By Peter Applebome
"Let's play a game," says Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, an unexpected suggestion from someone whom no one describes as a fun and games kind of guy. But then comes the game.
"Name a governor of New York since Al Smith who hasn't been the emperor of New York," he says, part of a conversation about governing and communication styles. He runs briskly through a long list of storied names including Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman, Rockefeller, Cuomo the Elder and Cuomo the Younger. "New York likes to have emperor governors. That doesn't fly in Connecticut."
No one has yet suggested that Mr. Malloy, who gives his second State of the State address as governor on Wednesday, is auditioning for the role of emperor of Connecticut. A more common description is that he sees himself as the mayor of Connecticut, a no-nonsense blur of activity trying to fill every pothole and overhaul the state's budget at the same time.
But after a tumultuous first year in office, Mr. Malloy finds himself in the somewhat imperial position of having gotten virtually everything he wanted. The question now is just what those victories add up to.
Mr. Malloy pushed through what by some measures was the largest increase in taxes in Connecticut's history while governors elsewhere were falling over one another to cut them. He reached a contentious cost-saving agreement with unions after a standoff that almost scuttled his budget, and he made an audacious $1.1 billion bet on building a world-class bioscience industry in a state that had no job growth for 22 years. He skittered from hurricane power loss to snowstorm power loss and from Davos, Switzerland (aides say he was invited for the World Economic Forum, and the goal was networking with corporate chief executives), to Afghanistan (a Pentagon-sponsored trip that allowed governors to see where their citizens were sent to fight) to 17 campaign-style town hall meetings to sell his budget.
To Mr. Malloy, Connecticut's first Democratic governor in 20 years, the results are clear.
"We took the largest per-capita deficit in the nation, and we wrestled it to the ground by cutting expenses, by increasing revenue and by restacking our relationship with our employees, which we did at the negotiating table," he said at his office at the statehouse. "There's no other state that accomplished that."
Not everyone is so impressed. The rating agency Moody's, which speaks a language familiar to Connecticut's many financially inclined residents, downgraded the state's debt last month, citing the high debt accumulated over years of borrowing as well as the depletion of the state's "rainy day fund."
The General Assembly's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis reported the state had a $145 million deficit in January, when the Malloy administration was projecting surpluses. And critics, not limited to Republican lawmakers, have raised questions about how real his projected cost savings, including from his agreement with the unions, really are.
Mr. Malloy would like to pivot to other issues, particularly education. But everyone agrees that after the budget drama of the last year, he needs to do everything possible to avoid a rerun.
"The budget is everything to Malloy," said Bill Curry, a former Democratic candidate for governor who now writes on politics. "The last thing you want is a sequel to a fiscal crisis."
Mr. Malloy made himself into something of a national figure in his first year, no small trick in a small state like Connecticut, by carving out a niche as a contrarian, unapologetic Democrat during an antigovernment, antitax wave.
So, for instance, there he was at a largely deserted statehouse on Martin Luther King's Birthday. At a time when Republican governors and legislatures around the country, citing accusations of voter fraud, were passing election measures that Democrats contend will suppress minority turnout, Mr. Malloy was advocating ways to make voting easier, including Web-based voter registration, Election Day registration and larger penalties on efforts to intimidate or impede voters.
"Connecticut continues to be different than other states," Mr. Malloy said at a news conference that morning. "It is another road not taken."
In the state, his governing style is viewed as one part traditional Democratic religion, one part managerial focus honed by 14 years as mayor of Stamford, and many parts manic energy and seven-day-a-week scheduling that stands in stark contrast to recent predecessors, particularly M. Jodi Rell, the popular but low-key Republican he followed.
He governed with a relentless and competitive work ethic rather than by winning any charm offensives. Colin McEnroe, a radio and print journalist who has covered Connecticut governors going back to Ella T. Grasso in 1979, said Mr. Malloy, more than any of the earlier governors, was "truly interested in making government work and wanting to do that personally." Still, he said, "Malloy doesn't have one amino acid of Bill Clinton's charm DNA, and maybe he pays a big price for that."
Even critics say he had extraordinary success at getting things done last year, but Republicans say it came at a steep price; they contend that the union agreement produced phantom savings and its no-layoff provision will severely limit the state in the future, that the job-growth initiatives cost millions that will not be recouped, and that the budget numbers do not hold up.
"My hat's off to him from a political point of view," said Chris Healy, former chairman of the state Republican Party and now a political consultant. "But at some point this fairy tale has to end. He either has to go back to the legislature with real budget cuts in real time or raise taxes. That's the only way he can do it."
Mr. Malloy and his aides have said they are prepared to make spending cuts as needed and they have pushed back at the criticism, sometimes with startling intensity. After the downgrade by Moody's, the governor's budget chief, Ben Barnes, shot back that Moody's was "wrong" in its analysis and its ratings change.
"Connecticut has done all the right things to shore up our finances," Mr. Barnes said, "and Moody's has responded with a downgrade intended to satisfy their internal corporate need to deflect attention from their historic lack of credibility."
Meanwhile, he is rolling out education proposals like heavy artillery and, as with the budget battle last year, seems to relish the magnitude of the problem.
"No one can say they have the largest achievement gap in the country except us," he said, referring to the gap between the state's largely white suburban students and its largely minority urban ones. "That's unacceptable, and someone has to hold a mirror up and say, "Look, Connecticut, this is unacceptable.' "