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Sullivan Hopes Sub Experience Can Help Beat Courtney
(Hartford Courant, The (CT) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jul. 5--It was a hot, windless day at Asnuntuck Community College and Frank Gulluni, director of the school's Manufacturing Technology Center, was earnestly explaining to a visiting candidate how important it still was to train workers for manufacturing jobs in Connecticut.
"What we need is a Madison Avenue approach toward convincing parents and educators that manufacturing is still the future in Connecticut," Gulluni told Sean Sullivan, the Republican seeking to represent the 2nd Congressional District. Raising his voice against the hum of nearby lathes and precision machine tools, Gulluni said, "There isn't a company in the state -- Sikorsky, Sterling, Pratt & Whitney -- that isn't looking for new, trained workers."
"I understand," Sullivan thoughtfully replied, appearing eager to learn more about the college's technical training programs. "We've created this society where everyone is a stockbroker or a lawyer. But there needs to be something else."
Sullivan, who is taking on incumbent Joe Courtney this year, engages in a lot of exchanges like that while on a listening tour of the sprawling eastern Connecticut district. The 2nd District runs from the defense-oriented shoreline near the Navy's submarine base at Groton to the machine shops and tobacco farms of Enfield along the Massachusetts border.
If this were a normal political year, Sullivan, a former submarine skipper and commander of the Groton base, might be front of mind for politicos across the country. Democrat Courtney won his seat in Congress in 2006 by 83 votes against three-term incumbent Republican Rob Simmons. By definition, a margin that slender would automatically set up Courtney to be targeted by national Republicans, who would pour money and volunteers into a district that could be considered exceptionally vulnerable.
But calculations like that are less relevant in a year when the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, an arthritic economy and President Bush's record low standing in the polls have hurt the Republican Party's fundraising efforts. As of mid-April, when their latest filings were recorded with the Federal Election Commission, Sullivan had raised $233,520 for his race, while Courtney had raised $1.5 million.
This disparity will prevent Sullivan from purchasing the kind of television advertising required to give him name recognition in the district, but party leaders say they are not worried.
"The 2nd is a district that has always defied conventions," said Republican State Chairman Chris Healy, who knows the district well after serving as Simmons' campaign manager in 2006. "And because it is a district of small towns, it is very responsive to the kind of retail politics that Sullivan is practicing. He's done a great job connecting with voters and donors."
Saving The Base
Sullivan is a precise, thoughtful conservative who speaks in the crisp cadences of a formal naval officer. His decision to run for Congress seems to fit into a context of life decisions that were interesting and not always predictable.
A native of Bridgeport, the son of a Nabisco salesman, he in 1976 secured then-Sen. Lowell P. Weicker's endorsement to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. It was the post-Vietnam War era, when military service had lost its luster for many American youth. Upon graduation Sullivan joined the elite submarine corps, patrolled the world underseas during the Cold War and eventually rose to command his own Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine. In the early 1990s, while on shore duty in Annapolis, Sullivan served as Navy liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1999, after returning to Connecticut to serve at the Navy Submarine Base in Groton, Sullivan and his wife, Sharon, decided to settle permanently in Ledyard to give their four children a stable school life. The decision to stop traveling for the Navy, Sullivan said, probably cost him an "admiralty track." But the Navy thought highly enough of him to promote him to base commander at Groton in 2004, where he gained valuable political experience working with the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the state's congressional delegation to save the base from closure.
Then-Rep. Simmons first met Sullivan in 2005 during the long effort to save the base after a federal commission recommended its closure. Simmons could see that Sullivan was torn between his loyalty to the base and its employees and the need to follow military orders.
"He [Sullivan] was completely professional as a naval officer who was required to initiate closure actions at the base," Simmons said. "But I could also sense the compassion he had for people under his command threatened with losing their jobs. That's the hardest duty for a military officer -- following orders while feeling the pain of others -- and Sullivan executed that difficult assignment very well."
Simmons is a strong supporter of Sullivan's bid for Congress, citing his grace under pressure during the base-closing period and his earlier experience as a military liaison to the House.
"He already knows the territory," Simmons said. "I can't imagine someone more prepared for this office."
All About The Base
While base commander, Sullivan also found time to chair the rebuilding committee overseeing a $10 million renovation at Ledyard High School and to obtain a law degree at the University of Connecticut.
"It's a very tedious process keeping track of a building program that large, and at the same time, Sean was also facing the enormous pressures associated with the base being threatened with closure," said Ledyard schools Superintendent Michael H. Graner. "But he never lost track of all the details or missed a meeting.
"How he did this while also attending law school at night I'll never know, but his intellectual and management ability is quite remarkable," Graner said.
"I knew that I would be retiring from the Navy some day and the career opportunities for someone who shoots torpedoes out of submarines is limited," Sullivan said. "But that's not really why I studied the law. I found the questions very interesting and it presented me with the challenge of learning a whole new way of looking at life."
Since his retirement from the Navy in 2006, Sullivan has practiced law in Norwich, made radio commercials and volunteered for Simmons' losing congressional battle against Courtney that year. State Republicans consider him an ideal choice to run against Courtney because of the importance of the submarine base and related defense industries in the district.
But Courtney has received high marks for his efforts to protect the sub base, particularly his work securing an extra $588 million in the defense budget for building additional submarines at the Electric Boat Co.'s sub-building facility in Groton.
"Joe Courtney has worked his tail off for Electric Boat and the sub base, and everyone in the district knows that," says Ken Delacruz, president of the Metal Trades Council that represents most unionized employees at Electric Boat. "It's going to be awfully hard for Sullivan to position himself against that record."
Economic Issues Will Rule
While deciding whether to run against Courtney, Sullivan studied the 2nd District election results from 2006, when the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and the possibility that the Democrats would take over control of the House of Representatives dominated the race. Those results, Sullivan said, showed exceptionally high turnout for Courtney around UConn and lower-than-normal turnout in traditional Republican strongholds along the eastern Connecticut shoreline.
"The Republicans stayed home and the Democrats were energized, and Simmons was hurt because the election was not about him or the district, it was about the war," Sullivan said. "But a congressional race shouldn't be about national affairs. It should be about the people of the district and their needs."
Sullivan concedes that national issues -- the sour economy and the war in Iraq -- will dominate the election this fall. He has criticized Courtney for opposing oil drilling in the Alaska wilderness, and for his support of letting the Bush tax cuts expire -- two decisions that Sullivan said will raise costs for consumers at a time when they are already pinched by rising prices.
"The single greatest issue that I hear when I go out is the rising cost of fuel and food -- people are really hurting," said Mary Ann Turner, chairperson of the Republican town committee in Enfield. "So, once again, national issues -- oil, gas prices, food -- will be the big concern of the race."
It is those issues, Sullivan said, that might just pull the diverse 2nd Congressional District together.
"The 2nd is so spread out that it's really four or five districts rolled into one, so it's hard to find a center of gravity and campaign on one theme," Sullivan said. "Until these gas prices came along I didn't think we would find one theme like that, but it's clear that the economy and Connecticut's role in it will be key in 2008."
Contact Rinker Buck at rbuck@courant.com.
Senior Information Specialist Cristina Bachetti contributed research for this story.
To see more of The Hartford Courant, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.courant.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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