Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

Well, it’s finally here. The end of the 2025 legislative session is upon us. This week, we’ll see the final (sort of) resolutions to many of the biggest debates that legislators took up this year.

Let’s dive in…

Who won the 2025 budget negotiations?

Like the throngs of faithful Catholics who flocked to St. Peter’s Square in Rome last month, the eyes of Connecticut’s most dedicated politics watchers were trained on a set of closed doors for most of last week. The subject of their anticipation: the conclusion of the Papal Conclave-like process that would ultimately produce a two-year budget deal between Gov. Ned Lamont and the Democrats who command the legislature’s overwhelming Democratic majorities.

Last Wednesday, rumors of white smoke shot around the Capitol. In subsequent days, leaders publicly confirmed they were getting closer by the hour. 

Habemus pactum. We have an agreement. Almost.

To stick with the conclave metaphor, the private budget talks that played out between the governor and legislative Democrats revolved around intraparty ideological differences that can be described as a sort of schism within the center-left coalition that governs Connecticut. Just as some observers of Church politics read the election of Pope Leo XIV as a consensus-seeking move to unite liberal and conservative factions, the budget deal that leaders struck over the course of the last several days has the outlines of a compromise between more moderate Democrats like Lamont and those seeking every feasible avenue to widen the fiscal aperture of the state’s next two-year spending plan.

As with the election of the new pontiff, there is an ongoing discussion in Connecticut political circles as to which faction came out on top in the budget negotiations. Publicly, both camps – the legislative Democrats and the governor – have mostly refrained from declaring victory in the Democrat-on-Democrat conflicts over spending. But there are hints of a consensus among Capitol insiders of all ideological stripes who believe that the legislature’s Democratic leaders outmaneuvered the governor and scored several key victories.

In public statements, the Democratic leaders have seemed pleased with the progress they’ve made in moving the budgetary needle closer to their position.

“I think we’ve moved a long way, I think we’re able to fund things that we weren’t able to fund prior,” House Speaker Matt Ritter said last Wednesday as budget talks neared the one-yard line.

It was Ritter, acting in coordination with State Senate President Martin Looney, who gave voice to the influential cohort of Democrats who sought more expansive spending than the more conservative governor. Like his predecessor, former Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, Ritter made extensive use of morning press conferences to shape the narrative of the budget debate. In those press conferences, Ritter’s nonchalant demeanor and impromptu analytical tangents belied a more concerted effort to move the governor on several key spending flashpoints.

Facing a time-sensitive crisis in the state’s Medicaid accounts last month, the governor took emergency action to exceed the state’s constitutional spending cap – a move that Ritter and Looney long advocated for the governor to do sooner rather than later. Ritter took a particularly aggressive stance during the discussions over the Medicaid deficiency, walking out a meeting in the governor’s office and later accusing unnamed interlocutors of “mansplaining” and “condescending” to the legislature.

Republicans were not shy in voicing their assessments of the outcome of the Medicaid deficiency crisis. State Sen. Heather Somers’s refrain that Lamont “folded like a lawn chair” has become a meme-able battle cry for her fellow Republicans in the State Senate. Lapel pins depicting a lawn chair have become the hottest new fashion accessory under the golden dome.

On the floor of the State Senate, State Sen. Ryan Fazio explicitly suggested that the circumstances surrounding the emergency fiscal maneuver were not merely a real-time reaction to the Medicaid deficiency – a shortfall that legislators have known about long before the start of the 2025 session.

“It almost strikes me as something that was pre-planned,” Fazio said of the move to bypass the spending cap for what Lamont described as a one-time departure.

After the Medicaid deficiency saga played out, attention turned to broader questions about the next state budget. Again, Ritter was out front. In the middle of last week, he suggested that the state dispatch with decades of tradition and adopt a one-year budget rather than a two-year one. The publicly assertive version of Ritter that came out during the Medicaid fight made another appearance.

“The legislative branch is not backup singers,” Ritter said during a Wednesday morning press conference. It was a message delivered to reporters but intended for an audience just down the hall.

Connecticut’s present fiscal challenges, Ritter said, amounted to a needle through which a thread would need to be delicately strung. The best way to do that, he argued, was with a one-year budget.

That suggestion elicited an unusually sharp response from Lamont later in the day.

“That just breaks every commitment we've made to the taxpayers of the state over the last 40, 45 years,” Lamont said of the proposal.

Departing from his typical style of avoiding public veto threats, Lamont said he would be inclined to shoot down a one-year budget if it ever got to his desk.

During Lamont’s press conference, the CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas asked Lamont if budget negotiations were effectively being conducted through the press. But just like the Medicaid deficiency fight, the brief barbs that were traded over the prospect of a one-year budget quickly gave way to more constructive talks. By that evening, those rumors of white smoke began to fly. Walking off the House floor after a marathon debate, Ritter confirmed that a deal was close and delivered his comments about the negotiations moving “a long way” from where they began.

Of course, to frame one side as the winner and the other as the loser is, admittedly, an oversimplification. Concluding that this year’s budget fight was a binary conflict in which legislative Democrats emerged as the undisputed victors is beyond reductive. It's innacurate. Though the legislative leaders demonstrated significant tactical prowess, the progressives who found allies in Ritter and Looney were not able to get several key initiatives over the finish line. The Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf, the preeminent chronicler of the state’s budgetary dramas, reported yesterday evening that a modest child tax credit proposal had been largely scrapped. Those who wished to see major reforms to the fiscal guardrails passed in 2017 are unlikely to see the full breadth of their desires fulfilled and calls for steeper taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents have also been tossed aside.

Even with the major rifts that still exist between the various factions of Democrats who comprise the state’s governing majority, there are also several major inclusions in the budget and broader 2025 legislative agenda that represent rallying points for virtually the whole party. The governor championed a historic investment in childcare that was cheered by progressives. Expansions to the protections state’s Trust Act also share the support of progressives and the governor. Lamont's narrative of the 2025 legislative session will tout those accomplishments. In his telling, the ideology of Lamontist moderation may well be the winner of the session. The investments in childcare would not be possible without significant budget surpluses. Expanding the protections of Trust Act while also broadening the set of criminal convictions that permit cooperation with federal immigration authorities is, at least from the Democratic perspective, a compromise that fits with Lamont's personal and ideological sensibilities.

Still, for many of those who form the left flank of the Connecticut Democratic base, the disappointments delivered by the actions of the governor who they helped elect twice might not be easily patched-over by the accomplishments they did notch. Lamont seems poised to veto the second consecutive effort to provide unemployment insurance for striking workers. The threat of a veto triggered a watering-down of a major artificial intelligence regulation bill which may still be killed by the governor's skepticism. For many on the left in Connecticut, the 2025 budget and broader legislative session may very well be summed up in words borrowed from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.”

Shape without form, shade without color.

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.

For Republicans, the narrative of the 2025 budget negotiations is one of a governor who bent to the will of Democrats who will never be satisfied with more and more spending. They might modify another line in that oft-quoted Eliot poem – a line that speaks of a moment of culmination.

This is the way the session ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper…and a fold.

UNH: Lamont at 52%. Voters divided on third term

The end of the legislative session also brings with it the beginning of an intense period of speculation about Gov. Ned Lamont’s plans for next year’s election. The governor has publicly stated that he will hold off on an announcement until after the gavel falls on midnight this Wednesday. But those wishing for immediate clarity might find themselves disappointed. In recent weeks, Lamont hasn’t given any indication that he’s made up his own mind on re-election, let alone hinted at a specific timeline for his announcement. His public stance is consistent with what multiple sources have told the Tip Sheet. No one seems to know his inclinations, even those closest to him – perhaps with one key exception.

A new poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire might offer some empirical context for Lamont as he weighs his next moves. The poll found Lamont’s approval rating to be just above 50%. That figure is lower than the oft-cited 60% that Morning Consult polling has shown. It’s close to the mid-50s approval rating found in recent private polling circulated among some Republicans and viewed by the Tip Sheet. Perhaps most interestingly, the UNH poll found that 39% “definitely” or “probably” want Lamont to run for a third term while 44% “definitely” or “probably” don’t want him to seek reelection.

Whether or not Lamont himself will give much consideration to the UNH poll is unknown, but the polling has spurred renewed conversations within Democratic and Republican circles about the prospects of the “Ned three-peat.”

The Democrats circling a run in 2026 are mostly in a wait-and-see mode. Plans are in place, but almost all of them – perhaps with the exception of State Rep. Josh Elliott – will not make any formal moves until after Lamont makes an announcement. In one scenario being considered by some potential ‘26ers, Lamont might offer a hint of his plans shortly after the conclusion of the legislative session before making a formal announcement. That scenario mostly contemplates an affirmative signal that the governor is readying for reelection followed by a period of weeks or months before the official start of a campaign.

On the Republican side, the assumptions about Lamont’s plans have largely remained the same. Predictions about whether or not he’ll run vary from person to person, but everyone seems to agree that if Lamont agrees to run, the GOP primary field would be considerably narrower than if he decides to exit.

There are already some signs that the field of Republican candidates is narrowing. Matthew Corey, the rugged Manchester small business owner who has twice won the Republican nomination to run against Sen. Chris Murphy, is officially running to be lieutenant governor after previously forming an exploratory committee that could have been transitioned into a gubernatorial campaign. According to an invitation obtained by the Tip Sheet, State Sen. Rob Sampson, the conservative firebrand whose name has been floated as a gubernatorial candidate, is on the host committee for an upcoming fundraiser for Peter Lumaj’s statewide exploratory committee. While that is not an explicit signal that Sampson himself won’t eventually jump in the race, it does suggest that the vocal faction of Connecticut conservatives are prepared to rally around each other.

At the center of the conversations surrounding the race to be the Republican nominee for governor is New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart. She recently touted hitting the $200,000 mark in her exploratory fundraising and is actively working to shore up her right flank in preparation for a potential primary. In a series of tweets and a White House visit, Stewart has sought to position herself close to President Donald Trump. If she can secure the Trump endorsement, Stewart could potentialy make the results of a primary a fait accompli. If she fails to nab the support of the president, she may face the same fate as former House Minority Leader Themis Klarides – endorsed by the party establishment only to fall in a statewide primary to a Trump-backed challenger.

When Lamont speaks to the press later this week, he can count on what the first question will be. The state, and the cadre of ambitious pols anxious to succeed him, will be listening closely.

We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!