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

This week, we’re breaking down the latest moves made by the Lamont campaign and discussing a curious similarity between two very different Connecticut politicians.

Plus, are we ever going to stop talking about Erin Stewart? One Connecticut think tank has an interesting idea inspired by the Stewart saga.

Finally, the Tip Sheet has picked up word of an impending endorsement in a closely-watched Democratic primary fight. We’ll tell you what we know at the end of this week’s newsletter.

Let’s dive in…

Ned goes on air

If you’ve turned on a television or watched a YouTube video in the last 72 hours, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve entered a new phase of the gubernatorial race. Ned Lamont has begun a major paid advertising push.

Lamont’s opening salvo came in the form of a 30-second commercial that features the governor rolling up his sleeves, balling his hands into fists, and rattling off three policies that have become centerpieces of his re-election effort.

The campaign’s initial purchase of airtime was in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars, covering all forms of television programming.  Obviously, this sum is just an initial investment from a campaign with vast resources to draw on. The campaign is deploying a second ad, one that takes square aim at Donald Trump and his aggressive campaign of immigration enforcement.

Abridged versions of the television commercials are also blanketing the internet, occupying those eternal 15 seconds before a YouTube video.

In the physical world, the Lamont campaign continues to build out what will likely be the largest campaign staff in the state this cycle. The Tip Sheet can confirm that a notable Lamont aide, Alan Cunningham, has completed a familiar migration from the governor’s office to the campaign in the last couple weeks. The Young Democrats leader has been placed in charge of youth outreach for his boss’ re-election effort. Cunningham was part of a crop of young organizers who proved their mettle on Lamont’s 2022 campaign before moving into jobs across the political scene.

Lamont will have the airwaves to himself for the time being. Josh Elliott filmed his first campaign advertisement this weekend. It is poised to hit the airwaves in the next couple weeks.

Striving to reach new audiences, Murphy and Fazio share pop culture takes

What’s Ryan Fazio’s favorite movie?

What makes Chris Murphy such a big fan of Bruce Hornsby?

Why would anyone ever care about these things?

Because, dear Tip Sheet reader, the fact that we now have access to detailed answers to the first two questions says a lot about the future of political communication.

At first glance, Murphy and Fazio have very little in common. They hail from different generations, political parties, and regions of Connecticut. But a pair of recent moves made by each man reveals a uniting characteristic, one that is perhaps best described by saying that Fazio and Murphy are both embracing something the Tip Sheet is choosing to call the Bill Simmons Model.

What is the Bill Simmons Model?

For the unfamiliar, Bill Simmons is a well-known sportswriter who began his career as a beat reporter at the Boston Herald before flowing with the shifting waters of the media industry to the internet and now to podcasting, where he is one of the industry’s major players.

Simmons is known for blending highbrow commentary with a touch of an everyman sensibility. His body of work sits somewhere on the center-left of a sports media spectrum spanning from Dave Portnoy, the brash Barstool Sports founder, to Louisa Thomas, a writer for the New Yorker.

When Simmons launched The Ringer, a digital media company which produces a growing slate of podcasts and online commentary, he described wanting his company’s content to feel like an enjoyable conversation with “the smartest guy at the bar” or the “smartest gal in the movie theater.”

In an evolution that reflects Simmons’ career-long ability to adapt, The Ringer has branched out from sports. Simmons has added to his podcast repertoire with The Rewatchables, a weekly show that sees Simmons and a rotating roster of cohosts provide analysis of famous films. The conversations are simultaneously laid back, vulgar, and granular to a nearly academic extent. Other Ringer podcasts discuss politics, media culture, music, and the pulpy intrigue of reality TV.

Why describe Fazio and Murphy as following the Bill Simmons Model?

Simmons took a sports column and built a media empire that now touches Hollywood, politics, and beyond. At 56, he has been able to maintain cultural relevance by being just as fluent in the NBA’s “GOAT debate” as he is arguing over the best 90s leading man or discussing pop music trends with his Gen Z daughter.

The age of TikTok and podcasting seems to have corralled every public figure, from sportswriters to senators, into one giant competition to win the public’s attention through hot takes on a boundless array of topics. Simmons competes in this arena with his "smart guy at the bar" persona.

Fazio and Murphy seem to understand that the rules of their chosen profession have changed, and they’ve displayed a willingness to adopt the vibe of Simmons and his media company – embracing conversations more suited to the bar than the ivory tower while trying to maintain intellectual credibility. It is a pursuit that seems to come to both men naturally.

In his late 20s, Fazio actually tried his hand at the exact same thing that catapulted Simmons to fame at the dawn of the internet age: offering carefully written sports opinions online. Back in 2017, Fazio was published in The Federalist, a conservative site, opining on the looming presence of a pitch clock in professional baseball. In another piece, he sung the praises of the MLB’s wildcard games.

Likewise, Murphy has long been known to tweet his takes on sports. In April, he engaged directly with Simmons, who had posted a rather stark description about a matchup between the Magic and Pistons.

“Riveting Magic/Pistons game,” Simmons wrote. “It’s like a clogged toilet offense battling the backed-up sink offense. You knew a banked in 3 would be the key play!”

“Also this last 2 minutes has taken approximately an hour and a half,” Murphy replied shortly before 11:00 PM Eastern on a Monday evening.

Connecticut’s junior senator has also appeared on podcasts produced by The Ringer and once tweeted a strong endorsement of Simmons’ eponymous show. 

This brings us to last week.

Murphy, who has been making the media rounds to promote his new book, appeared on the Track Star Podcast. Most Tip Sheet readers who scroll through short-form video platforms will be familiar with Track Star, which is not a Ringer property but shares a penchant for diving deep on culture. Host Jack Coyne has repeatedly gone viral for his “man on the street” interviews where he challenges guests, often A-list celebrities, to identify songs by ear and discuss them. Politicians, including Zohran Mamdani and Kamala Harris, have been featured guests. The roster of four songs Coyne presents are clearly not random, but rather curated to spark an interesting discussion with his guests. The podcast is an outgrowth of that format.

There was a palpable Simmons-esque quality to Murphy’s demeanor on the podcast. Throughout the Track Star interview, he weaved from a discussion of Boyz II Men to a recounting of his political origin story and then back to an impassioned soliloquy on his love of Bruce Hornsby. Yes, Chris Murphy is a diehard Bruce Hornsby fan. He gave a detailed explanation of why Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” makes a fitting soundtrack for life as a politician. It was a riff that echoed the type of delightfully intricate metaphors Simmons is known to spin as he explains, for instance, how Alec Baldwin’s scene-stealing appearances in “Glengarry Glen Ross” showcased the same explosiveness that the former NBA guard Dion Waiters brought when he came off the bench.

Last week also saw Fazio make a move into the pop culture space. He posted a video of himself naming his “movie Mount Rushmore.” Though the post most directly emulated the “Four Favorites” format pioneered by the cinephile social network Letterboxd, Fazio’s detailed commentary would’ve fit right in on an episode of The Rewatchables.

Like Simmons’ main podcast, The Rewatchables often uses the Mount Rushmore framing as a starting point for discussions that evoke emotion, historical analysis, and humor. It's a framing that allows room for equal appreciation of “Casablanca” and “Mean Girls.” Fazio included both as Rushmore picks.

A subsequent Fazio post saw him “blind rank” popular fast food chains. Again, he made the relatively trivial seem serious, methodically explaining aloud his thought process. Is there any question better suited for Simmons' archetypal barstool intellectual than determining if McDonald's is in the same category as Jersey Mike's? The sandwich chain, in Fazio’s view, is not classified as fast food. With his brow furrowed and his voice pausing to measure each sentence, Fazio described Jersey Mike's as “more serious dining” but apparently “not fun enough” to get a higher slot.

Voters will ultimately decide whether or not Murphy and Fazio’s willingness to venture out into the new public square makes them more fit for higher office. Politicians offering takes on broader culture is obviously not a new thing, but the modern media environment seems to be rewarding those who are part of that online take factory, not merely occasional observers. It is in this environment that ranking movies is seen as necessary to expand the reach of energy policy proposals. Music podcasts now offer pretense for discussion of wealth inequality. Come for the Hornsby, stay for the capital gains debate. Perceived credibility on the former validates opinions on the latter, so the theory goes. Every debate in the zeitgeist can be connected under this Bill Simmons Model of civic life, and it’s all apparently going to be settled by whoever the tuned-in public decides is the smartest guy at the bar.

Yankee pitches the “ERIN Act”

While the political class awaits the next developments in the Erin Stewart saga, the Yankee Institute’s Meghan Portfolio has some ideas on how to prevent future scandals involving government credit cards.

Portfolio recently published an outline for a centralized disclosure hub for the public disclosure of all expenditures on state-issued cards and cards belonging to nonprofits receiving state funds. Municipalities would have the option of adopting a state-authored ordinance for public disclosure or risk being put on a sort of noncompliance list.

The proposed reform has a name thanks to Portfolio: the Expenditure Records and Information Notification (ERIN) Act.

Sabin readies a big endorsement

The fight for the 92nd House district is shaping up to be one of this summer’s marquee fights. The race for the New Haven seat currently held by State Rep. Pat Dillon promises to provide action in arguably the most politically vibrant (and consequential) city in the state.

The Tip Sheet is told that Eli Sabin, one of two candidates vying to unseat Dillon, will be unveiling a significant endorsement in the coming days. Stay tuned as we work to confirm more about the announcement. You'll see it linked on Capitol Report!

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