(Editior's note: The author of this post has a Lesser campaign sign on his front lawn.)
You've likely seen them. Extremely negative post cards aimed at State Representative Matt Lesser who is running for a Connecticut State Senate seat in the ninth district against Republican Ed Charamut.
"As of yesterday, they've already spent $125,000 against us," Lesser said. "All of it negative mail."
The money comes from a pac called Change Connecticut which appears to be funded by the Republican State Leadership Committee and by people like the Koch brothers and Betsy Devos.
"They're on track to spend $300,0000 in these last days leading up to the election," Lesser explained.
Lesser is not the only Democratic campaign targeted. According to
the Hartford Courant, Change Connecticut has target Steve Cassano of Manchester, James Maroney of Milford and Norm Needleman of Essex.
Both Lesser and Charamut qualified for public funding in Connecticut, limiting their own campaigns to expenditures of $100,000. Lesser says he has no out-of-state funding for his campaign.
"That's more than enough money to run a campaign for a State Senate seat," Lesser said. "The additional money from the pac is drowning out the conversation we ought to be having here in the state."
Campaign finance laws allow pacs to spend money on campaigns, and those same laws make it nearly impossible to determine who is spending the money, and what their goals are.
"It's an astroturf campaign," Lesser said. "The spokesperson is a guy from New York who says the pac is concerned with taxation in Connecticut."
Republicans have had a decades-long campaign to gain political control at the state level. The so-called "
50 state solution," has been very successful in gaining control of state legislatures and governor's seats in many states. By 2015 Republicans controlled 70 percent of state houses and senates.
In Connecticut, there is a one seat difference in control of the State Senate. Democrats currently hold that control. And while, there is a larger Democratic margin in the House, analysts say that in this election, Republicans could win enough seats to take control there. And current polls put the governors race as neck-in-neck.
Republicans have used the "50 state solution" to gain state control, because many regulatory and legislative policies are made at the state level, from gender rights and education to voting rights and healthcare.
"I think it makes a mockery of Democracy," Lesser said. "Out-state-interests are trying to buy control of the State Senate. I should be flattered by the attention, I guess, but this is a vast amount of money trying to drown out the voices of state residents."
Lesser has been outspoken in his defense of a student loan bill of rights, and was the principle author of a 2015 Connecticut law protecting those rights. Education Secretary Betsy Devos, and her Department of Education under the Trump administration, have favored loan makers and not borrowers, and filed a lawsuit attempting to clock Connecticut from enforcing a law protecting those student borrowers.
"All I want is an even playing field," Lesser said. "I'm going to keep running my campaign they way I have been. I care deeply about the cities I would be representing. For Middletown, a Republican win in the Senate would be catastrophic."
