Dan Haar: Losses by two powerful, moderate CT lawmakers show flaws in 2024 election

State Representatives Michelle Cook and Holly Cheeseman have both seen tight races in their years of campaigning.

Neither took her election for granted this year. Cook had won eight 2-year terms as a Democrat in the increasingly Republican city of Torrington. Cheeseman had four wins to her credit as a Republican from East Lyme, a town drifting ever-further from her party with thin support for President-elect Donald Trump.

For both of these moderate state lawmakers in prominent, powerful positions at the Capitol, 2024 proved an unfortunate reckoning. Both lost races by less than 100 votes to young men, almost exactly half their ages, who ran from the right or the left to match the districts: Republican Joe Canino in the 65th District in Torrington and Democrat Nick Menapace in the 37th, in East Lyme, Montville and Salem.

In one way of looking at it, this was politics as usual. Upstart candidates take on established officeholders and win as fresh faces. It's a healthy part of the business. Good for Canino and Menapace for running effective campaigns. 

In every even-numbered year, a handful of state lawmakers lose reelection bids. And it's not unheard of for someone with a lot of influence in Hartford to come up short. Even a couple of contenders as House speakers crashed on Election Day in recent decades. 

But looked at from another angle, the 2024 election ousters of Cook, 54, and Cheeseman, 69, reflect troubling trends in public life. 

These are both extraordinarily hardworking and effective lawmakers who have bucked their own parties, sometimes in big situations. Every politician claims to cross the aisle and work with the other party to get things done. These two lawmakers did that every day, not just when the stars aligned on a bill.

"You look at what I have been able to do and you look at what Holly Cheeseman has been able to do, you lose that and it is hurting the state," Cook, a a deputy House speaker who sees a lot of time with the gavel in her hands in floor debates, said to me this week. 

"I worked very hard to advance policies that would genuinely help the state of Connecticut," said Cheeseman, the ranking House Republican on the powerful finance committee, "and it really didn’t matter who had ownership of that."

Deep-chasm, toxic politics and the rise of Trump hurt Cook, as a Democrat in a 56-percent Trump city; and Cheeseman, as a traditional, non-MAGA Republican whose main town gave Vice President Kamala Harris 62 percent of its vote. Making matters all the harder for both, their districts had shifted away from their parties, imperiling them as moderates. 

And even if voters might agree to send an effective moderate back for another term, how does a candidate get the message across? Traditional media can no longer reach enough voters in a fractured news environment. Endorsements no longer have the power they once did. And voters spend less time looking at their state legislators.

"Where people get their information I think comes down to luck of the draw maybe," Cheeseman said to me this week. 

Of course, she and Cook far outpolled their parties' candidates at the top of the ticket. But all it took was a a few more voters casting ballots along party lines, or making their decisions based on one issue, and boom! A centrist's political career falters. 

I walked some voters' homes in October with Cook — a prodigious door-knocker who seems to know the name of every child and every dog in the district — and it was clear that last summer's electric rate shock hurt her. Never mind that she had voted against the main bill that was blamed for the higher prices. 

"If you say the Democrats raised your electric rates, then every Democrat gets tarred with raising your electric rates, even though we didn’t," Cook said.

'The ones who bring you together'

None of this should take anything away from the soon-to-be-sworn in Canino and Menapace. Each could serve long and distinguished careers and I have nothing bad to say about either of them. 

Still, the losses by Cook and Cheeseman illustrate the erosion of politics from the center. And their absence could leave a void that matters in the heavily Democratic state House and Senate, each chamber with a veto-proof super-majority of Democrats. 

Cook has supported some traditional, liberal measures but she has also been a negotiator and a brake on moves that might go too far to the left. In 2020, she voted against a post-George Floyd police reform bill. 

"That one for me was extremely important because we know that for my town, that matters, for my police officers, that matters," Cook said. "I have been able to vote in a very moderate, Torrington-specific kind of a way. Holly and I are very similar in that way."

Cheeseman was the lone GOP lawmaker who stood with Gov. Ned Lamont and other top Democrats at a press conference hailing the newly adopted state budget in 2021. "The governor used the picture in one of his campaign ads," she said.

She added, "I was one of two Republicans when they passed the bill to cap insulin prices... My late husband was a Type 1 diabetic."

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, recognized the potential loss of moderate voices. 

"The people who run in purple-ish districts are the ones who can lose," he said, "and those are the ones who bring you together."

Pressure from the right and the left

In another example of a trend hurting moderates, Cook, who lost to Canino by 54 votes after a partial recount, did not receive the endorsement of the Working Families Party, which skipped over members of the legislature's moderate caucus this year. She had received 557 votes on the Working Families line in 2016 and 327 in 2020. "Huge deal," Cook said.

That, combined with the Trump showing and a rising GOP registration in Torrington overshadowed Cook's recent successes including a $2 million state grant for a new food bank and more than $150 million for a new high school.

And down in the 37th, Cheeseman was caught between an opponent running hard as a progressive against Republicanism, and Trump loyalists, who might have noticed that she didn't say anything positive (or negative) about the former and future president. She lost by 99 votes as she failed to make up enough ground in the less Democratic neighborhoods of Montville and Salem. 

"Two of the best legislators in the state lost elections because of Trump’s significant win in Torrington and in Holly’s case because she didn’t endorse him," said lobbyist Patrick Sullivan, a former Republican strategist. 

Endorsing Trump might not have helped. One anti-Trump Republican stopped Cheeseman in a parking lot and told her she was doing a great job. But the voter said he had to send a message to the party by voting against the whole GOP ticket in a protest against Trump. 

Cheeseman and Cook both said it's to soon to make a decision on a comeback. 

"The hope is that they’ve groomed people and mentored people to take their spots," said Ritter, the House speaker, who was matched with Cook as his mentor in his first term. "There’s a lot of people who will point to Michelle and Holly and say, 'They helped me get where I am today and I’m going to govern and act in a manner that would make them proud.'"

Ritter added, "That’s the legacy they leave behind."

dhaar@hearstmediact.com