Editorial Roundup: New England

Recent editorials of regional and national interest from New England’s newspapers:

CONNECTICUT:

Local Republicans defied trends as region has shifted right

The Day

Nov. 4

A blue wave washed across much of the state Tuesday, but not southeastern Connecticut, where Republicans have shown increasing strength in recent elections, even as the party sinks elsewhere.

The delegation that the region sends to Hartford stayed largely intact; totally when it came to the state Senate seats and mostly in the contests for the House of Representatives.

All four incumbent state senators in our region emerged with victories - Republican Senators Heather Somers in the 18th District and Paul Formica in the 20th District, and Democrats Cathy Osten in the 19th District and Norm Needleman in the 33rd District.

Going into the election, six Democrats and five Republicans split the 11 House seats in our region. By the time the last absentee ballots were counted that breakdown had shifted six to five in favor of the Republicans. The change resulted from the 297-vote victory of Republican Greg Howard over freshman Democratic Rep. Kate Rotella in the 43rd District of Stonington and North Stonington.

Howard, a Stonington police detective, benefited from his ties in the community, including his volunteering in youth sports. Howard, running particularly strong in North Stonington, had criticized Rotella’s support for the Police Accountability Bill, particularly provisions he argued handcuffed police when it came to conducting searches and unreasonably exposed police to lawsuits.

Our region, with Republicans not only holding their own but picking up a seat, was in contrast to the rest of the state. Preliminary results showed Democrats - riding the coattails of Joe Biden’s 17 percentage-point victory over President Trump in Connecticut - picking up between seven and nine seats in the House and two in the Senate. That would increase Democratic dominance in the two chambers, with a majority of at least 98-53 in the House and 24-12 control of the Senate.

The relative stability in the local delegation is good and bad.

Good because local legislators have shown they can work together across party lines when it comes to matters of particular importance for the region, such as state support for tourism and assuring a job-training pipeline to feed into job expansion at Electric Boat and the contractors that support its submarine construction operations.

For the region’s good, such cooperation must continue in support of such things as the planned development of a massive operation at State Pier in New London to support construction of offshore wind-power fields and in pushing Gov. Ned Lamont to work with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to legalize online sports betting and gaming.

The split delegation is bad, on the other hand, because Democrats with their strong majorities will be driving policy. This region will not have the political pull that urban centers and other Democratic Party strongholds will wield.

Once solidly in the hands of Democrats, the 18th and 20th Senatorial Districts are illustrative of the political shift in the region, with Sen. Formica winning election to a fourth term in the 20th and Sen. Somers to a third in the 18th. Democrats thought this year gave them a good shot to recapture those seats. They were wrong.

The two incumbents benefited from ticket splitting, with major towns in both their districts voting strongly Biden, while giving Formica and Somers sufficient support to assure their re-election.

Both parties will be looking for lessons from these results. The well-heeled communities in the state’s southwestern corner were once the rock bed of Connecticut Republicanism, supplying not only sure votes but campaign cash. Combined with Republicans elected from the state’s rural, conservative areas it gave the party a fighting chance.

But that dominance has eroded in successive elections and the party’s fulcrum has shifted east. Speaking to the Connecticut Mirror, Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, noted this change.

“They (Democrats) continue to gain the affluent districts and Republicans continue to hold and pick up the more blue-collar working-class communities,” said Candelora, expected to be the next House minority leader.

Democrats, meanwhile, need to consider why these working-class voters in our region, once a core Democratic constituency that emerged from its industrial past, now affiliate with Connecticut Republicans. Many, it would seem, see Democrats as the party of progressive elites, welfare programs, and government workers, not the struggling middle-class.

Stereotyping, issues of race, the growth of social media, and political messaging all contribute to a complex political picture.

On Tuesday it added up to a relatively good day for local Republicans on an otherwise bad day for their party in the state.

Online: https://bit.ly/2TZ1xbU

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MASSACHUSETTS:

Remembering a daughter of Provincetown

The Herald News

Nov. 4

In the flurry of the national election this week, there is a local family and wide group of friends that have another concern as well. The death of Kristin Verde, 55, on Sept. 20, due to pneumonia caused by a COVID-19 infection, came suddenly, according to her family in her obituary. Born, raised and deeply connected to Provincetown for her entire life, Verde was especially proud of her Portuguese fishing family heritage. She was part owner and operator of the F/V Blue Ocean for many years and, most recently, the F/V Yankee Rose. A true townie, she was happiest on or near the water. You could often find her at Herring Cove Beach or on a whale watch.

Verde is among the handful of residents from the three outermost Cape towns who are publicly known to have died from COVID-19 complications. Each death is sorrowful, and something to give anyone pause.

Verde, based on her family’s account, loved to cook, bead, sing along to music, and was a fierce opponent at most table games. She was always ready to have fun. She was a great companion to have good laughs with on a road trip. She loved celebrating holidays, especially the Blessing of the Fleet and Christmas. Deeply loyal, you could count on her to stand up for a family member or friend, even if the agitator was bigger than her.

“No one messed with Kris,” her family said.

Although seemingly tough to many, she might just as easily be caught teary-eyed in front of a Hallmark Channel movie.

Verde had a son, Cyle Thomas, and she often said that being his mom was her greatest accomplishment in life. She married Pedro Verde, with whom she shared 25 years of caring for one another, rooting for their familiar sports teams, bickering affectionately, and cooking memorable seafood feasts. She had many lifelong friendships that were as close as family.

To honor Verde’s memory, her family asked that others in the community “please stay vigilant, be safe and take care to keep safe those more vulnerable than yourself as well.”

It’s very good advice.

Online: https://bit.ly/3l6YkTP

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MAINE:

Collins makes history with big Senate win

Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel/CentralMaine.com

Nov. 5

They may be still counting votes across the nation, but at least one result is clear.

Mainers voted in record numbers to return Sen. Susan Collins to Washington for a fifth term, something no Maine politician has achieved since the Constitution was amended more than a century ago to let voters and not state legislatures pick their U.S. senators.

Collins had a strong showing in every part of the state, winning not only in conservative Aroostook County in northernmost Maine, but also in the more liberal York County in the south. She received a clear majority of the statewide vote, making a ranked-choice voting runoff unnecessary.

Collins’ Democratic challenger, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, acknowledged reality and called Collins to concede the race Wednesday, even before all the precincts had reported.

Collins will go back to Washington as the last Republican representing a New England state in either the House or Senate. That distinction tells the story of this race better than any policy brief or messaging strategy.

Maine voters, who haven’t supported a Republican presidential candidate in 32 years, continue to separate their opinion of Collins from their opinion of her party. More than 50,000 Mainers voted for both Collins and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden instead of voting a straight party ticket. The result is a testament to the enduring bond Collins has forged with many Mainers, even as national politics have become more polarized and partisan.

The Editorial Board did not endorse Collins this year because we were concerned that keeping the Senate in Republican hands would stop progress on issues such as COVID relief and climate action as well as health care and immigration reform. But in the last weeks of the campaign, Collins, anticipating a possible Biden win, explicitly campaigned on what she saw as the benefit of divided government. She said a Republican Senate was needed to provide a check on an overly aggressive liberal agenda.

Collins also stressed that her seniority would give her the clout to bring more federal resources to Maine, no matter who was president. Maine voters have spoken clearly in support of Collins’ view of the case, helping to give what appears likely to be a Republican majority another term in control of the Senate. For the sake of the country, we hope that the Biden-Collins voters were right and we were wrong.

There will be much written about this Senate race, one of the most expensive in history, featuring a relentless barrage of negative television ads. As the final fundraising numbers are reported, we will get a full picture of how much was spent by both sides, but it seems clear at this point that much of it was wasted. Along with pollsters, who universally predicted Gideon as the likely winner in this race, political parties should rethink how they run campaigns like this in the future.

But today, the focus should be on Collins, who made history this year under the most challenging circumstances. In these polarized times, it’s rare to see a candidate with appeal that crosses party lines.

Online: https://bit.ly/3mUOPHC

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VERMONT

No faith

Times Argus

Oct. 29

So should we be concerned?

Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. health care system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.

That seems concerning to us. Especially when we are getting news releases from the University of Vermont Health Care Network telling us they were affected.

In a joint alert Wednesday afternoon, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and health care providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of health care services.”

In Vermont, the statement from the hospital network was: “The Network is investigating all possible causes, including a malicious cyberattack, and we do not currently have a timeline for when systems will be restored,” the statement reads, adding: “The outage has led to variable impact on each affiliate as to how patient care is delivered.”

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.

The offensive by a Russian-speaking criminal gang coincides with the U.S. presidential election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit. “We are experiencing the most significant cyber-security threat we’ve ever seen in the United States,” Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said in a statement released Thursday.

According to the Associated Press, Alex Holden, CEO of Hold Security, which has been closely tracking the ransomware in question for more than a year, agreed that the unfolding offensive is unprecedented in magnitude for the United States given its timing in the heat of a contentions presidential election and the worst global pandemic in a century.

It is happening with greater frequency.

Nonprofits and colleges and universities across Vermont, as well as the Boy Scouts of America, informed donors this summer that they were on a growing list of entities affected by the ransomware attack.

In a recent regulatory filing, Blackbaud said further investigation showed that “for some of the notified customers, the cybercriminal might have accessed some unencrypted fields intended for bank-account information, Social Security numbers, usernames and/or passwords. In most cases, fields intended for sensitive information were encrypted and not accessible.”

Most colleges and universities stressed that its donor data affected by the breach did not include Social Security numbers or bank account or credit/debit card information. Instead, said details such as contact information, birth dates, family members and demographic data were likely to have been involved.

According to the notice, cybercriminals accessed data stored in various Blackbaud systems. Blackbaud agreed to pay the criminals to delete the information and says it “continues to closely monitor the situation.”

But this is a different beast altogether.

This most recent federal alert was co-authored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The cybercriminals launching the attacks use a strain of ransomware known as Ryuk, which is seeded through a network of zombie computers called Trickbot that Microsoft began trying to counter earlier in October. U.S. Cyber Command has also reportedly taken action against Trickbot. While Microsoft has had considerable success knocking its command-and-control servers offline through legal action, analysts say criminals have still been finding ways to spread Ryuk.

It is known that the U.S. has seen a plague of ransomware during the past 18 months or so, with major cities from Baltimore to Atlanta hit and local governments and schools hit especially hard.

A total of 59 U.S. health care providers/systems have been impacted by ransomware in 2020, disrupting patient care at up to 510 facilities.

That is too many. We need to be able to have trust and faith in the system.

Online: https://bit.ly/3mXXBEW

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