Cracked Bob: Stefanowski Errs in Skipping First Debate. Misses Chance to Explain Billions for GE, Zero for Distressed Middle Class Homeowners.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Stefanowski has spent the week blundering into two serious own-goals. He announced he does not support the minimum wage at all. The bidding war on raising the minimum wage has long been a minefield for Republicans. Stefanowski threw himself onto it and left himself no way out by declaring he’s against any minimum wage at all. Let the market decide. This has not been a popular stand in Connecticut at least 80 years. It’s unlikely to change now at the urging of a pawn shop operator and payday loan executive.

Worse, Stefanowski gave the back of his hand to tens of thousands of Connecticut homeowners when he said he does not think the state has a role to play in addressing the natural catastrophe of crumbling foundations. Stefanowski is going to have a tough time defending this. The wealthy Madison Republican enjoys touting his experience as an executive with GE in the first decade of the 21st century. GE, you may recall, wedged itself into $139 billion in government assistance during the financial crisis that peaked in 2008. Stefanowski appears to have no qualms about that government largesse to financial titans who created the mess that would have destroyed them without huge infusions from the public purse. Middle class homeowners with cracked and crumbling foundations? Let them eat cake–but let them pay for it themselves.

It was an an executive with GE that Stefanowski made a generous contribution to Democratic former U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd’s presidential candidate. Dodd was the head of the Senate Banking Committee at the time Pay-for-Play Bob gave his support to the left-wing veteran Connecticut Democrat.

One wonders if Stefanowski would feel the same about government’s role in a disaster if a hurricane brought devastation to tony Madison and its neighboring towns.