Governor Ned Lamont and his challenger for the Democratic nomination, Josh Elliott, will take turns Thursday afternoon in a hotel ballroom fielding questions from union members who will decide the next day if either of them will be endorsed by the Connecticut AFL-CIO ahead of the Aug. 11 primary.

Private Convention

For the first time, the business of winning an endorsement by the state’s largest labor federation will happen behind closed doors: The Sixteenth Biennial Political Convention in the grand ballroom of the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale is off limits to the press.

“I don’t know of any other organization that opens the process like we used to, but we talked amongst our affiliates and decided that we want it to be private so that our members could speak openly without worrying about their name being in the press,” said Ed Hawthorne, president of the state AFL-CIO.

In past years, the political conventions have offered an unvarnished view of the mood, preferences, goals and even disagreements within the labor movement in Connecticut, a state with one of the highest per-capita union memberships in the U.S., albeit largely on the strength of public-sector unions.

Candidate Positions

Lamont is the first incumbent Democratic governor to face a primary since 1978, but Hawthorne said that was not the impetus to close the convention.

Lamont, a Democrat seeking a third term, already has the backing of the building trades, but he has clashed with labor over his refusal to consider higher taxes on the wealthy and his veto of a bill that would have provided jobless benefits for strikers.

The governor’s message Thursday to the AFL-CIO will emphasize the role he played in passing a higher minimum wage, a nearly universal mandate for paid sick time, paid family and medical leave coverage, expanded collective bargaining rights for public employees and protections for workers who leave captive audience meetings.

No Republican candidate is addressing the convention. To speak, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ryan Fazio would have had to complete a written questionnaire and seek the endorsement.

Original reporting: The Connecticut Mirror — read the source article.