Cable Guy Runs (Shhh!) For Congress

by Paul Bass

Christopher Lancia never saw that nuclear sub coming.

Now, he said, Rosa DeLauro won’t see him coming.

Lancia is the Republican running an uphill challenge to 18-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. DeLauro in the Nov. 3 general election.

His party is sending him no money or help. As of June 30, DeLauro had raised $11 million for her reelection; Lancia had raised $14,648.55. The Cook Political Report ‘s “solid Democrat” rating for the district represents the national consensus. No challenger has come within striking distance of DeLauro since her first 7,332-vote initial election in 1990.

That hasn’t stopped the 55-year-old challenger from tirelessly traveling the New Haven-centered district, which stretches from Stratford and his Milford hometown to Waterbury and Middletown. He argues that people are underestimating the desire for change he’s hearing on the trail.

“I just think Rosa fell out of touch,” Lancia said during an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.

“I have no disrespect for her in any way, and I never bashed her once, and I don’t plan on doing it now towards the election. I just think it’s time for a change. We should never let anybody stay in Congress that long, there should be term limits or at least the retirement age.”

He speaks affectionately of DeLauro as a person. He said he has honest disagreements on many issues. For instance, he said he decided to run at first because he opposes transgender students participating in female school sports. He personally opposes abortion and says states, not the federal government, should decide the issue, though he also said he respects Connecticut law on the matter.

As for how to run against a powerful incumbent without money or national party support, Lancia cites formative moments in the Coast Guard and his youth in Bridgeport as guiding his strategy.

The operative words: “Stealth.” And “silence.”

One moment occurred during a stint in the Coast Guard. He was on a boat when he suddenly came face to face with a nuclear submarine, aka “the silent service.” He hadn’t heard it until he saw it.

“They were doing ops, and they were using us as sonar. That thing came on the back end of that boat and shook. And I looked at my buddy. I said, ‘We were dead, and we didn’t even know it.’”

In younger years, in Bridgeport, he sometimes hung around the city’s infamous Democratic machine politicians, where he picked up another strategic move: “Keep your mouth shut.”

“I learned how to stay quiet and and move in the darkness. And what I mean by that is: Never tell everybody all your business. Don’t worry about how much money you’re raising. Because when your opponent knows what you’re doing, they’re going to come and attack you. I don’t care if Rosa is 190: She knows so many people in the weeds and in power. If she even thought I was a challenge in the beginning, she would have went all over me. She’s finding out now how much of a pain in the neck I am, and I won’t go away.”

In the “Dateline” conversation, Lancia drew on his longer-standing career experience — in the cable installation business — as guides for policy positions.

He started out in the early ’90s disconnecting and installing home cable systems for companies like Comcast. He graduated to maintenance tech. (“I would balance the systems when we had outages. I like the challenge, like trying to find stuff that’s wrong.”) He eventually became an outside plant manager, then, most recently, a consultant/middleman arranging workers to install systems.

Along the way, he saw how the technology cahnged with the pivot to fiber. He also saw companies pocket millions of government subsidies meant to be used for transitioning to fiber systems.

That experience informs his take on two tech issues he’d tackle if elected to Congress.

One is artificial intelligence (A.I.): He argues that the federal government should have an independent nonpartisan panel reviewing the safety of new A.I.s.

He sees “nothing wrong” with A.I. as a tool for, say, analyzing spreadsheets or helping with writing.

“There is a lot of good, but everything that starts out good, if we don’t watch, is going to turn bad,” he said.

Another issue is surveillance. Lancia has spoken out in favor of Milford protests against the widespread adoption of Flock license-plate-reader cameras.

He said he sees a use for limited cameras at, say, highway exits and entrances. But “the whole thing went sideways. There was no transparency.” If elected, he said, he would see a Congressional investigation into the cameras. “I worked anti-terrorism. I worked on this sub base. We need cameras. I want more safeguards. I want to know who’s watching it.”

Click on the below video to watch the full conversation with GOP Congressional candidate Christopher Lancia on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.