Connecticut in Crisis: Policy Challenges and the 2018 Contest for Governor is Gary L. Rose’s most recent book on the New England political scene, a vital arena of American politics today. In this timely and penetrating volume, Rose explores five policy dilemmas currently facing Connecticut law makers. These dilemmas include the state’s inhospitable business climate, the heavy rates of taxation imposed on state residents and private companies, the racial isolation, poverty, and turmoil that grip the state’s cities, its crumbling infrastructure, and the deleterious effect of entitlements on policy experimentation and the state budget. Taken together, the severe policy dilemmas document a state that has descended into crisis.

Following Rose’s detailed examination of vexing policy dilemmas, Connecticut in Crisis examines the highly competitive gubernatorial contest that unfolded in 2018. Every phase of this electoral contest is carefully tracked. The unprecedented number of candidates who sought the governorship, the state party conventions, the summer primaries, the debates, and the fierce “too close to call” general election campaign are systematically examined in an objective and straight-forward fashion. The outcome of the 2018 contest, which resulted in the election of Ned Lamont, a multi-millionaire progressive Democrat, is explained as well.

Rose’s hard hitting and eye-opening volume demands a place in all serious discussion and debate regarding the complex policy problems currently confronting Connecticut’s newly elected governor, and American political life generally.