“It’s time to retire Dick Blumenthal,” Leora Levy states on the home page of her campaign website, but the Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut says she is ready not only to take on the career Democrat politician, but also the “timid” members of her own party “who will abandon or betray us when it comes down to the important votes.”
“Drawing a strong contrast with Dick Blumenthal is the only way to win this Senate seat,” Levy says as she campaigns toward the Connecticut primary on August 9.
#USA & #CT deserve a U.S. Senator who refuses to compromise our freedoms, values, & the American Dream. Joe Biden & @senBlumenthal devastating policies must end! I’m running to be your next U.S. Senator bc I refuse to let our great country be destroyed by the radical left #ctsen pic.twitter.com/k0TAB5uvpV
— Leora Levy (@LeoraLevyCT) April 13, 2022
In an interview with The Connecticut Star, the Greenwich fundraiser and former trader described herself as “a principled, common sense, conservative outsider” who experienced, firsthand, the American dream.
“I have a background that nobody else has,” Levy, 65, shared. “I escaped communist Cuba in 1960. I watched my father start with nothing and eventually build a successful business. And I worked his payroll during the summer. I learned the lesson of what the government takes out of people’s paychecks in those eight weeks.”
Levy said her family’s background of escaping Castro’s communist regime and building a life in America have deeply ingrained in her an appreciation for hardworking Americans trying to build lives for their families, but finding those lives turned upside down by the policies of the Biden administration:
I understand what happens to people, how hard it is to make ends meet. Again, I am not a career politician. We cannot defeat Blumenthal with a career politician who is the same type of politician as he is, who will vote the same way on the issues.
The Connecticut Republican Party endorsed former State Representative Themis Klarides, a pro-abortion rights Republican, at its convention in May.
At the end of the convention, the final delegate tally was 57 percent for Klarides, 22 percent for Levy, and 20 percent for immigration attorney Peter Lumaj of Fairfield.
In addition to being pro-abortion, Klarides also reportedly made known that she declined to vote for Donald Trump in 2020.
According to CT Mirror, Klarides anticipated an even higher convention tally, “but delegates said a late flurry of anonymous texts about her voting record and opposition to Trump seemed to exact a price,” the report noted.
In her statement on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Klarides announced she is “pro-choice and in the legislature worked to protect women’s right to access safe early-term abortion services.”
Americans value life & know every human life is precious & has value. My grandparents & my mother escaped the Holocaust. I escaped with my family from Communist Cuba. We know life is precious. Today the Supreme Court has returned America to valuing, respecting & protecting life.
— Leora Levy (@LeoraLevyCT) June 24, 2022
“I am the only pro-life candidate in this race of either party,” Levy told The Connecticut Star. “I am pro-Second Amendment. Blumenthal, when it comes to abortion, has sponsored a bill that would allow abortion nationally up to the minute of birth – I call it infanticide. Blumenthal is sponsoring legislation to disarm law-abiding citizens, to punish law-abiding citizens for the crimes committed by criminals and mentally ill people.”
“My opponent is responsible for helping to make Connecticut an abortion sanctuary and for voting for the very restrictive gun legislation in Connecticut,” she continued, “and has said publicly that she would do the same thing on the federal level.”
CT deserves transparency, not insiders’ political games!
Today, we filed a FOIA request after metadata from a Hartford Swamp letter attacking me, circulated by the Klarides campaign over the weekend, appeared to have come from a government official tied to her campaign. #CTSen
— Leora Levy (@LeoraLevyCT) July 12, 2022
Levy is the Republican National Committeewoman from Connecticut and also serves on the Executive Committee of the RNC. In 2019, she was nominated by then-President Donald Trump to serve as ambassador to Chile.
Confident in her ability to connect with Connecticut Republican voters, Levy asserted, nevertheless, every American, regardless of political affiliation, is experiencing the pain “inflicted on our country by the failed policies of the Biden administration, rubber stamped by Blumenthal”:
Everybody goes to the supermarket, sees the empty shelves and the high prices for what there is. Everybody goes to the gas station and has to decide whether to fill their car or feed their family. Everybody understands that it didn’t have to be this way. And all of these problems are inflicted upon us by Biden, rubber-stamped by Blumenthal. Everybody sees the invasion at our border. I’ve been calling it an invasion since the day I got into this race in February … and I say that as a legal immigrant to this country. I believe in legal immigration. But that’s what it should be. It should be legal, and we should control it and know who’s coming into our country.
Polling suggests most Americans are concerned about the economy, unprecedented inflation and gas prices, and crime, but Blumenthal and Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) appear to be running for re-election on their pro-abortion stands.
“Abortion,” Levy said, is “the shiny object they’re trying to distract the voters with because they cannot run on their record.”
We face a health care crisis. The Biden Admin needs to explore all available tools—including an emergency declaration—to support abortion access. Congress must pass #WHPA, repeal funding restrictions, & protect patients, clinics, & providers.
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) July 13, 2022
“As a taxpaying citizen, and as a mother in Connecticut, I am deeply, deeply troubled by the fact that Lamont and Blumenthal think that the way to attract business to Connecticut is by telling companies to come here because your workers can get abortions here, and that’s going to beef up your productivity,” she said. “That is really difficult for me to comprehend. It doesn’t square with my values and I don’t think it squares with the values of my friends who are pro-choice, frankly.”
“The problem with business in Connecticut is this is a very unfriendly business climate,” Levy continued:
It’s economically difficult to run a business here because of the high taxes, the oppressive nature of the regulatory regime here. Businesses have a hard time staying in business. Never mind expanding or starting new businesses. That’s what the Democrats should be addressing if they want to bring business to Connecticut. And, by the way, it was Senator Blumenthal, when he was attorney general, who chased more companies and more jobs out of Connecticut than anyone else. You know, Connecticut is the only state in the country that has not recovered the jobs it lost in the 2008 recession. That’s shameful.
Levy said that, if chosen as the Republican nominee for the Senate and elected in the general election in November, her priorities regarding legislation would be “the unaffordability of life caused by inflation, the result of the trillions of dollars of spending that Blumenthal voted for.”
“An absolute priority for me will be to re-energize and reinvigorate American energy production,” she said:
We must be energy independent. We were a net exporter before Biden was inaugurated, before he cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, canceled leases on public land, canceled exploration for oil and gas on public lands and public waters. America has the greatest reserves of energy in the world, and we produce it more cleanly than anywhere in the world. If you care about the environment, why would you want Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or Iran producing your oil to sell to us when they are among the most polluting in the world? Why? We want American technology, American workers, American jobs, and American energy.
Levy also observed “a general sense of lawlessness in our country.”
“I will always be on the side of our police and enforcing the laws against criminals,” she asserted. “The Democrats call rioters ‘peaceful protests.’ The system now favors the criminal, not the actual victims.”
Imagine if CT parents could use vouchers to send their kids to ANY school of their choice! I’m proud to stand with parents who oppose ‘radical ideologies’ NOT the politically motivated teachers’ unions who continue to put $$ before students. #CTSen https://t.co/nW1lXH4CAz
— Leora Levy (@LeoraLevyCT) July 9, 2022
“I will also be focused on protecting parental rights and also making sure that no federal education funds go for the teaching of Critical Race Theory, as has happened here in Connecticut,” the candidate said. “It was discovered that $1.1 billion of the COVID relief designated to mitigate the risk for COVID in the schools instead were used for teaching Critical Race Theory with Blumenthal’s stamp of approval. And that won’t happen with federal funds, when I’m a senator, and I will always protect parental rights.”
“I have three amazing sons who were raised here in Connecticut,” Levy shared. “And if anybody had told me that I could not be involved with their education, they would have had a lot more than a tiger mom to deal with.”
After assessing the problems American families are facing, especially since Biden took office, Levy said, “You know, I’ve seen this movie before. It happened in Cuba. After Castro confiscated the guns, he went for the children. He indoctrinated the children to spy on their parents and to inform on their parents, and he thought he replaced their parents in their minds as the father figure. This is classic Marxist.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Leora Levy” by Leora Levy.
