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09/01/2020 04:37 PMRepublican Brendan Saunders, a shoreline native who is new to running for office, is challenging State Senator Norm Needleman (D-33), who first won the seat in 2018 in a closely contested race, in the November election.
The district serves Chester, Clinton, Colchester, Deep River, East Haddam, East Hampton, Essex, Haddam, Lyme, Portland, Westbrook, and part of Old Saybrook.
Needleman is chair of the Senate’s Energy and Technology Committee and vice chair of its Planning and Development Committee. He is also the first selectman of Essex, an office he’s held since 2011, after serving as a selectman for the town starting in 2003. He previously served on the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals and the Economic Development Commission, as well as on the Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments and the Valley Shore Emergency Communications board.
He is the owner and president of Tower Laboratories, a privately held company he founded in 1979 that develops and manufactures effervescent products for medical use.
Saunders is director of sales and marketing at the Courtyard Marriott in Cromwell and serves on the Hospitality Advisory Board of Manchester Community College. He is an ordained Baptist minister who served first as pastor at a church in Maryland and then as founding minister of the Lighthouse Community Church in Westbrook, his hometown. He left to create Fusion Podcast, a forum about life and faith for young adults. Saunders lives in Clinton with his wife and their teenage daughter.
For Saunders, much of the motivation for running stems from his perception that quality of life in Connecticut has deteriorated, he explained.
“It’s extremely expensive to live in the state,” he said. “I’ve seen the manufacturing base of this state disappear. I have seen things like that that just bother me.”
Having assisted with the campaigns of Republican politicians like former 33rd District state senator Art Linares and State Representative Jesse MacLachlan (R-35), he one day found that “[t]he whole room turned and looked at me.”
“Are you ready to step to the forefront?” he said other Republicans asked him.
He was officially nominated by district Republicans in May.
A self-described Reagan Republican, Saunders is running to “lower the cost of living, build a better business climate, and make sure that everybody has a voice in Hartford,” he said.
Saunders explained that he takes issue with Needleman’s support of the police accountability bill, passed by the General Assembly and State Senate and signed into law by Governor Ned Lamont on July 31.
“I understand the need to be able to weed bad apples out of police departments, but I believe that this bill went too far with its [changes to] qualified immunity and with the restriction of military grade equipment,” Saunders said. “It went too far and it really handcuffs all the police.”
The bill was rushed, Saunders contends. In an op-ed published by the CT Examiner on July 25, Saunders contended that the bill would “nullify police boats currently used by towns along the shoreline,” requiring them to be “pulled from the water.”
The bill, however, does not include boats in its list of “controlled equipment.”
“It’s nonsense and rubbish,” Needleman said of Saunders’ interpretation of the bill. The concern it addresses is with “armored and personnel carriers and other military equipment that was acquired since 9/11.” Municipal patrol boats, such as the one that Essex itself has, are not affected, Needleman said.
“It speaks to a lack of knowledge and a total misunderstanding of what the bill” does, he said.
Saunders also contended that Needleman himself had qualms, yet voted for the bill, anyway.
“I was very critical of the bill at the beginning,” Needleman explained, “and I was one of the Democratic legislators who led the charge to amend [Section 41] that dealt with qualified immunity...In the weekend between the first and second draft, that was fixed.
“This was a very tough bill for me because I am nominally a chief of police” as Essex first selectman, he continued. “And police that work for me, police throughout the area, by and large do an excellent job to protect the public.”
But it was also an emotional decision, Needleman said.
“It is a moment for people of color who feel they’ve been discriminated against,” he said. “We had the momentum to do something and ultimately I supported that.”
Needleman is White; Saunders is Black.
Different sections of the bill take effect on different dates, and changes may be made in the meantime, both Saunders and Needleman acknowledged. The qualified immunity changes, for instance, take effect on July 1, 2021, and are likely to be revisited.
Saunders also contended that as chair of the Energy and Technology Committee, Needleman’s pursuit of a “green economy” has led to utility rate hikes. Saunders specifically referred to Public Act 19-35, passed in 2019, titled “An Act Concerning a Green Economy and Environmental Protection.” A fiscal analysis of the bill by the Connecticut General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Research states that elements of the bill “may increase costs to electric ratepayers.”
“I have no problem with what he’s doing now—going after the CEO [of Eversource] and trying to get accountability,” Saunders said, but Needleman should have realized the bill would lead to increased electricity rates.
“Let’s find a good way to do this,” Saunders said. “Let’s do this in a way that doesn’t shoulder all the costs onto the taxpayer.
“I want clean air and a green economy,” he continued. “But I don’t want it on the backs of consumers.
The bill had bipartisan support and passed out of committee unanimously. Co-sponsors included State Senator Paul Formica (R-20) and State Representative Devin Carney (R-23). MacLachlan voted for it. It passed the House unanimously (with five members absent) and passed the Senate 32–1, with 3 absences.
“I have a record [of] putting forward common-sense legislation,” Needleman said. “All of the bills that I proposed out of the Energy Committee last year were passed with broad bipartisan support and some of them were passed unanimously.”
In 2017, before Needleman was elected to the Senate, the legislature voted to allow the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection to include the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in clean energy procurements. This was after Dominion, Millstone’s owner, threatened to close the plant, claiming it could not compete with the region’s natural gas-powered plants.
“[A]lthough I was not in the legislature when the Millstone issue came up and I’m not sure how I would have voted...I do know that the end result is we saved over 1,000 jobs,” which were important to southeastern Connecticut, Needleman said.
The Millstone bill “had broad Republican support with limited Democratic support,” he continued. “A lot of Democrats voted against it because they thought it was a corporate bailout.”
Most legislators from eastern Connecticut supported the bill, he explained, but there was a downside to keeping Millstone from closing.
“The Connecticut ratepayer bore the rate increases associated with keeping the plant alive,” Needleman said. “The way it works, if you mandate something in Connecticut, then Connecticut ratepayers will pay the difference...between procurement and market.
“Connecticut committed to buying energy from Millstone at a higher rate than the market,” he said. “This shows up on the side of the bill because we mandate that [the utility companies] buy the power.”
“I stand on the record of my experience: Every bill that I had a hand in was broadly bipartisan,” Needleman said. His aim is to stabilize or bring rates down “while making our grid more reliable, and also make sure that Connecticut stays a leader on the path to more renewable energy.”