We live in an age of rage — where hyperbole and senseless attacks have become commonplace, where leaders whip people up instead of calming them down, and where the deterioration of our discourse does real and lasting damage.
Yesterday, Connecticut’s Attorney General — the state’s top lawyer — stood at a podium and told The people of Connecticut, his very clients – that if they stand with the President, they are, in his words, “disqualified from serving in office in this state.” He didn’t say it once. He said it twice.
Let that sit. The one official in our government sworn to uphold the rule of law just declared that Americans who hold a different political view than his are unfit to serve the people of Connecticut. That is not his call to make. In this country, voters decide who is qualified to serve— not a rogue Attorney General who makes a mockery of our Constitution.
And this is not the first time. This past April, Connecticut’s own utility regulators — PURA —formally rebuked this AG for what they called joining “the disquieting deterioration of discourse,” abandoning substance in favor of a frenzied outburst that did not hold up. When a state regulatory agency has to put in writing that the Attorney General is degrading the process,
that is not politics. That is a pattern. A very disturbing pattern.
So let me be clear about who I am, since the Attorney General wants to assign me a label. I am JB — the people’s lawyer. My allegiance is to the people of Connecticut, all of them, including the ones who disagree with me. That is what this office is supposed to be. And that’s the difference between me and my opponent. Everybody counts in my book, not just the ones who agree with me.
The Attorney General is meant to be the sober adult in the room, not the loudest voice fanning the flames. Connecticut deserves that steady hand. It’s the standard my parents raised me to hold, and it’s the standard I will bring to this office.
People’s Lawyer, not the Governor’s Lawyer.
