FIC Blog

Jonathan Pelto, an “education activist,” has announced that “he will have the signatures necessary to earn a spot on the ballot” for governor as a petitioning third party candidate. This will be bad news to Betty Gallo, who bills herself as “a lobbyist who specializes in social justice issues.” Just a few days ago Betty had an op-ed in the Sunday Courant urging her fellow “progressives” not to sign Pelto’s petition granting him ballot access because it would hurt Gov. Malloy who, she says, has “never wavered from his progressive principles.”

It’s a curious op-ed.

Betty claims Pelto “worked against workers” who “take care of people with disabilities.” But Betty does not mention that she herself worked against people with disabilities in her ongoing effort to legalize assisted suicide, a cause vigorously opposed by grassroots disability rights activists as well as the State Office of Advocacy and Protection for People With Disabilities and the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities. Betty references Gov. Malloy’s support for same-sex marriage twice but does not mention that the Connecticut Supreme Court imposed it years before Gov. Malloy was elected. She uses decades-old quotes about the earned income tax credit to give the impression that President Reagan praised Gov. Malloy’s passage of it, even though Reagan was long dead when it passed.

But Betty’s most glaring omission when it comes to assessing Gov. Malloy is the one on assisted suicide. As it happens, Gov. Malloy actually did take the prudent, progressive approach of giving greater choice to patients at the end of life by passing a pilot program for MOLST (Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) that can be improved upon as its effects are studied. But he did it by resisting the ableists who pay Betty Gallo to lobby in favor of assisted suicide.

On assisted suicide, it was Betty who “wavered” from her “progressive principles” and Gov. Malloy who rightly recognized and followed the truly progressive advice of the heads of his own agencies, the Office of Protection and Advocacy for People With Disabilities and the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities.

But if Gov. Malloy is re-elected this Fall, what will he owe Betty Gallo for this gushing op-ed?