Chairman Ben Proto on the radio with Lee Elci, 2/17/2025

All right, Ben is with us, and every Monday we chat with him for a bit about things going on within the party and around the state and around the globe. Good morning, Ben. How are you today? I'm doing well, Lee. How are you? How did you survive the next storm to end all storms? And then we got another one coming this week, supposedly. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the snow. By the way, just a couple of congratulations. You were on Newsmax recently. I thought you did a great job there, and you were also on Channel 3 yesterday, right? Yep. Eric Parker's CC25. Had a great conversation, Eric. I enjoyed being on Eric's show. He's a really good interviewer. But I wanted to talk about the first month of the Trump administration and the successes and how they were doing and where I thought it was going. We had a really good conversation, enjoyed it, and I look forward to talking more about the successes of the Trump administration. Well, maybe we can do that before we run out of time, but the Newsmax, I mean, that's a national gig. That must have been kind of cool. How'd that come about? They called me. I've talked with them before. I've been interviewed by them for their online service, not necessarily their video, but some of their online stories in the past. And they decided they had found out about William Tong and his complete, total, utter Trump derangement syndrome affliction that he had. And so they decided they wanted to chat about how crazy he is and how out of touch and out of step he is, not only with folks in Connecticut, but across the country. And so we had a fun time talking about General Tong and his craziness. It was good. It was a good job. So folks missed it. I'm sure you can get it up on Newsmax website. Did you save that? Maybe circulate that around? We did. We got it up on our social media in some clips. We clipped it up a little bit over about 10, 12 minutes, which is a pretty good chunk of change. Sure it is. As you know, I'm on air. And I was with Chris Salcedo, and he does a great job for them at four o'clock hour on Newsmax. All right. Well, we'll have to go back and watch that. So a couple of questions, two in particular, we'll start from some of our listeners. But this one in particular, it might be good for you to explain this, because I think sometimes people are confused by this. So if you could ask Ben to explain the difference between legislative responsibility and party leadership responsibilities, and what are the Connecticut Party specific planks in the platform? Sure. So obviously, legislators are elected by their constituents, by the voters in their district. They are directly responsible to those people. They're the people who elected them, they're the people they represent. And their job is to be their voice in Hartford. And they propose legislation, they debate legislation, they vote on legislation. The party has, you know, we have, you know, I talk with Ben and Ben Candelara and Steve Harding, pretty regularly, I talk with other members of the House and the Senate pretty regularly about legislation. But at the end of the day, it's their job to propose it, it's their job to debate it, it's their job to vote on it, their job to enact it or kill it. You know, people always say, well, you need to go tell that those House people what to do. And I say, look, if I were to walk into the House office and tell them they had to do X, or else they would kind of look at me and say, could you leave now, please? Because that's not my job. That's their job. Our job on our side is to support them to help them. You know, we do, you know, we will provide them with some research on things from other states as well as what they get from their own legislative research team. We can provide them with information that we receive either through our polling processes. You know, to our conversations, what we see coming back to us through our, our folks who reach out to us about things that are going on, you know, oftentimes, you know, we'll get I'll get emails from people screaming at me about legislation. And it's like, well, okay, I'll forward head over and let people know who actually, you know, can push the red or the green button, that this is what we're hearing. We provide them resources, we can provide them data, we can provide them polling information. You know, we can back them up. So you know, they have a press conference on energy pricing, let's say, well, when they have that press conference, we'll take what they do, we'll take their video feeds, we'll take their written press conference, and we'll, we'll, you know, send it out through our communication networks as well as theirs to back up what they're talking about. So it's our job to be a support network for them. During the legislative cycle, to provide them with information to provide them with resources to provide them with help to move the agenda that are being pushed in Hartford in the legislature. Ben Proto, chairman of the Republican Party, breaking down a couple of questions from some of our listeners. So that was number one. Number two, Dan writes in a question for Mr. Proto, how can we get the Connecticut Republicans to step up their digital marketing and email game? I have gone to the CT Rep website and registered, donated several to several campaigns and never really get any outreach back. So that was just a concerned Republican in Connecticut named Dan. Yep. So one of the things I will tell you is that our friends at Google tend to play games with our email to the point where about two years, two or three years ago, the RNC actually sued Google because of their moving, in particular, Republican emails to spam. Particularly, we used to see it happen towards the end of each month, which was always the high end of where we would do our digital fundraising programs from. So one thing I always tell people is check their spam box. We have substantially upped our digital game over the last few years. This past year, we probably were pushing anywhere between four to seven emails a week that were going out on fundraising, on legislative issues, on national issues, on state issues. We have begun running our podcast that I've started called The Right Direction. We're going to be putting that back up. We took a break right after the election as we went through the holiday season and then got through the whole inauguration and whatnot. We're going to be putting that back up in the near future and probably trying to run that, a new episode every couple of weeks, not only with state leaders, but with national leaders. We're in the process of putting in place a whole new data system, which will allow us to have a better understanding of how people get their messaging, how they get their news, how they communicate, whether it's through streaming services or broadcast services or texting or email. Everybody kind of does it differently and really is generational in a lot of ways. We're really harvesting that information. We're very active in our social media. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. We now have a TikTok account and we're going to be posting more information and more video to TikTok. It's a slow process. What's interesting is people think you can just go out and do this. It's not an inexpensive proposition to do all of this. I know you go and people can post their stuff on Facebook for free or post their stuff up on X or some of the other social media platforms at no cost. In order for us to do this, and not just us, it's like any other business, when you're out there doing this, this is advertising, it's marketing, there's a cost to this, there's a time commitment to this, there's a particular way it has to be done in order for it to be effective. You've got to also look at what's the cost benefit analysis to spending X amount of dollars. Do I spend it here on TikTok or do I spend it on X or do I spend it on Instagram? Do I spend it in email? Do I spend it in texting? How do I best move this particular message at this particular time? It's like any other business. I think people forget that about party politics is the Connecticut Republican Party, and same thing with the Connecticut Democratic Party, we're a 24-7, 365-day-a-year business. We have all the same costs as businesses have, the same overhead that people have. We pay taxes. We pay property taxes, the city of Middletown, on our equipment and whatnot, just like every other business does. We have payroll taxes that we have. We have our utility bills like everybody else does. It's a business which is very different than a campaign which opens in a particular time, usually the early part of an election year, and closes at the end of that election year. We're running constantly, and there's a cost structure involved to running that business like there is every other business. We're investing more in digital. We're investing more in our email and texting programs and our data analysis programs. We're going to see those really, I think, pay benefits as we move into the municipal cycle this year, and as we kick that forward into the 2026 state cycle. The money that you allocate towards different resources, Ben, is there a committee that comes up with that, or is that your decision being that you are in charge? We have a budget. We adopted our budget in January. The odd-year budget is always less than the even-year budget because, obviously, the odd-year, we have just the municipal cycles. I can't use federal dollars in a municipal cycle. You've got to understand the state party, again, not just Connecticut Republicans, but every state party in the country, Democrat and Republican, has two different accounts. We have a federal account, and we have a state account. I can't use federal dollars in a municipal election because they're not federal dollars. They're not a federal election. There's no federal candidate on the ballot. Those monies are used predominantly to run the overhead in the off-year for the party. We can do some party building with the federal dollars during the off-year, but for the most part, all those dollars are state-year. What's interesting is, on the federal side, we have a $10,000 maximum contribution limit. That limit has not been changed in 22 years. The FEC has not raised that limit for the state party in 22 years. In 2026, a congressional campaign in the state of Connecticut will have a higher dollar limit than the state party will on its federal side because the congressional races and the federal campaign races have a CPI component to them, so they increase every two years. They've not done that on the federal side. On the state side, back a couple of years ago, Nancy DiNardo, the then-chair of the Connecticut Democratic Party, and myself went to the legislature together. We testified together in front of the GAE to ask for an increase because we had not had an increase in the state party side in over 15 years. It was $10,000. They increased that to $15,000. One of the issues we do have on our side, on the state side, is we're subject to all of the bans that exist in Connecticut. We can't raise money from state contractors, from prospective state contractors. Lobbyists have a $100 limit to us during the legislative session. So we take out a lot of people who would have an interest in, you know, pushing forward the platform, pushing forward our principles and values from being able to contribute on the state side because they're barred under state law from giving that money. So it becomes a balancing act, but there is a committee. We have a Budget and Control Committee that exists pursuant to our bylaws. Our executive director and myself put the initial budget together. We present that to the committee. The committee met a couple of weeks ago actually in early January on a Saturday. We spent a number of hours going through that budget. We then took it to the state central committee at our January meeting. We went through that budget literally line by line explaining all, you know, where it is. We have our operating expenses. We have our non-operating expenses, just like any other business. And the committee as a whole discusses it, talks about it, and votes to adopt it. Okay. Farron, I appreciate you explaining that in such great detail. And since you mentioned it, the state central members, which I think they're elected in May, and so they have a lot of power. I mean, is that the same in every state? Do you know of it that it runs the same way? I'm curious. They can have it depending on, you know, how they utilize it. Their job really is as the representative for their local parties to the state committee. They're elected, you know, by within the senate district. So the state central districts are the same as the state senate district. So there's 36 state central districts, and there's two members from each district. So there's 72 members that are elected. And there is a member who serves, who is the president of Connecticut, the college Republican, and there's a member who is the president of the Connecticut Young Republican. So there's 74 total voting members for the committee. And really, you know, there's not a real job description, per se, for state central members. And it's what, you know, each person or each member kind of uses their strength. And so we have members who, you know, can raise some money. We have members who are really good at organizing. We have members who have the ability to really communicate back and forth with their town committees and bring those concerns to us where we can help them, help their town committees do better. So it really depends on how much of a role the member wants to take as to, you know, use the term power. It may be more influence that they have for their local committees and their local candidates back to the state party. Okay, fair enough. Ben Proto, chairman of the Republican Party here in the state of Connecticut, breaking down some inside baseball. It's always good from time to time to hear him explain this because it gets a little in the weeds for some people, I think, as, you know, as it gets a little complicated, et cetera, when it comes to this stuff. All right, let's let's we don't have a lot of time left. So I did I want to bring I did want to bring up. I guess Christopher Murphy was called a moron by by Donald Trump's, I guess, the watchdog account on Twitter, and rightfully so. So, I mean, what do you know about that? You know, it's interesting. I'm not sure what Chris Murphy is running for. I don't know if he's trying to position himself for something in 2028, either a presidential or vice presidential slot, although I think ultimately, if I had to guess what Chris is trying to do, I think he's trying to become the next Democrat leader in the Senate to take Chuck Schumer's position when when Schumer steps down, whatever that might be. He's clearly a huge sufferer of the Trump derangement syndrome. You know, this is a guy who thinks we're having a constitutional crisis when we're really not. You know, we're you know, we kind of get it kind of kind of gets back to the the the concept that, you know, the thing I think has the Democrats most concerned is the fact that Donald Trump's actually doing what he said he was going to do, which is going to put them in a difficult position when they start making promises in the next election that they're going to actually have to live up to because they have no ability to do that. Well, I mean, he has been running around like he's running for something else. There's no question. No question about that. All right, Ben, where can folks find out more about you guys? Where do they go? cc.gop. We're about to revamp the entire website. Also, check out on. We're on the same thing on social media platforms. Check out CT House rules, which is the House Republican social media accounts and Connecticut Senate Republicans, Senate Republicans. You can learn a lot there. I also urge people go to the legislative website, cca.gov, go learn about Bill. There are a lot of stupid ass, excuse me, bills that the Democrats have put in that you need to be talking and calling your legislators, whether a Democrat or Republican thing. This is really bad. Don't do this vote. No, right. I think Greg is that Greg Howard is actually having an event on Thursday night. People need to look into because he's actually trying to explain the process. So I think that's a good step for folks. And just real quick, we have an event Thursday night here in Stratford for the fundraiser. We have the RNC co-chair, Casey Crosby, who I think is going to be on your show Friday morning. Oh, yeah. Great. Coming in for the event for us. It's going to be in Stratford. I know it's a long way from your folks to do, but make sure you tune in to the show Friday morning. Listen to Casey Crosby. She took Laura Trump's position when Laura decided not to speak reelection to the co-chair. Casey is a great lady from Kentucky, been involved in helping turn that state around over the last number of years as well. You'll enjoy the conversation with Casey. Well, Ben, I appreciate it. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you. Take care, buddy. All right. You got it. Ben Proto, chairman of the Republican Party here in the state of Connecticut. All right. We will take a break. Coming up right after the top of the hour. So Professor William Clyde, economics professor, has been invested in AI and AI learning for kids. We're going to get into that. I hope it interests you. You call in. I don't think we've ever talked to him before.