To Be Governor
Over a year ago, I started the process of running for governor of Connecticut. I didn’t know who would help me. I didn’t know what other candidates would join the race. I wasn’t sure what the issues would be — “affordability” looked like an early favorite then and it has since become the major pain point for my own family’s budget and for most Connecticut residents.
That’s not the issue I had in mind to run on, nor is it the core of my platform as it is for the other candidates.
The single most important issue to me over a year ago, and this is a position that hasn’t changed after conversations with dozens of Connecticut residents, is the swift formation and maintenance of a voluntary state guard in Connecticut, answerable only to the state. It is my belief that such an organization will prevent a great deal of trouble in the future. It will also provide tangible benefits to the towns and cities that are ultimately responsible for organizing and training volunteers.
I’ve seen what happens when a country leaves preparedness for disaster, emergency, and war to others. I’ve also seen how expensive expertise and equipment have become. Simply put, we can’t continue to afford to protect ourselves to the standard we’re used to. At the same time, between climate change and an increasingly unstable world, we can’t afford not to prepare for the bad scenarios that seem increasingly likely. War, economic crisis, pandemic.
This is a big idea, and nobody else is running on it. Connecticut citizens need relief from high tax bills, the high cost of health care, the high cost of utilities, crushing student loan debt, the impossibility for many of owning their own home — the list goes on. It’s hard to take a step back and embrace long term solutions to these urgent problems.
What do these problems have in common? They’re ultimately out of our control, particularly when they touch on the private sector as health care, higher education, home ownership and utilities all do. What governor can realistically solve the problem of homes being unaffordable? What governor can realistically solve the problem of expensive health care? These are problems presidents haven’t been able to solve, even when they have control over Congress and the Supreme Court (as President Trump does, and President Obama did).
I have very little faith that there’s a fast solution at the state level for these issues. I have no faith that any solution exists at the federal level. I think we need to do what we can today to decentralize power, learn to help each other out, and start hedging Connecticut against a larger, general economic collapse as the era of globalism ends. We must look to ourselves, and that starts with a voluntary State Guard.
Each week, I’ll be writing about the process of running — what that looks like. What challenges I face as an independent unaffiliated, candidate with no personal wealth. What lessons the team learns. I started pulling this project together in January of 2025. I’ve learned a lot since then. And I have no doubt that the hardest lessons are yet to come.
