Malloy Talks Politics at MCC

Dannel Malloy knows how to work a room.

Not surprising, as it’s a skill that Malloy has had to use often in his career as Connecticut’s 88th governor, the longest serving mayor in the city of Stamford’s history and a successful trial lawyer and district attorney.

Although Malloy’s audience Wednesday was not the typical group of lawmakers, lobbyists and government officials that usually occupy his time, but instead students in a pair of classes at Manchester Community College.

The governor spoke for about an hour to a room full of students in interpersonal communications and American government classes at MCC, touching on everything from his personal career and history to his to his plan to consolidate the state’s community colleges and regional universities under one umbrella. 

“I was asked to come by and try and be interesting,” Malloy joked. “I don’t know how interesting I’ll be.”

In his remarks, Malloy talked about the importance of effective communication in public life, both being able to deliver and interpret it.

 “At it’s very core, politics is communication,” Malloy said. “Communication can be used well and for good purposes; there’s bad communication, and then there’s the misuse of communication.”

As an example of the “misuse of communication,” Malloy cited the attempts by Congressional Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood through claiming it as part of a larger effort to save the federal government $100 billion.

“The argument, and this is an interesting thing to watch, that we need to defund Planned Parenthood, not because – which would be a direct assault – they perform abortions to a very small percentage of the women that they serve. That wasn’t the attack,” Malloy said. “The attack was we need to defund Planned Parenthood as part of an overall drive to cut out $100 billion in expenditures.”

Malloy said only a “tiny, tiny, tiny percent of that savings” would come from the elimination of Planned Parenthood.

“But if you read the language that was proposed by the folks putting that forward in the budget it had nothing to do with ideology,” Malloy said. “The reality is it just scrapped the surface, and if you look just slightly under the veneer, you understand what was actually behind it. So it’s really important to raise up generations of people who think about language, and think about politics, and contemplate how those two things are used in connection.”

Rebecca M. Townsend, an assistant professor of communications at MCC whose class was one of the two that Malloy addressed, said she thought the governor’s appearance offered a wonderful opportunity to students to hear first hand examples of some of the things they had discussed in class.

“I was particularly impressed with the governor’s discussion of politics and language,” Townsend said. “We’ve spent a lot of time in my interpersonal communication class talking about language and the importance of verbal communication.”

Townsend, a Massachusetts resident, said that as a state of Connecticut worker, she also wanted to hear more about Malloy’s plan to achieve about $2 billion in savings through state employees givebacks over the next two years.

When that topic came up, Malloy said, “we negotiate, we talk, and hopefully we get that. Because the alternative is the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs currently occupied by state employees and the shrinking of the state’s safety net, so the options aren’t very good.”

Malloy said his plan to consolidate the state’s 12 community colleges and four regional universities into a single system would save millions of dollars in administrative costs and make it “substantially easier for students to go from one institution to another, and therefore I believe make it easier to get that associate’s degree or that four-year degree.”

Kellie Gilbert, an MCC student and Manchester resident, said she found Malloy’s talk informative, but that she was still concerned about a reduction in financial aid funding.  

“I understand we all need to make sacrifices, but education would be the last place I’d want to see sacrifices,” Gilbert said. “Hopefully when it comes up for a vote, we won’t have as much financial aid cut. I know I’ve depended on financial aid helping me through summer courses and whatnot.”

Malloy told the students that Connecticut faced a difficult road ahead in the short term, with a projected budget deficit of $3.3 billion, but that he was confident that implementing many of the plans and proposal he discussed with them would put the state on solid ground in the long term.

“Most of the governors in the country are choosing to balance their budgets by extensively cutting services, demonizing state employees and shifting responsibility to local governments. I’m not seeking to do that,” Malloy said. “We’ve cut about $800 million from planned expenditures next year. We’ve asked our fellow state employees to make concessions, substantial concessions, and we’re proposing raising taxes by $1.5 billion.” 

“It’s not an easy thing to do,” Malloy continued. “It’s not a popular thing to do, but I’m not trying to be popular, I’m trying to be successful, and there’s a difference.” 

Time will tell if Malloy is able to effectively communicate his proposals into existence.