By: Tzirel Rosenblatt

By any measure, the return of Betsy McCaughey to the electoral arena is not a footnote — it is a thunderclap. According to a report on Wednesday in The New York Post, the former New York lieutenant governor, a veteran of bruising political wars and one of the most recognizable conservative intellectuals of the last three decades, is formally launching a campaign for governor of Connecticut, promising to wage nothing less than a counter-revolution against what she characterizes as Hartford’s systematic assault on homeowners, seniors and the middle class.

McCaughey, now 77, is filing her official paperwork on Thursday to seek the Republican nomination to lead the Constitution State. As The New York Post report detailed, she is entering the race with a platform that is unapologetically populist, fiercely anti-establishment and aimed squarely at what she calls “Lefty Gov. Ned Lamont’s Housing Law,” a measure she argues has accelerated property-tax hikes and eroded local control.

“I remember when Connecticut was the opportunity state,” McCaughey told The New York Post. “Now it’s the evacuation state.”

The line, both nostalgic and incendiary, encapsulates her entire argument. McCaughey, who grew up in Milford and Westport and now maintains a residence in Greenwich, says she has watched the state hemorrhage families, businesses and retirees under the weight of taxation, regulation and rising energy costs.

Her central mission, as described in The New York Post report, is to “stop Hartford’s war on homeowners.” That war, in her telling, is waged through a trifecta of punitive property taxes, state-imposed zoning mandates and energy policies that have turned utility bills into a monthly crisis.

Perhaps the most striking plank in McCaughey’s platform is her pledge to relieve “almost all seniors of any property tax burden at all.” It is a promise that has already electrified older voters in Fairfield and New Haven counties, where tax bills have soared even as retirees struggle with inflation and shrinking fixed incomes.

In interviews with The New York Post, McCaughey has framed the issue not merely as fiscal policy but as moral obligation. For decades, she argues, Connecticut’s seniors built the towns that now tax them into exile.

“They paid into this system their whole lives,” she told the paper. “Now the state is telling them to sell their homes or go broke.”

McCaughey’s critique of Connecticut’s energy regime is equally ferocious. She has vowed to slash electric rates, eliminate the “public benefit charge” that appears on every utility bill, and impose a ban on offshore wind projects.

According to The New York Post report, she views offshore wind as emblematic of what she calls “green racketeering” — a system in which ratepayers are conscripted to subsidize politically fashionable but economically punishing projects.

“Families are choosing between groceries and electric bills,” she told The New York Post. “And Hartford is talking about wind turbines in the Atlantic.”

McCaughey is no ingénue. Her political identity was forged in confrontation — most famously in the 1990s, when she wrote a blistering critique of President Bill Clinton’s health-care proposal. The column catapulted her into the national spotlight, making her a hero to conservatives and a nemesis to Democrats.

That notoriety paved the way for her election as lieutenant governor of New York under Republican Gov. George Pataki. But as The New York Post has chronicled, the alliance deteriorated spectacularly. Clashes between McCaughey and Pataki became legendary, culminating in her removal from the ticket when he sought re-election in 1998.

Far from retreating, she parlayed the experience into a prolific media career, writing columns for The New York Post and becoming a fixture on the right-leaning cable network Newsmax. Her byline and television presence kept her a familiar — and polarizing — figure long after she left office.

Less widely known, but central to her biography, is her role as a founder of Reduce Infection Deaths, a national campaign to combat hospital-acquired infections, headquartered in Connecticut. The organization has lobbied for transparency in hospital safety and has credited itself with saving thousands of lives.

For McCaughey, the campaign underscores a recurring theme in her political philosophy: that bureaucratic inertia kills, whether in hospitals or in statehouses.

McCaughey’s entry complicates an already crowded Republican primary. State Sen. Ryan Fazio and former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart are also vying for the GOP nomination. But The New York Post reported that neither commands the same level of name recognition or national profile.

Where Fazio offers technocratic credentials and Stewart markets executive experience, McCaughey brings something rarer: a reputation for combativeness and a willingness to antagonize entrenched interests.

Lamont, meanwhile, is seeking a third term — a rarity in modern Connecticut politics. His administration has championed housing mandates, climate initiatives and progressive taxation, all of which McCaughey has made central targets of her campaign.

To her supporters, McCaughey is not merely running for governor; she is mounting an insurgency against a political class they believe has become detached from the lived realities of Connecticut residents.

“She says what people are thinking but are afraid to say,” one Republican operative told The New York Post. “That Hartford has forgotten who it works for.”

Her rhetoric is unvarnished, her style unapologetically pugilistic. Yet it is precisely this disposition — honed in battles with Clinton, Pataki and the hospital industry — that her backers believe could resonate in a state that has watched its tax base erode year after year.

Perhaps the most potent argument in McCaughey’s arsenal is demographic reality. Connecticut has seen sustained out-migration, particularly among high-income earners and retirees. McCaughey has vowed to reverse what she calls a “slow-motion evacuation.”

As she told The New York Post: “You don’t fix this state by nibbling around the edges. You fix it by breaking the system that’s driving people out.”

Whether Connecticut Republicans are prepared to embrace such a radical recalibration remains to be seen. But one fact is already indisputable: Betsy McCaughey’s gubernatorial bid has injected electricity into a race that was, until now, defined more by managerial competence than ideological fervor.

As The New York Post report observed, one thing is clear — the woman who once upended a sitting president’s health-care plan is now aiming her sights at Hartford itself. And she is not known for missing her mark.