Running as an Independent
There aren’t many helpful “how-to” guides around on running for governor of Connecticut, and Connecticut, a state with one of the highest concentrations of lawyers per residents in the U.S., has a lot of laws and regulations in place.
If you have a lot of money or are part of a major political party (in the U.S. that’s the Democrats and the Republicans), this isn’t as much of a concern. You can pay for expertise (wealthy) or have expertise on tap in the form of party assistance (politician). These are the hacks for shortcutting legal regulations and requirements: be rich, join a party.
I’m doing it the hard way, as an unaffiliated Independent. My network of friends and colleagues is robust and was built up over decades, but I’m neither wealthy nor a career politician with one of the major parties. So I and my team are navigating this process by ourselves. Learning how to build an airplane as we’re flying it, so to speak.
My four big takeaways so far are first that getting someone to manage the money before you have any money is surprisingly challenging. The sort of person who manages money carefully and scrupulously tends not to be the sort of person who takes a flyer on a campaign (or, not usually). This requires attention and energy that one would often prefer to be focused elsewhere. I ended up having to lean harder than I would have liked on personal relationships for a Treasurer (necessary in Connecticut, and cannot be the candidate) and Deputy Treasurer (not necessary but so strongly recommended as to be basically a requirement).
Second, the process of starting a campaign, of getting it going, is heavily focused on building a website and a system for collecting donations in a way that’s compliant with CT state law. But it’s a chicken and egg problem: you can’t collect or spend any money before registering as a campaign. To get the campaign staff you need to do either, and to do things like register and build websites, you need money. The way CT gets around this is that you have to file within 10 days of spending money. You will spend money on a website domain (mine is bonenbergerforgovernor.com, it cost me $60 over 3 years via squarespace), and you have to file within 10 days after you’ve done so.
Third, the eCRIS system (the CT SEEC’s system for tracking campaign contributions and managing campaign finances generally) is intuitive to use, but there are holes (likely the result of very few data points or campaigns, many of which run more than one effort). It would have been helpful to know upfront that I didn’t need to physically fill out campaign paperwork with my treasurer and deputy treasurer, that the eCRIS system manages those things itself. Even so, there are gaps; the form one needs to fill to file appears to require things (bank account, website) that require money that presumably would have been illegal to raise or spend before filing. A call to the folks at the SEEC clarified things, but why should that have been necessary? Why ask people for information they can’t provide, if it turns out that practically speaking the information isn’t immediately necessary?
These are almost certainly work-arounds that are in place because laws have changed over the decades and centuries, and they work because so few people actually run for governor. Every 4 years, maybe a half dozen or more people fill out the paperwork and make something approaching a credible run for governor. There isn’t impetus to change how that process works, save to constrain it in a way that makes the system accessible and prevents special interests from capturing it.
The fourth and final lesson I learned over the past couple weeks, since filing, was: Connecticut’s Citizens Election Program, while wonderful, is very difficult for unaffiliated Independent gubernatorial candidates. As a petitioning candidate — every true unaffiliated independent candidate is a petitioning candidate — one needs to get enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot in November, a process that involves getting 7500 valid signatures between April 28 and July 29. Before I’m on the ballot, I can’t apply for the CEP grant. I will almost certainly need to raise and spend a large sum of money, certainly hundreds of thousands of dollars, to employ people in May and June to get me signatures that are due by the end of July.
As a true Independent, without support from a minor party or infrastructure you’d built before as part of a major party, it’s not practical to participate in the CEP on the state level. It could be possible for a state representative — probably not a state senator — but it’s just not feasible for a gubernatorial candidate.
Alas! It’s a great program, created with good intentions. It’s almost certain that I won’t be able to participate.
