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

After our one-week hiatus (which may or may not have been tied to St. Patrick’s Day weekend festivities) we’re back and we’re taking the temperature of the race to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Plus, a State Senate race we’ve been following closely has drawn another candidate. 

Let’s dive in…

Elliott: “We’re having a primary. There’s no question.”

When you ask State Rep. Josh Elliott how he feels about his campaign to pry the Democratic gubernatorial nomination from the grip of Gov. Ned Lamont, you get a characteristically chipper answer from the 41-year-old progressive.

Things are going well and only getting better, so he says.

Take a gander at his social media pages or at the emails he pens to a growing list of Democrats, and you’ll see him quantifying what he describes as snowballing support for his challenge to the incumbent governor. He’s visited nearly 80 town committees and says he’s raised half the required funds to qualify for the state’s public campaign financing program. Elliott says he can feel his support growing as more and more Democratic voters seek a candidates who is, as New Haven Democratic Town Committee chair Vin Mauro recently put it, willing to say out loud complaints many progressives have had about Lamont.

The only available public polling on the race lends at least some credence to the claim of momentum – even if Elliott still is in a distant second place. 

The most recent survey from the University of New Hampshire shows Elliott trailing Lamont 57-13 with 29% undecided. That represents a six point improvement from the last UNH poll in November. 

It is that trajectory paired with new fundraising developments that has led Elliott to abandon a self-imposed deadline he once set for himself. In late January, he told the Hartford Courant’s Chris Keating that he would drop out of the race if he could not raise enough funds to qualify for public financing by mid-April. More recently, he’s grown confident he’ll hit his mark – even if it takes a little longer.

“At this point, it’s just so clear we’re going to raise the money,” he said. “We raised 17 [thousand] in January. 37, 38 in February. We are on track to be between 45 to 50 in March.”

Elliott said he’s spending about $20,000 per month and has around $45,000 on hand. He’s also certain he’ll have enough support at the state party convention to force a primary election. 

“I’ve been at 15% for months now,” Elliott said. “We’re having a primary. There’s no question.”

Delegates will convene in May. Elliott will need at least 15% of them to cast their votes for him. And while there might not be any question in Elliott’s mind that he’ll be on the ballot with Lamont in August, there are certainly some persistent questions in the minds of many of the people whose support Elliott is actively courting. 

On the issue of fundraising, skeptics of the Elliott project question why he hasn’t been able to clear the threshold that Erin Stewart and State Sen. Ryan Fazio both passed in January. Where Elliott sees momentum, detractors see underperformance.

Elliott’s detractors also continue to question his commitment to the race. Even as he projects supreme confidence that he’ll make it all the way to the August gubernatorial primary, Elliott does not hide the fact that he is running to keep his House seat at the same time as he pursues a showdown with Lamont. 

“I’m asking both my constituency in Hamden if they’d like me back, and I’m asking the state if they’d like to hire me as governor,” he said.

In Elliott’s mind, he can do both without sacrificing the integrity of his candidacy for either office.

Not everyone sees it that way. The Lamont campaign has seized on those doubts.

“Josh Elliott is hedging his bets running for both governor and state representative,” Michael Last, the chair of the West Haven Democratic Town Committee, said in a statement provided by the Lamont campaign. “Connecticut voters expect candidates to be all in.”

Within and beyond Lamont’s orbit, Elliott’s assurances that he has already garnered enough delegate support to trigger a primary are the subject of much speculation. Some insiders, including a handful of Lamont allies, share Elliott’s assessment that he’ll easily clear the 15% threshold. Others gauge his current level of support somewhere between 10-15%.

“We know one thing for sure: Governor Lamont will be endorsed at the convention,” Lauren Gray, the Lamont campaign’s comms chief, said.

As he vies for delegates and campaign contributions, Elliott is constantly opening new lines of attacks on Lamont. There are familiar punches at Lamont’s fiscal moderation, personal wealth, and sometimes collegial interactions with the Trump administration. There are also more specific, wonky critiques like the one highlighting Lamont’s proposed $900,000 reduction to the budget of the secretary of the state’s office.

“Governor Lamont is proposing a $1 million cut to election security,” a recent Elliott campaign infographic reads.

Asked for comment on that charge, Lamont’s office disputed the characterization of the proposed adjustment to the secretary of the state’s office budget as a cut.

“The funding adjustment reflects historical lapses, rather than an actual cut,” a Lamont spokesman said.

In a subsequent statement, the spokesman seemed to suggest that changes to the proposal were in the works.

“While [the Office of Policy and Management] proposed a budget adjustment based on past funding levels, we’ve communicated and are working with [the secretary of the state] to ensure the final budget fully supports the resources they need to carry out their important work,” the spokesman said.

Elliott doesn’t buy that explanation.

“When the governor makes a ‘mistake,’ and I use that in quotation marks, that shows that he’s just not really paying attention to the issue,” Elliott said.

The squabble over the relatively small line item in Lamont’s budget adjustments illustrates a key tactic of the Elliott campaign: hammering away in an effort to string together a larger narrative of Lamont’s leadership.

The test of whether or not that narrative has taken hold among a large enough segment of the Democratic Party will come on the convention floor.

Lamont team adds staff

As the convention draws closer, the Lamont campaign is continuing to staff up. Among the recent additions to the team is Steve Sheinberg, the outgoing chair of the Fairfield Democratic Town Committee.

The campaign has also hired a number of regional organizers focused on each congressional district: Megan Wallett in the 1st District, Jennifer Croughwell in the 2nd District, Rippy Patton in the 5th District, Jake Marrandino in the 3rd District, and Alejandro Correa in the 4th District.

Sources tell the Tip Sheet that Sheinberg has been making calls to Democratic Town Committee chairs on behalf of the Lamont campaign in the lead up to the convention. Working delegates is a task Sheinberg knows well. In 2022, when Sheinberg was still relatively unknown outside Fairfield County, he was a key part of the team that marshaled support for Stephanie Thomas on the convention floor.

Sheinberg’s last day leading the Fairfield Democrats will be Wednesday, when the town committee will also finalize its delegate slate.

Race for Maher’s seat draws another Democrat

State Rep. Lucy Dathan will not have an uncontested path to succeeding the outgoing State Sen. Ceci Maher.

Sam Nestor, the first selectwoman of Weston, has opened a campaign for the seat.

The district spans eight Fairfield County communities and the race to be its next state senator promises to be one of the most interesting primary contests of the 2026 cycle.

That’s all for this week! We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet.