Judge Underhill Demolishes Public Financing in CT

by: mattw

Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 07:36:01 AM EDT

• If you just read the introduction and conclusion, you'd probably think that Underhill wants some tweaks made to the statutes -- that a few changes in line with what they're doing in Maine and Arizona will fix the CEP right up. That's not the case -- the ruling really guts public financing in Connecticut, and if it holds would endanger parts of the Maine and Arizona laws as well.
• The judge lays it on pretty thick with the statistics, including six appendices, but at a couple of key spots halts at the moment the statistics would disprove the point he's trying to make. Late in the ruling, he categorically dismisses the relevance of statistics to his ruling altogether.
• Just as a factoid, Audrey Blondin indicated in her testimony that she intends to run for either Secretary of the State or Governor in 2010.
• The ruling focuses on the impact the CEP has on minor party candidates, but only glancingly mentions Cicero Booker, and mentions the other four minor party or independent candidates to qualify for grants in 2008 not at all. Which is pretty frustrating in the midst of long passages decrying how it is "nearly impossible" for candidates to overcome the burden of qualifying!
• The judge's rationale shifts: at first, it's a constitutional question of the 1st and 14th amendments (free speech, equal protection) -- opposing the "windfall" of money given to mostly major-party candidates as furnishing them with unfair advantages. Later, he wants the minor parties to be able to win -- suggesting that they should be elevated to be on a level playing field with only a glancing interest in measurable public support. By the end, he rounds on the supplemental grants that help participating candidates match excess spending by independent groups and self-financing candidates -- that minor parties must be given an opportunity to outspend major-party candidates or else they are still being unfairly disadvantaged. It's hard to imagine a matching fund that would make it through his battery of complaints.
• Judge Underhill obviously thinks very very little of whoever showed up in his courtroom to argue for the state, zinging them for what he thought were misrepresentations or procedural errors on their part throughout.
• Not struck down? The individual donor limits which are not contained in the CEP statutes, but are rather in a different chapter. This will probably mean the end of all those exploratory committees -- why raise $375 for Governor when you can raise $3500 for the primary, and another $3500 for the general?

All things considered, my take on this is that, in Connecticut at least, this is good for the Democrats, and lousy for democracy. Public financing introduced some randomness into the 2008 election -- most of the seats that changed hands were not competitive beforehand, and increased stability is going to benefit the incumbents.

To save public financing before 2010, the legislature would need to pass a whole new bill, which seems highly unlikely to me. I'd bet that the money in the CEP fund is probably going to be raided and stashed in somebody's budget proposal before the close of business today.  

Second, the use of a statewide proxy artificially enhances the political strength of many major party General Assembly candidates by disregarding the level of public support for those candidates within their actual legislative district; in the past three election cycles, in nearly half of the legislative districts, one of the major parties has either abandoned the district or its candidate has won less than 20% of the vote, in other words, losing in landslide fashion.  By using a statewide proxy, the CEP permits any major party candidate to become eligible for full public financing without first requiring those candidates to demonstrate the same significant modicum of public support that minor candidates must establish before becoming similarly eligible for full funding.  In this way, the CEP distorts the strength of many major party candidates who have otherwise failed to establish any degree of success in a particular district by removing the inhibiting factors that previously deterred candidates from running in that district, such as lack of public support or inability to raise the necessary campaign funding to be competitive.

[ ... ]
Notably, unaffiliated voters, at 882,744 (42.2%), comprise the largest group of registered voters in Connecticut.

Audrey Blondin will "likely run for Secretary of the State or Governor in 2010"

On the house side, in 76 out 151 state house districts, or 50.3%, registered Republicans account for less than 20% of the registered voters.  Twenty-two of those districts have less than 10% registered Republicans; in twelve of those districts, Republicans account for less than 5% of the registered voters.   Id.  There are no house districts with less than 20% registered Democrats. In 61 out of 151, or 40.4%, of state house districts, the disparity between registered voters of the major parties is greater than 20%, making candidates from the dominant major party eligible for increased primary grants.  Id.  

The state further argues that, far from being a burden on minor party candidates' political opportunity, the CEP provides the opportunity for minor party candidates to gain access to far greater amounts of funding than they would otherwise be able to garner, which will make those candidates more competitive and will substantially benefit their party's infrastructure and public visibility.  In other words, the state argues that the CEP will transform minor party candidates "from perpetual losers into viable competitors."

(3) the additional qualifying criteria for minor party candidates are nearly impossible to achieve, thus ensuring that minor party candidates will only very rarely qualify for the "enhancing" benefits made available by CEP participation

NO THEY AREN'T. If you can't get 20% of the district to support you, then you have no legitimate shot at winning the election!

Analyzing minor party candidates' historical electoral record, the CEP's funding provisions create an evident paradox for minor party candidates.  The evidence demonstrates that minor party candidates have typically been unable to raise money from a wide swath of the electorate.  Their success has come most frequently by targeting those fundraising resources in districts where the major party candidate has run unopposed and/or did not spend a sizable amount of money on the campaign.  Thus, in 2004, only one minor party candidate for the state senate did not run as "exempt" - plaintiff DeRosa.  That year, DeRosa reported $150.08 in campaign expenditures in his race against one major party candidate and another minor party candidate.  Despite this lack of fundraising success, in the four election cycles prior to 2008, 33 minor party candidates have received over 10% of the vote.  The high levels of funding that the CEP injects into state legislative races has all but eliminated the existence of "low-cost districts" where the cost of mounting a campaign was well under the CEP grant levels.  It is unlikely, therefore, that a minor party candidate running a low-cost campaign will be able to replicate anywhere near the same level of success from pre-CEP election cycles.

First, the plaintiff is blaming the public financing system for his failure to raise more than $150.08? That is completely ridiculous.

But no, it isn't unlikely that minor parties "will be able to replicate anywhere near the same level of success from pre-CEP election cycles"  -- minor parties did 50% better in 2008 than in 2006! I can't fathom what kind of "analyzing" would have led Underhill to a conclusion totally counter to the actual outcome of the 2008 election (with the CEP grants).

House 08 minor party percentages
5.1
7.3
16.2+1.8
2.5+0.4
1.9
2.4
8.7
8.5
1.1
1.3
13.3
1.2
12.6
12
12.3
20.2
4.4+0.9
9.8+9.3
3
35.3
15.5
7
13.9
13
9.6
1.9
18
20.1
32 districts with candidates (2 wfp)
average 9.1% minor party vote per district

House 06 Minor Party %s
3.8
3.9
4.5
0.4
4.6
12.9
3.8
6.4
1.4+1.8
6.5
7.2
1.3
22.4
7.6
5.3+10
1
12.1+2.2
14.7
6.1
1.4+1.9
10.7
7.2
2.3
2.7
7.4+2.4
5.9
1.7
12.6
10.2
8.6
9.2
11.7
1.2
6

39 districts with candidates (17 wfp)
average 6.2% minor party vote per district

Third, the state has urged in other portions of its briefing, and I agreed in my findings of fact, that minor parties generally lack established organizational structures.  Therefore, it is unlikely that a minor party could ever mount a sufficiently well-organized campaign to collect the necessary signatures in the time period allotted, i.e., between January and August of an election year.  I will, therefore, continue my analysis under the premise that qualifying under the CEP petitioning requirement would require hiring paid signature gatherers.

Nonsense. State law requires primary petitions to be collected in a period between two to four weeks. Lee Whitnum collected 2500 signatures in a mostly volunteer effort in a month. Marilyn Moore collected 1600 signatures in two weeks in an entirely volunteer-based effort. And, minor party and petitioning candidates can collect signatures from 100% of voters in any given district, not just the portion of voters registered with a particular party.

And it's supposed to be unlikely that these minor parties "could ever ... collect the necessary signatures" in an eight month period? That is total crap.

The state's petitioning expert, Harold Hubschman, advises that a successful petition campaign would need to collect 150% of the threshold number of signatures in order to have a sufficient cushion against signature invalidity.
[...]
Second, Hubschman's hypothesis regarding the ease of using unpaid volunteers is based solely on petition drives he has been hired to conduct on behalf of major party candidates; he has never been involved in any petition campaign for a minor party candidate other than Joe Lieberman, who was an incumbent Democratic senator at the time of the petitioning drive, with the attendant name recognition and established base of supporters.  Pl. Ex. 32, Hubschman Dep. at 44. Therefore, Hubschman does not have any knowledge about the unique difficulties facing minor party candidates seeking to connect with members of the electorate, without name recognition or major party identification to help them.
[...]
Connecticut does not require private property owners or merchants, such as grocery stores, to give access to their property to signature gatherers.  Hubschman Decl. ¶ 22.  Yet the most efficient location to collect signatures, according to petitioning expert Hubschman, is outside a grocery store.  Id.  

Therefore, if private property owners elect not to permit petitioners on their property, the process of petitioning becomes more time-consuming by forcing petitioners to go door-to-door or to collect signatures outside less trafficked, public locations such as post offices or commuter rail stations.

The overage doesn't apply so much going door-to-door: working from lists gives petition gatherers the ability to check that the data from each voter matches the official records, greatly reducing the need for an overage. Further reducing the need for an overage is the ability to collect signatures from members of any party and unaffiliated voters.

These figures are consistent with the experience of minor party candidates, as demonstrated by the efforts of Cicero Booker, the Working Families candidate in the 15th Senate District who qualified for a full CEP grant in 2008.  According to Jon Green, the director of the Connecticut Working Families Party, Booker needed to collect 2,703 valid signatures to qualify for a full CEP grant; his campaign actually submitted in excess of 5,300 signatures.

[...]

Connecticut, to get on the ballot as a gubernatorial candidate, a candidate must gather 7,500 from registered voters statewide.  Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9-453d.  In contrast, to qualify for CEP funding, a state senate candidate must collect, on average, even more signatures - 7,916 - from within a single senatorial district.

Which is it? Conflicting numbers -- 2700 or 7916? Plus, this makes the "candidates could never accomplish this" line look absurd. Just because Mr. Hundred-Fifty can't get a campaign organization together doesn't mean that every minor party has to be made of disorganized fuckups!

Moreover, that burden necessarily focuses a minor party candidate on the task of qualifying for the CEP rather than the activities of campaigning.

What does the judge think is involved in campaigning? You walk up to a voter, have a conversation with them, and solicit their support. This also conflicts with his assertion that any successful petition drive would require the use of an outside contractor: either speaking with voters to solicit their support for financing is going to consume the candidate's time (meaning it is a job that can be performed by the candidate), or it requires an outside manager to organize signature gatherers for a fee.

For example, if a minor party candidate for state house keeps his or her contributions below $5,000, his or her major party opponent will only be eligible for a $15,000 grant.  As soon as the minor party candidate reaches the $5,000 threshold, his or her opponent's public funding shoots to $25,000, making it that much more difficult for the minor party candidate to wage an effective campaign against his publicly-funded opponent.  Therefore, the minor party candidate faces a strong incentive to avoid raising contributions in excess of $5,000, whether or not that candidate hopes to become eligible for the CEP.

The judge shifts his stance on the interest he is protecting: though his earlier constitutional claim centers on free speech (using the always-annoying metaphor of "a debate" to illustrate the nature of the campaign), he switches to an electoral rationale -- that the interest of the minor party is not to fairly propagate their views, but to defeat a political opponent. (For example, he states elsewhere that "Any measure aimed at preventing splintered parties and unrestrained factionalism, however, must be narrowly crafted to avoid drowning out the independent, third party voices in the marketplace of ideas." )

The state contends that the appropriate level of scrutiny is determined using the Supreme Court's test set forth in the election law and ballot access cases of Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983), and Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992).  The state argues that, under the Anderson-Burdick balancing test, because the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the CEP represents a "severe" burden on their First Amendment rights, intermediate scrutiny must apply.

Because the Anderson-Burdick line of decisions focuses on whether a state's election and ballot access laws have impermissibly burdened the rights of voters to associate or to choose among candidates, rather than the speech rights of candidates affected by campaign finance regulations, the balancing test set forth in those cases is not applicable here.  In Burdick, a voter challenged Hawaii's prohibition on write-in voting, 504 U.S. at 430; Anderson involved a challenge by several voters to Ohio's early filing deadline for independent candidates' seeking to be placed on the general election ballot. 460 U.S. at 782-83.  The Burdick Court acknowledged that voting was "of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure," but declined to hold that strict scrutiny must apply in every case challenging election laws that burden voters' rights because it "would tie the hands of States seeking to assure that elections are operated equitably and efficiently."  504 U.S. at 433.  

Because achieving legitimacy for the democratic electoral process requires balancing the rights of voters to have freedom of choice and association with the need for order and efficiency in running elections, the Burdick Court, citing Anderson, concluded that a more deferential and "flexible" standard applied to challenges to state election laws.  Id. at 434.  In such cases, a court "must weigh 'the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate' against 'the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule,' taking into consideration 'the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights.'" Id. (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789).  Necessarily, the extent to which the challenged regulation burdened the voters' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights dictated the level of scrutiny that should apply.  Id.

Those cases simply have no bearing on the issues presented by this challenge to Connecticut's public campaign financing law by minor parties and minor party candidates.

Accordingly, I decline to apply the Anderson-Burdick test and conclude, instead, that "exacting scrutiny," i.e., strict scrutiny, should apply given the significant impact the CEP has on minor party candidates' political speech rights

The judge discusses the (actually irrelevant) logic of the Burdick Court (in a case which does involve the rights of voters and not of candidates), but skips over discussion of the Anderson Court (in a case which used intermediate scrutiny and directly addresses the kinds of unequal burdens placed before non-major party  candidates ). Since this is the pivot point at which our entire public financing system got flushed down the drain, it would have been nice if he didn't just skate past the more-relevant of the two cases that might have justified use of intermediate scrutiny.

The state contends that the CEP, with its statutory preference for major party candidates, serves five separate, but related, compelling government interests: to eliminate actual and perceived corruption, to free candidates and elected officials from the burden of political fundraising, to encourage a significant level of candidate participation in the public financing program, to protect the public fisc, and to avoid providing incentives for the creation of splintered parties and unrestrained factionalism.  

I just thought it was interest that preventing factionalism is considered a compelling government interest, and that the judge didn't contest this as a compelling interest. As this discussion plays out, "preventing spoiler candidates" is also something he seems to admit into his argument as a compelling interest, which it seems obvious is often the point of a minor-party campaign.

This also illustrates the fallacy of the state's explanation that the CEP has high  qualifying thresholds for minor party candidates because the aim of the CEP is to provide public funding only for candidates who have a realistic chance of winning an election.  If that were truly the aim of the CEP, it would have to use much higher thresholds of 40% or 45%, applied to both major and minor party candidates, in order to ensure that only candidates with a legitimate chance of winning an election would receive a grant.  Because the CEP currently funds many major party candidates who have no realistic chance of winning, the state cannot claim with a straight face that the CEP is only meant to fund candidates with a legitimate shot at winning an election.

No, it doesn't. Major parties will often win a seat in the next election after it was uncontested. Of seats where party control changed hands in 2008, 31% were not sought in 2006 by the major party that won it in 08, and in 38% of those seats, the party that won in in 2008 did not mount a challenge that secured over 40% in 2006. Contrary to the judge's assertion, less than a third of the seats where party control changed hands would have been considered "competitive" under his proposed threshold of 40%, and only 15% would have been considered "competitive" under his higher threshold of 45%. However, 70% of those seats would have been considered "competitive" using the 20% threshold in the CEP law.

(As an aside, the 2008 results show that many more seats were seriously challenged that had not been previously: the judge's 40-45% standard would have been met by 60% of the 2006 races where party control changed hands, with another 20% unchallenged in the 2004 cycle, and 20% falling below the 40% threshold proposed by the judge.)

2008 party switches:
District Party Winner In Prev Cycle?
HD 62 Dem Anne Hornish NO
HD 65 Dem Michelle Cook YES (40-50%)
HD 100 DEM Matt Lesser YES (under 40%)
HD 103 Dem E Etsy YES (under 40%)
SD 22 Dem Musto YES (under 40%)
HD 47 Rep Chris Coutu YES (under 40%)
HD 134 Rep Tony Hwang YES (40-50%)
HD 44 Dem Mae Flexer YES (Under 40%)
HD 61 Dem Matt Conway YES (40-50%)
HD 77 Dem Chris Wright YES (40-50%)
HD 105 Dem T. Conroy NO
HD 106 Dem Chris Lyddy NO
HD 143 Dem Peggy Reeves NO

2006 party switches
HD 2 Dem Jason Bartlett YES (40-50%)
HD 19 Dem Beth Bye YES (40-50%)
HD 31 Dem Thomas Kehoe YES (40-50%)
HD 41 Dem Elissa Wright NO
SD 18 Dem A Maynard YES (40-50%)
SD 16 REP Sam Caligiuri YES (under 40%)
HD 16 Dem L Schofield YES (under 40%)
HD 133 Dem Kim Fawcett NO
HD 134 Dem Tom Christiano YES (40-50%)
HD 147 Dem William Tong YES (40-50%)

In short, the state has failed to demonstrate how treating major and minor party candidates differently for purposes of CEP eligibility furthers its stated interests for doing so - protecting the public fisc and preventing factionalism.

The judge does address how the differentiated process for minor and major party candidates serves the interest of protecting the public fisc -- from the same section in which he claims the state has not address the issue of protecting the public fisc:

An updated report about Maine's clean election program from state senator Peter Mills does not report any problems with factionalism or splintered parties; the problems that have surfaced in Maine all involve the misuse of public funds for personal or other corrupt purposes.  Mills Decl. ¶ 14.  Similarly, in a declaration submitted in November 2008, the Executive Director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, Jonathan Wayne, reports that Maine has recently experienced some abuses of its system, including at least three instances where campaign consultants attempted to recruit candidates to qualify for public funding so that they could take substantial commissions from those public grants.

The state relies on Professor Green's opinion that the 20% threshold is not unreasonable and that it is a satisfactory threshold for determining a modicum of popular support and electability. Professor Green's testimony about the "de minimus" nature of the CEP's 20% threshold was undermined by his insistence that the qualifying criteria threshold had to be set high enough to prevent embarrassing, fiscally corrupt candidates who might undermine the electorate's opinion about the integrity of the public financing system and so-called stalking- horse candidates.  12/10/08 Tr. at 279, 306.  If the 10/15/20% thresholds are truly a de minimus requirement for minor party candidates to achieve, then they cannot logically also keep out stalking-horse candidates or those candidates seeking to use the funds for personal gain.  Id. The state cannot have it both ways: it cannot claim that the high thresholds are necessary to prevent the entry of candidates who will not run legitimate campaigns, while simultaneously holding up the thresholds as remarkably easy for any reasonably competent candidate to surpass.

Of course they can, because there are candidates that are not reasonably competent. 20% of the electorate in the current year being at least open to one's candidacy is a perfectly reasonable threshold for electability in a two- or three-candidate field. Any candidate conducting a campaign with a chance of succeeding electorally would indeed find the requirement a de minimus hurdle to overcome.
At the same time, funding electable candidates is a different standard from enabling political speech, and it may be that using electability as a measure for protecting the public fisc is an unfair standard. But Professor Green's testimony is not self-contradictory. And by this point in the ruling, Underhill seems to be speaking more to enabling electoral victories (making "electability" a meaningful standard) that enabling speech.

Second, when asked at the bench trial what the legislature had consulted when setting the 10/15/20% threshold, defense counsel cited an OLR Research Report entitled Past Performance of Petitioning and Minor Party Candidates in Connecticut.  12/10/08 Tr. at 393-94; Pl. Ex. 30.  Notwithstanding the fact that the report post-dates the passage of the CEP, [...]

There are a number of examples where the judge points out how, in his opinion, the defense completely screwed up. This is just one of the funnier ones.

Regardless of the ballot access, fundraising results, and vote outcomes in 2008, the CEP, in fact, funneled large amounts of money to major party candidates in 2008, thus dramatically enhancing their relative ability to reach the electorate beyond their past ability to raise contributions and campaign, but without any countervailing disadvantage to those participating candidates.  As a result, the relative strength of the major party candidates has been dramatically increased and the relative strength of the minor party candidates has been dramatically diminished.

Ballot access, fundraising results, and vote outcomes are the measurable statistics of relative party strength! By discarding them, the judge drifts away from a judgement based on the facts of the case.

If minor party access to dollars has improved, minor party access to the ballot has improved, and share of total votes garnered by minor parties in the election has improved (all true) then how has the relative strength of the major parties increased? More votes for minor parties = less relative strength for major parties.

It may be that the increase in minor party strength was not caused by the CEP, but I can't see how one would argue that the CEP has harmed minor party strength.

Furthermore, in races with two participating candidates, any level of independent expenditure will trigger matching funds for the participating candidates.  According to DeRosa, the CEP's difficult qualifying criteria will encourage the Green Party to engage in more direct forms of advocacy, such as independent expenditures expressly advocating the defeat of a participating candidate rather than solely focusing on running candidates on the Green Party platform.  Pl. Ex. A-9, DeRosa Supp. Decl. at ¶ 21. In 2006, for example, the Green Party actively supported Democrat Diane Farrell in her race against Republican incumbent United States Representative Chris Shays, based on the Green Party and Farrell's shared political objectives on issues including the environment and the war in Iraq.Id. at ¶¶ 22-23.  In a race for state office with participating candidates, any similar mailing, advertisement, or other form of public advocacy promoting the defeat of a participating candidate would automatically trigger CEP matching funds equal to the cost of such advocacy.  DeRosa believes that the existence of the independent expenditure provision will chill the Green Party from engaging in such efforts because the party will have to consider whether it would be worth engaging in the political speech that would trigger increased public funding for the candidate they oppose.  Id. at ¶¶ 20-21, 25-26.  

Did they now? Richard Duffee didn't spend any money between his 10/23 endorsement of Farrell and the election:

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b...

And the Connecticut Green Party has not had a Federal committee since 2001.

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b...

So I call bullshit: if nothing they did in 2006 for Farrell required spending any money, nothing would "chill the Green Party from engaging in such efforts" in the future. Fucking lying snakes.

It's telling though that one self-serving press conference from two years ago is the only example of political advocacy that these goofs could come up with, and even with that they're exaggerating what they did.

Based on the high amount of public funding that participating candidates will receive through CEP grants, minor parties must logically attempt to raise contributions that exceed that public funding in order to be competitive.  The minor parties' search for viable candidates capable of running self-financed campaigns, or who have a solid base of high-donor contributors, will be made more difficult by the existence of the excess expenditure fund because it will immediately wipe away any incentive created by superior fundraising, for those potential candidates to run on a minor party platform. ¶¶ 37-38.  As Governor Weicker's experience demonstrates, his superior fundraising capabilities provided a significant key to his success as a minor party candidate for Governor in 1990.  Pl. Ex. A-2, Weicker Decl. ¶ 20. Because outspending major party candidates has proven successful for minor party candidates in the past, and because the plaintiffs' efforts to try to recruit new types of candidates are being chilled, and will continue to be chilled, by the existence of the excess expenditure provision, the plaintiffs have asserted the requisite concrete injury attributable to the excess expenditure provision.

By page 128, equal protection is long forgotten -- if a minor party candidate can't significantly outraise a CEP participating major party candidate, then they are still injured by the law. Never mind, of course, that the excess expenditure provision actually does allow a participating candidate to be outspent, whether through independent expenditures or personal funds from a non-participating candidate, as there is a cap on the maximum supplemental grants offered by the trigger provisions. The judge notes this fact 100 pages earlier:

In addition to the primary and general election grants, participating candidates are eligible to receive additional public funds, in the form of supplemental grants, in the event they are outspent by a nonparticipating candidate or by any other non-candidate individual or group (collectively, the "trigger provisions").  See Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 9-713 ("excess expenditures"); 9-714 ("independent expenditures").  Each supplemental grant is capped at a maximum 100% of the full grant for any given office; participating candidates are thus eligible to receive an additional 200% of the full grant in supplemental funding.  Id.  Any participating candidate is eligible to receive supplemental grants under the trigger provisions.  See id.

Plus, while the judge states that "outspending major party candidates has proven successful for minor party candidates in the past", his sole citation does not bear this out. By October of the 1990 campaign, Weicker had raised $530,000 to Bruce Morrison's $900,000 and Rowland's $1.4 million -- and news reports from that time indicate that Rowland expanded his fundraising lead by election day. Joe Lieberman was, in the end, outspend by Ned Lamont by about a million dollars. And no other minor-party successes at the statewide or legislative level come to mind.