ads with Democrats pledging to vote for the Republican along with spots criticizing Lamont’s position on data centers and energy costs. Fazio performed well in two televised debates despite failing to land a rhetorical, race-changing blow. But the early superhero ads were defining for a candidate running in a stiff headwind, who will likely seek higher office again, maybe next time as just a regular guy.
Jeffrey Cole of Madison is a former news anchor for WFSB in Hartford and more recently retired as an investigative reporter at Fox 29 in Philadelphia.