State Sen. Andrew W. Roraback, R-Goshen, Friday became the second Republican to express formal interest in his party’s nomination for attorney general, calling himself a “country lawyer” and “moderate Republican” who will be willing to confront injustices to citizens.
Roraback filed papers with the State Elections Enforcement Commission for an exploratory “test-the-waters” effort over the next month or so — to decide whether he will seek the office being vacated after the November election by Democrat Richard Blumenthal, who is running for the U.S. Senate.
Roraback said he loves and values his job as a state senator and will deliberate carefully before any decision to give it up and seek the higher office.
He said he doesn’t always agree with Blumenthal’s approach to the job — Roraback said he would be more pro-economic development in his dealings with corporations than Blumenthal has — but acknowledged that Blumenthal’s “work ethic” is one to emulate. “He’s worked his tail off,” Roraback said, adding that his own string of about 7,600 consecutive legislative roll-coll votes attests to how hard he works.
John Pavia, a corporate lawyer from Easton who is an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University, preceded Roraback in filing papers toward running for the GOP nomination for attorney general.
Roraback, 49, a lawyer since 1987, is part of a family law practice, Roraback and Roraback, that dates back generations in Litchfield County.
The three Democrats who have declared an interest in their party’s nomination for attorney general are: Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz; former state Senate majority leader George Jepsen of Stamford and state Rep. Cameron Staples of New Haven.
Bysiewicz filed a lawsuit last week in hopes of obtaining a judge’s ruling to clear away critics’ doubts that she has logged the 10 years of “active practice” in the law that a state statute requires to serve as attorney general in Connecticut.
Bysiewicz has been registered as a lawyer more than 23 years, but logged only six years of private or corporate law practice in Connecticut before assumiing her current post 11 years ago.
She says that although a person doesn’t need to be a lawyer to serve as secretary of the state, it should still count as the “active practice” of law — and thus qualify her under the 10-year requirement — because she directs a staff of lawyers and gives legal advice about elections and business registrations.
Bysiewicz, in her lawsuit, is suing her own office and the state Democratic Party, because both would play a rule in deciding whether she could run for attorney general. She wants a Superior Court judge to either declare her eligible under the 10-year requirement, or to declare that requirement unconstitutional.
Earlier this week, the state Republican Party hired a lawyer to intervene in that pending lawsuit and challenge Bysiewicz’s claim that she is qualified. No court hearing has yet been scheduled.
Roraback declined to state an opinion about whether Bysiewicz, shown in an early poll to be the Democratic front-runner, meets the 10-year requirement.
He did say, however, that he is disappointed that Bysiewicz, a leading advocate for public campaign financing for years, now has decided to renounce the state’s public financing system in her own campaign.
That public campaign financing system has been declared unconstitutional, but state officials are appealing the ruling. In the meantime, the system is still operating, and numerous candidates are running their campaigns within its fundraising and spending restrictions. Roraback said he would use the public financing system. He said that he thinks Bysiewicz, his undergraduate classmate at Yale, should have done that, too — as long as there was still “breath” in it.