Debicella plans to run for Congress against Himes

Written by Fred Musante, Hersam Acorn Newspapers
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 11:11

State Senator Dan Debicella of Shelton announced this week he would run for Connecticut’s 4th District congressional seat against U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat, in the 2010 election.

Debicella, a Republican, said he decided to run two weeks ago when Republican state Sen. John McKinney of Fairfield announced he was dropping out of consideration for family reasons. He joins Will Gregory, a 24-year-old newcomer from New Canaan, in seeking his party’s nomination.

A 34-year-old fiscal conservative with an MBA from Harvard and a position as the ranking member on the state Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, Mr. Debicella has played a key Republican role in negotiations over this year’s state budget, which has yet to pass. Mr. Debicella was elected to the 21st Senate District seat in 2006.

He explained he was announcing his candidacy 14 months before the congressional election in order to raise the money needed for the race and to boost his name recognition in western Fairfield County, where few voters may know him. The 4th Congressional District comprises 17 cities and towns in southwestern Connecticut from Greenwich and Ridgefield to Shelton and Oxford.

Mr. Himes won the seat last year by unseating Republican Christopher Shays, who had held the post since 1987.

Debicella is the first in his family to go to college. His father was a Bridgeport police officer, and his mother was a federal court secretary.

Last December he became a casualty of the recession when he was laid off from his job as director of strategy for Pepsi. He is presently assistant vice president for marketing at The Hartford Financial Services.

His focus has been on economic issues. In his first term in the legislature, he wrote a law to give tax credits to companies that create 10 or more jobs in Connecticut, and in his second term this year, he has fought against raising taxes to balance the state’s budget deficit.

In his campaign announcement, Mr. Debicella said he would focus on the same key issues that Mr. Himes has, economic recovery and health care reform, but that he favored Republican solutions.

He criticized Mr. Himes and the Democrats in Congress for seeking the wrong solutions to those problems, and claimed that Mr. Himes is a “rubber stamp” who voted with the Democratic Party 94% of the time.

“I’m someone who believes that government should be about problem-solving and not ideological debate,” he said.

Direct bailouts to banks to shore up the nation’s lending system was the wrong plan, said Mr. Debicella. He favored creating a special government bank to take over so-called “toxic assets” and to get them off the banks’ balance sheets to restore confidence in the banking system.

The Democrats also have the wrong plan on reforming health care, he said, adding they would tax the 94% in Connecticut who have health care in order to give it to the 6% who don’t, but that wouldn’t address the root cause of the problem, which is “out-of-control costs.”

Mr. Debicella said he would attack health care cost inflation instead by investing in health care information technology, preventative medicine and malpractice reform.

Another priority, he said, is fixing transportation in Connecticut. “We need common sense solutions for our rails and roads to resolve the choke points where traffic builds or where mass transit fails,” he said.

He also favors increasing Metro-North ridership by building more railroad station parking area in eastern Fairfield Country and creating a shuttle system in western Fairfield County.