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 taking a look at the back-and-forth between the Erin Stewart and Ryan Fazio campaigns after the New Britain mayor released the results of hypothetical primary and general elections.

Plus, is the race for the 1st Congressional District going to get even more crowded this week?

Let’s dive in…

Campaign ‘26: Fazio and Stewart camps trade fire

If there was one sentence to sum up the sentiment inside Connecticut’s Republican scene at the present moment, it would probably be: This could get ugly.

The “this” in that sentence refers, of course, to the developing rivalry between State Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich and Mayor Erin Stewart of New Britain as they both pursue the GOP nomination for governor.

Fazio is coming off his first full week as a candidate for the nomination.

Stewart is still, technically, only in an exploratory phase.

As much as Stewart might be embracing the advice of learned legal counsel and qualifying each of her public statements with variations of the word “explore,” there is increasingly little doubt as to what her ultimate intentions are.

An internal Stewart campaign (sorry, “exploratory” campaign) poll presented to the state press corps in two tranches last week revealed just how committed she is in the pursuit of the Republican nomination.

The first round of numbers put out by the Stewart campaign was widely read as a shot directly at Fazio. The campaign’s polling showed the Hardware City’s mayor with a nearly 30-point lead over Fazio among likely GOP primary voters.

“Mayor Erin Stewart holds lead in CT GOP primary with 35% undecided for governor,” The Hartford Courant headline read on Thursday morning.

The release of the primary poll touched off a back-and-forth between the Stewart and Fazio camps.

Fazio’s team, currently led by the operative Jim Conroy, immediately questioned the veracity of the polling.

“Clearly Ryan’s competition is sensing his momentum, as just one week into his candidacy they are shopping disingenuous push polling,” Conroy said.

The notion that the Stewart survey was a push poll designed to sway respondents toward supporting the mayor had been floating around ever since screenshots of questions assumed to be from the survey began to circulate.

One question juxtaposed “a candidate that is a mayor in Connecticut who believes in fiscal conservatism and common sense” or “a candidate that had a career in private equity driving business growth and served in the Connecticut State Senate for four years representing lower Fairfield County.”

Another queried GOP voters about their preferences between “a candidate that embraces Trump and his energetic style as a fighter” with “a candidate that is constantly focused on being bipartisan, he doesn’t endorse the Trump MAGA agenda and avoids saying Trump’s name publicly.”

The Stewart camp denied the notion that they had engaged in push polling.

OnMessage, the firm that conducted the survey, characterized the poll as a benchmark poll – with candidate preference questions asked before questions testing various messages about the two candidates. They did not provide crosstabs or detailed methodological information in the memos they shared with reporters.

The firm is a national GOP campaign outfit with experience polling races across the country. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina and former Governor Rick Scott of Florida have all used OnMessage polling. The firm’s top pollster is a veteran in the field and was once named “Pollster of the Year” by a professional association of political consultants.

OnMessage was also tapped by President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign to craft one of the closing television ads of the cycle.

Two seasoned Connecticut political operatives with no dog in the Stewart-Fazio fight gave their two cents in interviews with News 8.

“These are credible polls, credible pollsters,” Liz Kurantowicz, a longtime GOP politico, said.

Roy Occhiogrosso, a strategist who helped steer former Governor Dannel Malloy to victory, said he believed the poll was a benchmark poll – not a push poll – based on what he’d seen.

On Friday, the firm revealed the results of a hypothetical head-to-head matchup between Stewart and Governor Ned Lamont. The survey, which sampled 600 likely general election voters, found Stewart down by eight points with another eight percent undecided.

As was the case with the primary poll, Stewart’s exploratory campaign did not disclose the types of details that are typical when academic institutions and news organizations release polling. They did, however, underscore their own interpretations of the data.

“The poll shows that Mayor Stewart, even in an exploratory phase, starts where our last Republican candidates finished,” Morgan Wilson, a vice president at OnMessage and a senior advisor to Stewart, said.

Kurantowicz echoed that analysis, noting that Stewart’s support mapped onto the recent historical averages for statewide Republican candidates.

Occhiogrosso mostly dismissed the significance of polling this early in the cycle.

“I look at those numbers at some level as being meaningless,” he said. “If at this point, only eight percent are undecided, I just find that hard to believe. Nobody’s focused on this right now.”

Lamont’s team largely declined to engage with the head-to-head polling when asked for comment.

Rob Blanchard, Lamont’s chief spokesman, provided a statement worded nearly identically to the others he’s offered in response to potential opponents on both sides of the aisle.

“Governor Lamont is proud to put his record on affordability and opportunity up against anyone,” Blanchard wrote.

The intraparty kerfuffle over the Stewart poll served as a sort of preview for the speed at which the temperature in a potential primary battle could rise.

Regardless of how one interprets the design of the poll – push poll, benchmark poll or something else – it’s undeniable that the Stewart exploratory campaign is at the ready with multiple lines of attack against Fazio.

In framing the results of the primary poll, Wilson, the Stewart advisor, made reference to “Hartford insiders with boilerplate announcement videos, full of Capitol concerns and devoid of real voters’ concerns.”

He didn’t explicitly invoke Fazio’s name. But then again, neither did the questions in the widely-circulated screenshots.

Among the state’s Republican insiders, the interpretations of Stewart’s moves varied. Some shared Conroy’s assessment that the aggressive rollout of the polling indicated a desire in the Stewart camp to hit hard at the momentum Fazio built within a few days of launching his campaign. Others read the poll as a sign of genuine strength on Stewart’s side. Insiders on both sides of the Stewart-Fazio divide, and many who have not yet committed to a side, saw the whole episode as a sign of things ratcheting up.

Stewart herself was quick to tout the polls publicly. Behind the scenes, she fired off a round of texts to numerous Republican legislators, reaching out to say “hi” and check in.

For his part, Fazio has steered clear of hitting Stewart directly.

When asked, he speaks of not wanting to tear down other Republicans and running on his own record. His surrogates have not been as shy.

To repeat that line: This could get ugly. Fast.

Another week, another candidate in the 1st Congressional District?

As if there weren’t already enough candidates and potential candidates to discuss more than a year out from next year’s election, word of a new candidate entering the race for Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District grew in intensity this weekend.

State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest’s name has been floating in the political ether for weeks. The outspoken West Hartford progressive is expected to make a move this week.

For those not keeping close tabs on the race for the 1st District, Gilchrest would be the fifth Democrat to enter the running.

Congressman John Larson has made it clear that he’s in for another run. Former Mayor Luke Bronin of Hartford is in, too. So are businessman Jack Perry of Southington and attorney Ruth Fortune of Hartford.

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