Ryan Fazio is the Connecticut GOP gubernatorial nominee.

He's also a state senator out of Greenwich, representing the 36th district in Connecticut since 2021.

Thank you so muc for being here, Senator Fazio.

Thanks for having me.

Let's start with your plan to lower energy costs for ratepayers in Connecticut.

This is on everybody's mind, of course.

It's a 15 to 20% savings for consumers on their energy bills that you're promising you would achieve that?

Principally by cutting a portion of a customer's bill, something called the public benefits charge.

That charge can help fund programs like payment assistance for people who can't afford their bills.

Are you willing to do that at the expense of low income residents?

Well, listen, with the sky high energy rates in Connecticut, everybody is feeling like they have less money than they otherwise should.

Connecticut's energy bills are among the highest in the entire country, and it's primarily because of these hidden taxes and fees to pay for over 5 different government programs.

Listen, social programs exist in our stat and need to exist in our state.

They are funded through the normal budget process, through the taxes that we're paying.

But in Connecticut, we're not only paying some of the highest taxes in the country, we're also paying taxes and fees through our electric bill.

Now, most of wha the public benefits charges are and the other hidden taxe and fees in our electric bill, specifically the supply portion of our bill, are pay for subsidies to private energy companies.

The social progra aspect of it is just a minority, maybe 10% of the entire set of discretionary charges.

Should those programs go away, or would taxpayers have to pick it up i some other form in the budget?

So my plan calls for most of the programs being ended immediately, some of them being phased out and then some of them being funded through the normal budget process.

And that could be anywhere from 50 to 150 million out of the roughly billion dollars.

But the most important poin is that the governor and state legislature are imposing over $1 billion of hidden taxes and fees on you through your electric bill, which raise your electric bills by 20%.

And it cannot continue to be that way.

Certain to housing.

The federal government announced plans late last year to limit the amount of money states can access from the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Continuum of care progra to put toward supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness.

All that to say, should the state spend more or less to support this type of program, particularl if the federal dollars go away?

The state of Connecticut is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on, building public housing.

Or nonprofit low income housing in the state of Connecticut.

There is a lot more we can do to make sure the dollars that we're spending at the behest of taxpayers now are effectively building housing that is needed, in the state of Connecticut.

So one of the problems is that the Lamont administration is borrowing I think, 200, $250 million of taxpayer dollars pe year, to build public housing.

But one of those programs is not competitively bid one of those two verticals, over $100 million in something called the fle funds is not competitively bid.

It is not leveraged with private dollars.

So we are getting a lot les housing and a lot less quality housing for the dollars that we're borrowing and taxing away from taxpayers than we could otherwise.

If we had a competitive bid proces and if we actually leveraged the the public dollars against private dollars.

So my plan calls for competitive bidding and leveraging every single public dollar that is spent in order to get the most amount of housing for the dollars that you are being taxed.

Can Connecticut get over sort of the NIMBYism to to get through with some kind of affordable housing plan?

So we hear often lawmakers, including our governor, who can be considered many times a, a moderate Democrat in this regard for this particular issue, talking about undermining local control.

You're talking abou undermining local control, too, or excuse me not undermining local control.

So how can voters differentiate between the two of you on housing then?

Well, I classify the governor as as a liberal.

I think he's, you know, kind of showed his showed his colors in that regard, rightly or wrongly.

Listen, the governor has undermined local control to a significant, factor.

He signed House Bill 8002 that will give big developers more rights and more say, over, towns and cities.

And he supports 830 G which is the 30 year old housing law that allows big developers to, ignore local zoning.

I think that there needs to be a grand bargain on housing that can make housing affordable.

I thin setting pitting big developers and the state government against towns and cities is not going to result in lon term solutions to the problem.

I think first and foremost, we need property tax relief and property tax reform in order to reduce housing costs.

It's one of the main reasons that Connecticut has among the highest housing costs in the country is that we have the thir highest property taxes, second.

We do need t reform zoning, especially when it comes to medium size and small scale housing.

In order to improve housin availability and affordability.

So that means make it easie to build the accessory dwelling units, build the residential and mixed use areas, convert commercial to residential.

Those are the types of development that I think towns and cities will be more supportive of.

And I think it's important to have political solutions where there's buying across th aisle, across towns and cities and backgrounds in order to make things sustainable and work best.

The current solutions that the governor has imposed with, you know, the Hartford with big developers are not sustainabl because they don't have buy in from most towns and cities.

I think if you have a scenario where you have some local control protected, where you reform the zoning to make building easier in the way that towns and cities are more likely to embrace and you limit property taxes that you can make housing, lower cost in this stat and you can improve our economy.

You touted your education experience as a volunteer tutoring middle grade kids in a Bronx care, charter school.

You talk about being an education governor.

There's also a TV ad by your opponent, Ned Lamont, there, stating that you voted against a budget that increased spending on education in school meals.

Can you talk to us about that?

Yeah.

And how you would respond?

Yeah.

Thank you for asking that.

So, you know, it's funny every time the governor's ads come on TV, first of all, he's more talking about me than himself, even though he's been in office for eight years.

But he's lying about my record.

I propose an amendment to that state budget.

The state budget.

And the reason I voted against it.

Increase governmen spending by 8% year over year, which is just not sustainable for taxpayers in a state that is the third highest tax in the country.

I propose an alternative that limited spending, but kept the spending and increased actually spending on education to our towns and cities and, subsidize meals for low and moderate income students by about $200 million.

So I propose an alternative budget on the Senate floor that my Democratic colleagues voted against that increase education spending by $200 million per year.

So, you know, this is just politic as usual, that the governor is, you know, running a dishonest campaign about his opponent's record.

But I think what's more telling is that the guy's been in office for eight years, and he's spending more money trashing me than he is touting his own record.

After eight years, you think you'd have a lot to say about yourself, whether it's education, cost sharing, continuing or, some model where you do allow wide access to, I think, charter schools, as you put it, or, you know choice choice schools whatever.

Can you explain how you're going to be able to support, equitable access to quality education for schools, in Connecticut.

So and students.

Great.

Great question.

And my education plan is, I think the longest and most complex of all the plans I've introduced.

And I would encourage your listeners, please visit Ryan fazio.com.

I've outlined my plans in detail on the website, and our goal has been to been the most specific and substantive gubernatorial campaign in the country.

Not just promises, not just headlines, but specific plans and the education plan.

The goal is that zip code should not determine a child's outcome.

It regardless of background, regardless of the town or the city they're from whether they got a lot of money or not, a lot of money in that town or city.

Every student should have access to a world class education in this state.

But what we've seen under Governor Lamont is that some people are being graduated from Hartford public high schools without learning how to read that mat and reading scores have declined over eight years, and the black white achievement cap has grown to one of the largest in the country.

A lot of kids across Connecticut aren't able to read, not just in the cities.

Yeah, and that's not acceptable because we know that every child has the capacity to succeed if they're provided the right support.

So we need high standards and high accountability and the right curriculum.

So we need integrate into every part of our schools science of reading, science of learning, phonics.

You support the science of reading?

Absolutely.

Science of reading is vital vital vital.

But you know what?

In our education schools, four out of our nine public education schools that teach teachers in this state aren't fully science of reading.

They're still balance literac as a part of their curriculum.

And that might not necessarily it might be more of a, of a of a of a big, excuse me, a town like Darien might be more opposed to, the science of reading than some of the big city schools.

Talk to u about what you've been saying.

You were talking about the Windsor data Center.

You were talking about what happened in 2021.

I will remind you, as Paul Hughes, did in a recent CT insider.com article, that people thought differently about data center five years ago than they do now.

And you weren't in the legislature at that point, I think, when this passed.

So it's hindsight.

So you could say whatever you want about this, but help us understand what you would have been thinking about at the time and if you would have sort of done, I guess, what the governor did, which was sort of being business friendly at the time with the tax break.

Yes.

It's understood.

So for your listeners, a few years ago, righ before I got to the legislature, the governor authored championed the law, that gave tax breaks to data centers, so exempted data centers from paying sales taxes or property taxes.

In order to encourage mor of them to come to Connecticut.

In the last few years in the state Senate, before data centers even became a hot topic, I introduced legislation multiple years to repeal those tax subsidies to data centers and make data centers pay their fair share of sales taxes and property taxes.

And any other cost.

I was also vocally skeptical that they might increase the cost of electricity and power for Connecticut residents b putting more demand on the grid.

You know, the governor oppose my effort and opposes my efforts to repeal that special tax break to data centers.

This is, I think, an importan area of difference between us.

I don't think that data centers or any other well connected company should get specia tax benefits at the expense of middle class families who are struggling to pay their bills and pay their taxes.

I think there should be equal and fair treatment, especially for the people who don't get their own lobbyist in Hartford.

So I oppose the governor's tax subsidy for data centers, and I would repeal it as governor, just as I tried to do as a senato but couldn't get him on board.

Longtime panelist on the wheelhouse.

CT mirror.

Mark passing two year ago, wrote an article about you.

The headlin he was walking around with you as you were door knocking.

He said, Ask Greenwich Senator Ryan Fazio about anything except Trump.

So naturally, I'm going to ask you about the president.

In a 2025 interview with the Hartford Business Journal, you said you voted for the president.

Have great respec for his service, and patriotism.

What motivated you to vote for President Trump and the and what policies of his administration would you endorse as governor?

You know, it's funny that, you know, I disagreed with Mark about that article because I was walking around campaigning for reelection, and not a single perso asked me about federal politics.

I was with me for three hours.

Nobody asked me about federal politics.

And likewise this campaign.

Running for state government, running for governor.

Very, very few people ask me about federal politics because voters in Connecticut are informed and they understan that they need to elect people separately to Congress and the federal government, as well as state government.

The governor in the state legislature.

And I have a record in the state Senate working in bipartisan fashion, collaborativel passing laws across the aisle, including to improve women's access to birth control, including, to support our nonprofits in the state.

And that's the same attitude I'd take to the governorship now you know, yes, I'm a Republican.

Yes, I voted for the president.

I, I I've said that openly.

There's things that I agree with Republicans, at the federal level on and disagree with.

I, I, I have been a long time critic of, excessive and arbitrary tariffs.

I've been, a critic of going to war when there's not a clear national defense interest in anything, including the present case.

But I also want there to be, you know, secure border and lower taxes, and I support limited government.

So what's most important is, I think how individuals as candidates carry themselves and what their record is on the issues that they are running to solve.

And I have worke collaboratively and bipartisan in a respectful manner as a state senator.

And I think we need that approach, that bipartisanship that balance in the governor's office in our state to make the state affordable.

You talk about secure borders.

Can you at least, get behind one of these arguments that an economist made to us on the wheelhouse recently?

Her name is Martha Gimbel.

She works at the Yale Budget Lab.

She says that undocumente migrants, immigrants as a whole, can support the workforce and long term growth in the US economy.

So does that policy sort o hinder the federal policy here, sort of hinder what we're trying to achieve in terms of economic growth nationally?

It's a it's a Farron.

An interesting question.

And I think there's not just economics at play.

There's broader issues at play.

But I think if I were to, you know, totally simplify my views on immigration, which is, again, a federal polic that said, at the federal level, I'd say that I think legal immigration, constructed in a manner that is advantageous for the long term success of our country, is good and chaotic or illegal immigration.

That is not oriented or, regulated in a manner that' advantageous to the long term.

Interest of the country is bad.

And so, you know, that's my general attitude.

I think it's shared by a vast majority of Connecticut residents.

At the same time, as governor, I won't be able to effectuate federal immigration policy.

I want to wrap this up soon.

Unfortunately, I could ask you a million questions.

So this is probably going to be the last one here.

We've talked about you on the wheelhouse without you here because of your district.

And how dare you.

Which i you know, how much is going on.

There's so much change.

It like much of Connecticut is, is turning blue.

Yeah.

Except for Ryan Fazio seat.

So help me understand how you can appeal to a wide swath of voters.

Are you concerne about a Trump factor in a race?

Being in a state in Connecticut where so many people, not so many people, but, you know, more than half of people in, in Connecticut sor of disapprove of Donald Trump.

Explain to listeners why folk should vote for you this fall.

Give us the elevator pitch.

Well, listen, I have worked in a collaborative and bipartisan fashion in the state Senate.

And that's why, as you said, I was able to win three times in a state Senate seat that Kamala Harris won by 17 and Joe Biden won by over 20%.

Because I care about the issues and getting things done.

And I think that you need people of all different backgrounds in both political parties to work together in a collaborative way in order to get things done.

And that is how I have carried myself in the state Senate.

And I think that's what we need in the governor's office.

The fact is that after eight years, the governor has had ample opportunity to make the state affordable.

And he hasn't.

He's raised taxes by hundred of millions of dollars per year.

When you add up all the different tax changes he's made including raising sales taxes, including raising payroll taxes and more, he's raised hidden fees in your electric bill and contributed to electric bills rising, roughly 38% on his watch.

And the unemployment rate in Connecticut has risen to the third highest in the country.

I think after eight years.

Now it's time for a change.

I'll deliver the largest middl class tax cut in state history.

I'll cut all the hidden ta and fees in your electric bill and reduce it by 20%.

And I'll create opportunity and hope again in this state, which should deserve nothing but the best from its its leadership.

So I believe in our state, I believe the future can be brighter but we need a positive change.

Ryan Fazio, the Connecticut GOP nominee for governor, also a state senator out of Greenwich representing the 36th district.

Thank you so much for coming up here and talking to us on the show.

Thanks for having me.