New GOP Head Hopes To Show There's Life In The Party
If all had gone according to plan, Jerry Labriola Jr. would have spent the summer focused solely on his family, his real estate law practice and his gig playing keyboards in a pop-rock cover band.
But Labriola now has another task: rebuilding the fractured Connecticut Republican Party.
The lifelong Republican who proudly cast his first vote for President Gerald Ford in 1976 took over as GOP state chairman in late June. It wasn't a job he spent months campaigning for. In fact, Labriola decided to run for the post only after the favored candidate abruptly dropped out less than two weeks before the state central committee was scheduled to choose a new leader.
The accidental chairman inherited a party still reeling from the internal wounds of the bitter 2010 election, riven by factions, and, some say, teetering on the brink of irrelevancy after losing control of the governor's office and failing to win any of the state's five congressional districts for the past two election cycles.
"People realize we need to be unified as a party,'' said Labriola, the father of two college-age daughters who lives with his wife, Barbara, in Wallingford. "It won't be easy. I'm not trying to be Pollyanna about it, but I think I have it in me to do it, being the eternal optimist that I am.''
Small-Town Lawyer
Unlike his predecessor, Chris Healy, Labriola isn't a silver-tongued operative well-versed in the art of hurling verbal bombs at Democrats and proffering pithy quotes to reporters. Instead, he presents the image of an unassuming, small-town lawyer, which is exactly what he is.
His supporters say he's the right man for the job. Labriola, 53, has deep ties to the Republican establishment — he is the former treasurer of the state party, served on the state central committee, and ran against U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro in 2010. His father, also named Jerry Labriola, was a state senator and an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. Senate in the 1980s and '90s. His younger brother, David, currently serves in the state House of Representatives.
But Labriola has also forged bonds with the tea party movement and others on the party's right flank. He has the blessings of both former Congressman Rob Simmons, a socially moderate Republican who supports abortion rights and has received accolades from gay rights groups, and Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut and an outspoken opponent of both abortion and same-sex marriage.
"He's got the ability to bring everybody together,'' said Tanya Bachand, a tea party activist who managed Labriola's congressional campaign. "He got support from the grass-roots people and the gun people and Rob Simmons and Peter Wolfgang. When we're all pulling on the same rope in the same direction at the same time, that's a pretty exciting thing."
While Labriola's backers say that delicate coalition is evidence of his political savvy, Democrats point to it as proof that he's had to cozy up to right-wing ideologues who are out of step with Connecticut's blue state ethos.
"The Republican Party continues to move to the right in supporting extreme positions,'' Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo said. "That may play in some states but it certainly won't play in Connecticut."
Republican national leaders "cater to the extreme tea party group and that's why they're losing people who have moderate positions,'' DiNardo added. "And in Connecticut, the land of steady habits, we have many moderate people."
The Republican Party counted 438,473 registered voters in Connecticut as of October 2010. There were nearly 800,000 registered Democrats and 904,000 unaffiliated voters.
Urban Inroads
Sitting in the Republican Party's New Britain headquarters, a vast and largely unoccupied red-brick industrial building, Labriola has already begun to formulate his plans to turn things around. Chief among them is an "urban strategy" designed to reclaim the votes of city denizens that the GOP had long ago relegated to the Democrats.
"It's very important that we grow the party,'' said Corey Brinson, a Republican member of the Hartford city council and a key Labriola supporter. "If our party's going to be around, if we're going to be relevant, we have to reflect the voters in 15 or 20 years. If we don't, we're never going to win elections."
Brinson, who nominated Labriola for chairman, points to the narrow defeat of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley last fall.
"He lost the election in our cities," Brinson said. "We need to look at that close election as a wakeup call. There's no one in particular to blame, but a good chairman … should be thoughtful about making sure we have women and people of color in our party. Jerry's in a good position because he's got nowhere to go but up."
Labriola says he plans to run candidates in every major race, even in districts where Democrats predominate. That is certainly the case in the 3rd Congressional District, where Labriola gamely mounted a challenge against the personally and politically popular DeLauro in 2010. Bachand recalls one campaign stop at a New Haven coffee shop frequented by Yale University students, where Labriola got involved in a passionate but cordial discussion with four young men who emphatically did not share Labriola's philosophy of limited government and free-market economics.
"It was very clear they were never going to vote for him,'' Bachand recalled."Yet he talked to them for more than 20 minutes. The whole time I was thinking, 'We have so many other things we could be doing. This is clearly a lost cause.' "
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