At its height, Visconti's campaign was polling at nine percent.
Just three days before the election, petitioning candidate Joe Visconti has dropped out of the race for governor.
Visconti announced his withdrawal from the campaign Sunday at a campaign stop with Foley in Brookfield. He said he made the decision Saturday afternoon, and met with Foley later in the evening, after seeing a poll showing Foley trailing Malloy by a few percentage points.
"On Saturday, at 4:00, I saw the PPP [Public Policy Polling] poll come out," Visconti told WNPR on Monday, "and it showed Tom down by three. Right now there’s a new [Quinnipiac] poll out, showing him down by three also. I kind of forecasted that he may be sliding in the numbers. Although there’s been a lot of reporting that I wouldn’t affect the race either way, we just felt that we needed to jump on and help him get in, basically."
Listen below to Visconti's remarks on Monday:
"[Foley] is a Republican," Visconti said, "and although we’re a petitioning candidate, I’m inclined to be a Republican, and I think he’d do a better job as governor. I just couldn’t see four more years of Dan Malloy, and what’s happening to Connecticut."
Visconti said he didn't ask Foley for anything. "I didn’t ask for any issue positions, just [gave him] the full endorsement," he said.
At its height, Visconti's campaign, driven by a strong pro-gun stance, and an open challenge to both candidates to face fiscal realities in the form of large projected budget deficits, was polling at nine percent. That dropped to eight percent by the most recent Quinnipiac poll, but he was still getting strong support from both independents and Democrats.
That success, despite nearly no fundraising, little advertising and limited exposure in debates, came as a surprise to everyone, including Visconti himself.
Visconti, a former West Hartford town councilman, contractor, and musician, had run a campaign that often took gentle jabs at both Malloy and Foley on social media, and called out both candidates for being short on specifics about how to close a pending budget gap.
"Not necessarily the lesser of two evils," Visconti told WNPR. "You know you may be the better candidate, you may have better ideas; but the public knows the two major candidates."
This report includes information from The Associated Press.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
WNPR’s JOHN DANKOSKY: Can you explain why you decided to drop out of the race and throw your support behind Tom Foley?
JOE VISCONTI: Tom’s crew organized the press conference. We didn’t contact media. On Saturday, at 4:00, I saw the PPP poll come out, and it showed Tom down by three. And right now there’s a new QPoll out, showing him down by three also. I kind of forecasted and saw that he may be sliding in the numbers. Although there’s been a lot of reporting that I wouldn’t affect the race either way, we just felt that we needed to jump on and help him get in, basically. He’s a Republican, and although we’re a petitioning candidate, I’m inclined to be a Republican, and I think he’d do a better job as governor. I just couldn’t see four more years of Dan Malloy, and what’s happening to Connecticut, especially in the light of this week, watching the governor give over $40 million away to just – just giving out money all week, in an election week, prior to an election – I just couldn’t watch what he was continuing to do. We’re not the Connecticut State Bank and Trust, and he’s acting as though we are. I had to make a call. I made the call to Tom. I called him at 4:00. We met at 6:30 at my mom’s house over here in West Hartford, and we talked at the kitchen table, and I just gave him the full endorsement. I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t ask for any issue positions, just the full endorsement.
When Visconti was on Where We Live he said:
VISCONTI ON WWL: The reality is Tom doesn’t connect. He doesn’t have the working class persona that I have. I’m a contractor. I’m a builder. I’ve been through hard times. I’ve been up; I’ve been down over the decades. I connect with Democrats, unaffiliated. It’s not just persona, but it’s who I am that comes through. It comes through on the street. …Tom, beyond that, is failure to – he slept in, and I was saying in these eight years, he wasn’t paying attention. He’s had three years to run this. I keep seeing stumble after stumble. This is why I stayed in the race. I kept watching, I’m not going to go through another Linda McMahon show, and at the end of the day have our party or brand or the conservative message diluted or not articulated and we lose.
DANKOSKY: What in your mind has changed about anything you just said about Tom Foley and his candidacy?
VISCONTI: Tom does have a problem with connecting; he does. If you sat with him at a kitchen table, he’s a different man than if you listen to him on the radio or to a TV. Neither Governor Malloy or Tom does a great job of connecting, and it’s just a part of the persona and not necessarily a part of his heart or his plans and that is true. I wanted him to take harder positions during the campaign on a lot of issues I thought are important. He didn’t, for whatever strategy they believed in, his team. But at the end of the day, I believe that the Republican party, or at least Tom running the state of Connecticut, will do a better job of job creation, less giveaways by the government.
We’ve got a hard task in front of us, and I know Tom can do it. I know with the help of a lot of people, and a lot of input from the public, he can do it. I just can’t see Dan Malloy -- it got down to one of these things where -- what’s not necessarily the lesser of two evils, but who can actually get us on another course. If it’s not going to be me, it has to be Tom. It gets down to things like that in the moment, where you know he may be the better candidate; he may have the better ideas, and all of that, but the public know the major candidates. With the two major candidates -- and this is what I looked at when I saw the polls -- can we help Tom get over, and I think we can. I just had to make a call for the state of Connecticut. It wasn’t for me as a candidate; it was looking at the future of Connecticut. We need a change in direction, and he may not be the perfect candidate on a lot of levels, but it’s the best thing I can do right now, is try to turn it. This doesn’t mean all of our people are going to go with him. They vote the way the vote. It’s the way it is. We’re remaining on the ballot, because we promised the public that they would have a choice. They’ve asked for one by signing the petition, but also to try to strike our name from the ballot, I don’t know the nuances of it, but I think it’d be a pretty difficult process. I think it has to be done physically, to take us off the ballot before we use the ballot to vote, so I don’t want a fiasco happening with the ballot process.
DANKOSKY: I think it would be absolutely impossible to take you off the ballot. There's a ballot question up tomorrow that would expand absentee voting, expand early voting in the state, and there are those who have already cast absentee ballots. What about those, Joe Visconti, who have already voted for you; who believed in your message; who believed everything you just said about you being a better candidate than the other two guys, who have cast a vote for you, throwing their support behind you? Now, just a few days before this very important election, you’re saying I’m not in it anymore?
VISCONTI: Yeah, well that’s part of the process when you watch what’s happening in this race, a very tight race and a dog fight, as a candidate and as a person they’re going to need to trust my decision, I just couldn't sit here and watch myself not help the better of the two candidates get in. I had to make a call because the polls were sliding against him and maybe it’s not enough, and maybe it isnt going to be enough, but either way we didn’t see we had the support of 400,000 people that would get me in office. If we had that support, we would have at least seen some of that reflected in our campaign donations, but they weren’t there. So we had to look at everything quickly and say this is turning away from the conservative movement in Connecticut. We know it’s a liberal state and I just couldn’t sit by on the sidelines and watch my numbers evaporate and not try, at least attempt, to help Tom win this. I think thats what it got down to.
DANKOSKY: One of the things in this new Quinnipiac poll, which, I should say, the timing is a little bit odd coming out the day before election day, includes some questions that were asked of respondents before you actually dropped out of the race, so I’m not exactly sure what this poll is going to tell us for real. The first question asked, if the election for governor was being held today and you were one of the candidates, Dan Malloy has 43 percent, Tom Foley has 42 percent, and you still hold eight percent. One thing about that, Joe Visconti, is four percent of Republicans in this poll say they would vote for you, and five percent of Democrats say that would vote for you. There’s a very real chance that you getting out of the race may help Dan Malloy just as much as it helps Tom Foley.
VISCONTI: Yeah, you can’t call these things. They said last week that if I got out of the race a few days ago, in the Q poll, Foley would be up by one point. You know, these are the risks and chances you take. You have to go with your gut. We're trying to convince everyone who is supporting me that they have to go towards Tom. They may not. That’s what I said earlier. You can’t tell people, just ask them and try to influence it, and if that’s the case, we’ll know in 24 hours -- 30 hours.
DANKOSKY: I know you said, Joe, that you didn't get anything or ask for anything from Tom Foley to make this endorsement. One thing I think a lot of your supporters would ask you is, are you going to try to hold Tom Foley to being a better candidate, or if he wins, a better governor? You have said already to us a few times that Tom Foley doesn’t really have very specific plans to deal with the budget deficit. That’s something that you talked about a lot during the debates, and during your appearances on the show -- something that you feel, that the governor and Mr. Foley hadn’t really had enough specifics about how they're going to solve. What are you going to do to make Tom Foley a better candidate?
VISCONTI: You hit the nail on the head. Well, not the better candidate -- he has one day to be a better candidate -- but he has four years to be a good governor. We do have major deficits coming, and I was very sad and upset that neither candidate addressed those -- the governor especially, because he knows the numbers better than anyone. Neither one -- and I’m surprised the media didn't, for months, push this issue, they didn't. It’s something that’s not going to go away, and we’re not going to grow out of this that quick. It’s something I will be pressing with everyone that would want to help, we’re going to offer suggestions to the governor like everyone else. If it’s Tom Foley, or if it’s Governor Malloy, there’s going to be hell to be paid when the people wake up and realize next spring that there’s tax increases coming, and neither candidate talked about it. I can’t see a way to cut enough not to have a tax increase. I have worked for months trying to find that out and it’s not there and we can’t see the revenue growth enough to offset this, so this is something I will definitely press when Tom Foley becomes governor. I will be all over him. For that which he did not put out because they thought it was strategically wise not to as the governor did, then both of them, either one of them, will have to be accountable. I won’t stop that, because that’s the whole process with a third party candidate...can take those risks because if they can’t win they can at least tell you the truth of what you see and we did that. We completed our mission of telling people, not just the conservative message, but what we see coming on a lot of issues where the other candidates just would not address it. It became a competition of personality.
DANKOSKY: So you think governor Tom Foley would have to raise taxes to get out of this budget deficit?
VISCONTI: I don’t know how we can grow, this is truthful, I don’t know how we can cut enough, even if the legislature agreed with it and mothballed enough programs, for us not to have some form of a tax increase unless we grow completely out of it in a miracle situation. I don't see it happening and I see someone having to do something. Again, these are things I didn’t speak with Tom Foley about, but we will press him when he’s governor to do everything as possible to secure as many jobs and not lay off people. A lot of people say he’s going to fire people. We are trying to keep it so maybe he will have to reallocate positions, but to keep the labor force intact because we need more services in an aging Connecticut, still stuck in a recession. We need more government services and we can’t afford more. To fire people, the big unions say Tom Foley’s going to fire them, I don't see Tom doing that, I wouldn't do that, and because you don't downsize but you really need union concessions. Again, I think Tom will be looking at that next year.
DANKOKSY: Are you relieved this morning? Are you sad? How are you feeling?
VISCONTI: This was nothing to do with me, personally. It was a complete political decision at 4:00 on Saturday afternoon. I have to act. I need to be relevant in making Connecticut go the right way, helping it go the right way. I just acted quickly, very quickly, no one on my team knew. I told no one -- they found out watching it on television, or hearing it on the radio. I just had to decide, “this is it,” because I didn't want to be influenced by a lot of them that would want me to stay in it and all these different things. It just got to the point where- the polls are all over the place you can see the Q polls just up and down from two days ago- but a trend in a blue state with a president coming and all of that, I just felt he needed a boost and a shot in the arm. I will influence the outcome. I think it will be Tom Foley for governor- that’s what I feel. I just think the anger towards Malloy is so far and wide beyond party politics that they need to come out, the ones that are angry, not just about the tax increase but more about a lot of things the governor has said about the future and people know there are going to be tax increases. They know it.
DANKOSKY: Joe Visconti, great to talk with you, and we’ll see you, I’m sure, Tuesday night on election night. Thanks so much for talking with us.
