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 laying out some of our predictions for Gov. Ned Lamont’s state of the state address.

Plus, two of the leading GOP candidates for governor headlined one of the party’s major cattle calls. How’d they do?

Let’s dive in…

The 2026 State of the State Drinking Game

Loyal Tip Sheet readers will recall last year’s “State of the State Bingo Card” which tried to predict the Ned-isms that would be featured in the governor’s annual address.

The bingo card ended up being so accurate that the governor himself tipped his hat to this humble weekly newsletter with a winking “Bingo!” as he sipped a diet ginger ale.

This year, the Tip Sheet is giving it another go with some more predictions for Lamont’s state of the state and we’re formatting it as a drinking game.

Expect the governor to try and avoid some of the more tired fixtures of his public remarks. Don’t expect many pizza-centric remarks or jokes about the utility companies.

Of course, many of our readers will be in the chamber or otherwise on the job during the speech, so some modifications to the drinking game format might be in order. Perhaps one could keep a tally during the speech and then rack up the drinks after hours. We’re using shots as our standard denomination for this game but feel free to substitute sips or pints of your preferred beverage if this list ends up being as spot-on as last year’s.

Take a shot if…

…the governor says some variation of, “We’ve got your back.” That phrase has become Lamont’s go-to when announcing new policies or trumpeting old ones. It’s basically Lamont’s tagline and re-election thesis statement. Minimum wage increase? We’ve got your back. Backfilling federal health insurance subsidies? We’ve got your back. Replacing slashed federal education grants? We’ve got your back. This one is almost certain to come up.

…the governor makes a reference to UConn basketball. How could he not? Both teams are on track to dominate the month of March. It’d be political malpractice if Lamont didn’t include at least a passing mention of the one thing that is sure to unite people across party lines. One shot for each team he mentions.

…the governor says someone’s first name without adding any context as to who they are. This one is surely a headache for the people who help prepare the governor for public remarks. Oftentimes, Lamont will just start shouting out people’s names with the apparent expectation that the audience will know who he’s talking about. Certainly, everyone in the chamber will know who the governor is referring to when he thanks “Andrea” for her hard work on shoring up the state’s social service network or “Sean” for his help on pension reforms. But casual viewers will be left scratching their heads. One shot for every name.

Take two shots if…

…the governor subtly swipes at one of his campaign opponents. It’s a rare election year state of the state and that means ripe opportunities to walk the thin line between campaigning and policymaking. Of course, there’s room for some interpretation here. Lamont’s standard line about how “the numbers need to add up” on any tax cut proposals can be read as a dig at his Republican challengers or as a more general critique of vague plans. You be the judge.

...there is any sort of pop culture reference. At this point, predicting that the governor will try to make some mention of the latest cultural trends seems like a sure bet. In previous years, Lamont has quoted Broadway musicals and used Beyoncé as an example of how to rein in smartphone use. That said, it’s possible that in his quest to avoid cliches, he’ll eschew any overt overtures to the popular zeitgeist. Hence, two shots if he does make a pop culture reference. Three shots if it’s a “Heated Rivalry” reference.

…the governor spends a little longer than usual praising Marty Looney. Personally welcoming the legislative leaders is a built-in formality of any state of the state address. It’s often the first thing a governor will do after they step up to the podium. This year, there are whispers (growing louder with each Mark Pazniokas article) that the most senior legislative leader might call it a career come “sine die.” If Lamont lingers a little longer on his greeting to Looney or if he takes time during his speech to thank the State Senate president for his collaboration over the years, take two shots. Irish whiskey only.

Finish the bottle if…

…there’s a “You lie!” moment. It’s hard to imagine any member of the Connecticut legislature pulling the same move that Congressman Joe Wilson famously did during President Barack Obama’s 2009 joint address to Congress. But if ever there was a year for it to happen, this could be the one. Two of Lamont’s opponents for re-election will be seated in the chamber and while it’s hard to imagine the buttoned-up Ryan Fazio staging a disruption, it’s not entirely unimaginable that Josh Elliott or one of his fellow progressives might try to make some sort of a statement. For this one, we won’t count protests from the gallery or nonverbal demonstrations in the form of signs and embroidered t-shirts.

…the governor tells his Palm Beach airport joke. Ok, this one is another longshot. But the governor is known to repeat jokes that get a good reaction and it’s likely he’ll spend at least some of his speech talking about healthcare and previewing his “Connecticut Option” proposal. Lamont has been workshopping a joke about a conversation (which may or may not be apocryphal) with a person who recalled wondering where the best hospital in Florida is. An unnamed interlocutor supposedly replied by recommending the Palm Beach airport, which was meant as a shorthand for flying back to Connecticut. It’s a quintessential Ned-ism in the way that it talks up the innovation of the state’s private sector, nods to the progressive priority of healthcare reform, and offers a positive contrast between the Nutmeg State and the Sunshine State.

…the governor mentions Anthony Anthony. Last year, this was the prediction that got the Tip Sheet a nod in the state of the state. Mentions of Anthony Anthony were, for a time, a mainstay in many of the governor’s public remarks. This will be Anthony’s last state of the state as a government employee. He’s set to leave his post in the coming days for greener and more lucrative pastures in the private sector. Again, Lamont is probably going to try to stay away from state of the state cliches, but if he indulges one last shout out to his best marketer…well, cheers!

East of the river, Stewart and Fazio battled for support at a major GOP cattle call

Braving bitterly cold air and roads still caked with the remnants of a major snowstorm, hundreds of the Republican Party’s most faithful members packed the dingy ballroom of Norwich’s Holiday Inn last Thursday night.

The Holiday Inn sits, as the Tip Sheet’s author would discover later that evening, a mere seven-minute drive away from Mohegan Sun. The casino will host this year’s Republican Party convention. On Thursday, attendees of the second annual “Get Out to Vote” dinner hosted by the Republican group Grassroots East got a preview of the convention floor fight that will help determine their party’s gubernatorial nominee.

The dinner was a classic cattle call, with Erin Stewart and Ryan Fazio working the room and warring political teams projecting their strength through campaign stickers affixed to lapels. It was hard to tell which side held the sticker advantage on Thursday night, though most attendees appeared to have picked a camp.

Both candidates rolled in with entourages of staff and influential allies.

When it came time to speak, it was Stewart who got the first slot. She wasted no time landing blows on both Lamont and Fazio, staring directly at the latter while she delivered certain lines.

Hitting at the incumbent, Stewart said his chipper outlook on the state economy was out of touch.

“If I lived in a house with nine bathrooms in the richest town in America, I might think things are pretty fine, too,” she quipped. “But for those of us who live outside Greenwich and on planet Earth, we can all agree that things in Connecticut are lightyears away from fine.”

Greenwich-centric jabs have become a favorite of Stewart’s in recent weeks. The attacks function simultaneously as an attack on her entire field of rivals and as a reinforcement of the populist-tinged, “us-versus-them” messaging she’s tried to position at the center of her campaign.

The bathroom attack will be familiar to those who followed the colorful but ultimately lopsided Democratic primary in 2018. In that race, Joe Ganim, the Bridgeport mayor who had recently been re-elected to the job after serving a federal sentence for a corruption conviction, went after Lamont with a made-for-Capitol-Report soundbite on the number of bathrooms in the Greenwich businessman’s home.

The headlines generated from the 2018 bathroom exchange sit in the pantheon of recent Connecticut political history.

“Potty politics infests Connecticut’s race for governor,” was the title of a Jim Shea column.

“Ned Lamont tells Joe Ganim to get out of the bathroom,” the WTNH headline read.

It was WTNH’s former chief political correspondent, the late Mark Davis, who elevated the whole saga with a question that encapsulated his punchy style and still echoes as a great example of how to throw an interviewee off balance while at the same time revealing something substantive.

“Have you ever cleaned one of those bathrooms?” Davis asked.

“Lamont was speechless,” Mark Pazniokas wrote of the response to Davis’ question.

Susan Bysiewicz threw Lamont a lifeline, answering the question with a joke (Annie Lamont has put him on cleaning duty, Bysiewicz insisted) and a defense on the underlying issue.

“We have had some great leaders – the Kennedy family, Lowell Weicker – who come from privileged backgrounds,” she said. “But the common thread is they are passionate about public service, just like Ned is.”

Eight years later, Lamont is again coming under fire from a brash mayor who would very much like to see him sent back to his Greenwich estate on a permanent basis.

In addition to swipes at Lamont, Stewart’s speech was also chalk full of red meat for the conservative base.

On transgender rights, Stewart said, “I don’t want a biological male in the locker room or the bathroom with my daughter.”

On abortion, the candidate who has in the past painted herself as a pro-choice Republican drew cheers when she criticized certain forms of the procedure.

“I’m not afraid to talk about the fact that late-term and partial-birth abortions make me want to throw up,” Stewart said. “They’re morally wrong and should be illegal.”

Stewart tried to present that string of declarative remarks as evidence that she’s different from her Republican opponents – personally and ideologically.

“I’m not afraid of the hard issues,” Stewart said, implicitly suggesting that her rivals, namely Fazio, are.

“Most importantly, I’m not afraid to say that I voted for President Trump every time,” Stewart said in another veiled swing at Fazio, who once carefully avoided answering questions about his presidential balloting.

In one sense, Stewart’s speech was a display of a candidate in offense, aggressively trying to stake out a more unabashedly conservative position than Fazio while reiterating her record as a winner in a Democrat-dominated city.

In another sense, Stewart’s attempt to tout conservative bona fides can be viewed as an act of defense as she contends with a vocal new entrant into the race and attacks from a Fazio-aligned group.

Absent from the speaking lineup was Betsy McCaughey, the conservative firebrand who is widely viewed as a wildcard factor in a race that was once seen as a two-way match between Stewart and Fazio.

McCaughey did not have a speaking slot on Thursday. An event organizer attributed her absence to timing, saying she “didn’t express an interest in time to be accommodated.”

There appears to be some discrepancies over what, exactly, led to McCaughey’s omission from the speaking lineup.

“One of my rivals refuses to let me speak at the dinner,” McCaughey said, without saying who she believes blocked her from addressing the crowd.

In the absence of public polling, a solid measure of McCaughey’s potency as a candidate likely won’t be available until she discloses how much money she’s managed to raise. But even if the former New York lieutenant governor proves not to be a major factor in the race, attacks on Stewart’s right flank will still come. In fact, they’re already well underway.

Earlier in the day on Thursday, a pair of text messages were blasted out to state Republicans courtesy of an independent expenditure group that has been aligned with Fazio. Each text was written in the standard hyperbole of political attack ads and sought to characterize Stewart as a moderate interloper trying to swindle the ruby red base.

In other words, the independent group, which has received funding from the Darien state representative and Fazio ally Tracy Marra, is trying to call Stewart a RINO.

One text hammered Stewart on the issue of immigration:

“Did you know? As a member of the Board of Regents, charged with overseeing Connecticut’s state colleges and universities, Erin Stewart was silent as administrators funneled grants, internships, and jobs to illegal immigrants instead of Connecticut students.”

The second message went after her on crime:

“Stewart repeatedly undercut law enforcement requests for more resources and put woke DEI over public safety.”

The timing of the texts was not lost on any insiders who knew that Fazio and Stewart would be sharing a stage Thursday evening.

When it was his turn to speak, Fazio mostly stuck to his strategy of not directly responding to Stewart’s swipes or issuing attacks of his own.

He opened with an attempt at humor.

“It was so cold outside, I saw them with their hands in their own pockets,” Fazio said of a group of Democrats he supposedly saw standing outside the Capitol that day.

Another laugh line came when Fazio repeated his favorite joke about the state’s high electric rates.

“Our state now faces the third highest electric rates in the country, which is detached from the mainland, and California, which is detached from reality,” he said.

A hearty laugh erupted from the crowd.

Then, Fazio insisted he would not stoop to pandering to an eastern Connecticut crowd by pretending his sports loyalties weren’t with the New York teams he grew up rooting for.

No pandering, that is, except for a nod to a shared figure among Patriots and Giants fans: Bill Parcells.

“You are what your record says you are,” Fazio said, quoting Parcells as a prefix to an attack on Lamont’s record.

From there, Fazio launched into the statistic-laden points of a stump speech that will be familiar to anyone who has followed his career in the legislature. Property taxes, local control, and the energy issue all featured heavily.

“I am the one that passed the law that required the public benefits charge to be shown in our electric bill every single month,” Fazio declared. “It wasn’t until I pushed through the law requiring transparency that anybody knew about it.”

The red meat in Fazio’s speech was decidedly leaner than the offerings in Stewart’s. There was a line about repealing Connecticut’s Trust Act and fighting the Democratic-backed housing bill that passed in last year’s special session. But aside from that, Fazio mostly steered clear of the hot buttons that Stewart forcefully pressed on over and over again.

As for the more personal attacks on his hometown and background, Fazio pushed back slightly.

“I didn’t have any connections to politics before I ran for office five years ago, and I spent most of my career in the private sector,” Fazio said, making a very subtle, almost imperceptible nod to Stewart’s political parentage and lifelong employment in government.

Neither candidate offered much in the way of reaction to the other’s speech. Fazio listened to Stewart intently at times, offering few visible indications of what he was thinking. He lightly tapped his hand on the table as the crowd cheered some of Stewart’s lines and offered what could be accurately described as a “golf clap” when she wrapped her speech.

Stewart sat across the room from the Fazio table, slightly obscured from view by the large cameras of a production crew. The only reactions she appeared to offer during Fazio’s speech were in the form of whispered comments to John Healey, her close political confidant who was seated next to her. Other than that, she appeared mostly uninterested in what her opponent had to say.

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