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July 18, 2024

CT GOP hopes J.D. Vance writes a new chapter in Trump era

SHAHRZAD RASEKH / CT MIRROR State Sen. Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, speaks with members of the Connecticut delegation at an event near the RNC convention in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024.
By Mark Pazniokas, CT Mirror

MILWAUKEE — J.D. Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” suddenly is a must-read for Stephen Harding — a delegate who views the Republican National Convention through the prism of what is good, bad or indifferent to Republicans in Connecticut, a state where the Donald J. Trump era is endlessly complicated.

Harding, 36, is a state senator from Brookfield, Conn., former home of M. Jodi Rell, who stood in favor of abortion rights and political civility as Connecticut’s last Republican governor. In his first term, Harding unexpectedly was tapped as the leader of a beleaguered Senate Republican minority.

Like many in Connecticut, Harding knows the Trump tap dance, the moves accompanied by praise for many of Trump’s first-term policies while keeping a careful distance from the chaos of the ending, the much-debunked claims of a stolen election and the stunning assault on the U.S. Capitol.

He arrived in the convention hall Wednesday night eager to get a sense of Vance, the up-from-the-bottom Yale Law School graduate and nominee for vice president who won his first term representing Ohio the U.S. Senate on the same night Harding was elected in 2022, and how Vance will play in Connecticut.

What he heard was a polished and playful speaker, a storyteller who connected with a Republican audience by trashing the old foundations of the Grand Old Party, most notably “Wall Street barons” — and the “career politicians” like Joe Biden who voted for NAFTA and other free trade pacts that drained the life small towns like his.

“Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price,” Vance said.

His acceptance speech borrowed heavily from his memoir, an account of growing up as the child of a drug-addicted single mother, guided by a colorful grandmother. Vance described her as a devout Christian who swore like a sailor and kept 19 loaded handguns scattered around her house.

The mother who couldn’t raise him was in Trump’s box, clean and sober for not quite 10 years. Grinning, Vance said the actual 10-year anniversary of her sobriety was in January 2025, and if it’s OK with Trump, they just might celebrate in the White House,

If that sounds like a movie, it was — one made by Ron Howard.

At 39, Vance is a contemporary of Harding. Both are lawyers with young families: Harding is the father of two; Vance, three. Harding wanted to hear a voice of a generation not of the 78-year-old Trump or his 81-year opponent, President Joe Biden.

“What is similar to my life, in that I am raising a young family in this country?” Harding said. “I think he can relate to what it’s like to believe in the future of this country, and to leave this country ultimately a better place for his kids. And that should be everybody’s goal.”

Vance covered that ground and more. As Harding hoped, Vance stayed far from the post he made on social media soon after the attempt on Trump’s life, blaming Biden for rhetoric that incited violence. It was off message for a Trump campaign intent on presenting Trump as a born-again unifier.

“It’s a very hopeful, positive message. That’s what I’ve heard,” Harding said. “And I have no doubt it will continue to Thursday.”

Thursday night is when Trump, who has attended each of the first three nights of the convention, will accept the nomination and show whether the president who refused to accept his loss in 2020 and demonized Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the results can be a unifier.

John Frey, the long-serving Republican National Committeeman from Ridgefield, Conn., said he believes Trump’s near-death experience has changed the man.

Harding hopes that is the case. He is of the generation of elected Republicans with little to no experience of a time before Trump. He won a special election for a vacancy in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 2015, the same year Trump descended an escalator to announce his candidacy — and claim Mexico was pushing immigrants to the U.S., and not their best.

“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” Trump said. “And some, I assume, are good people.”

Lines like those, as well as Trump’s earlier insistence that the first Black president was not a citizen, keep many elected Republicans at a safe distance, praising policies but not always the man.

When Trump entered the White House in January 2017, Republicans held 18 of  the 36 seats in the Connecticut Senate. Now they have 12 — four of them won with less than 51% of the vote.

Harding is one of only two members of the General Assembly here as one of the 28 delegates. The other is Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato of Bristol. A third, Rep. Joe Hoxha, also of Bristol, is an alternate.

All three were at an event where Andrew T. Olivastro, a senior executive at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the delegates that sees a “realignment election,” based on polling and other data shared with Heritage. 

“I wake up every day, and I think about three things: Crush the left, suffocate the state and restore self governance,” said Olivastro, a former United Technologies executive who lives in Farmington, Conn.

Dianne Yamin, a retired probate judge from Danbury who is attending the convention as a guest of the Connecticut delegation, asked him about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s book-length treatise offered to Trump as a transition plan and blueprint for a second term.

The book was released a year ago, but it has become a target from the Biden campaign in recent weeks. It calls for dismantling federal agencies and weakening regulatory powers. Trump has insisted he knows nothing about it, even though many of its contributors are from his circle. 

Olivastro said he expects Trump to pick and choose from the document.

“Nobody’s gonna put words in Donald Trump’s mouth. And I don’t know who wants to try to do that. That was never our plan,” he said.

Harding was reassured by the answer, which Republicans likely will use in Connecticut.

“He reasserted the fact that it’s a menu of different ideas that the party, the president, and other Republican officials can pick and choose from. They don’t have to utilize all of it,” Harding said.

On Wednesday night, Harding applauded Vance as he tried to make the case that Trump was good for the working man.

“President Trump’s vision is so simple and yet so powerful: We’re done catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man. We’re done importing foreign labor,” Vance said. “We’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages.”

CT Mirror staff writer Lisa Hagen contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.

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