Sen. Sampson’s Statement on Silencing
January 14, 2021Over the last several days, Connecticut Democrats have tried to conflate the obtuse and disgusting comments of a third person with my legitimate call for action on a bona fide policy concern – a narrative contrived and designed to smear my good name and silence me from challenging their poor policy decisions.
Late yesterday, the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus issued a statement asking that I apologize to my colleague Senator Winfield (D – New Haven) for the message below that they consider to be “hateful.”
Democrats serving on the legislature’s Judiciary committee in Hartford are already telegraphing that they have zero interest in reversing any of the dangerous public policy that has led to the massive crime wave affecting our community. Instead, they want to weaken our criminal justice system further by erasing criminal records and prohibiting employers and landlords from using criminal record data in their decision making.
I will be proposing legislation to reverse many of the bad laws that have been enacted over the last decade, culminating with the so-called “police accountability bill” from last year. Added together, these misguided laws have undermined the rule of law in our state and emboldened criminals, particularly juvenile car thieves.
I will be counting on my community to help me create public pressure to force the majority party to have this conversation whether they want to or not. Stay tuned.
Respectfully, I will not apologize. My job is to work on behalf of my constituents in support or opposition to policies in an effort to improve our quality of life in public safety.
In response to this article I shared to highlight my concerns about the police accountability bill, a person I’ve never heard of posted an ugly comment. As soon as it was brought to my attention, I condemned it, spoke with the Capitol police and reached out to Senator Winfield as a result of the concerns he expressed. I take responsibility for every word I write or speak, but I can’t begin to control everything posted on a public page open to every person on earth with a Facebook account.
Those who serve in the legislature know the pressure you draw by taking a firm stand on a heated issue. It is our duty to communicate our positions and to advocate for what we think is right. We are also expected to stand by our decisions, our votes, and positions, and defend them if necessary. Further, starting a petition or calling on members of the public to contact their legislators to create pressure for action is the very definition of politics. There is nothing “hateful” about it.
I have great respect for Senator Winfield and share his concern about the great divide in our nation and the intense passions we are witnessing each day. Like him, I have received threats—including one that made national news in 2019 when someone in the judiciary committee hearing room threatened to “blow me away” if they had a gun. https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Anti-gun-activist-I-d-blow-away-CT-13679790.php
I spoke with Senator Winfield personally, and I believe he accepted my assurance that I never have and never would say or do anything I thought might harm him or any of our colleagues at the Capitol–or anyone on this earth, when it comes to that. Like my colleague, my heart has been broken by the violence we’ve seen in the last year. Always in life there is pain, but surely we have our share overflowing since last spring.
Whatever the pain—as individuals and as a society–violence is no solution. Our best hope is reasoned conversation. That’s why I’m surprised that the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus would so labor to diminish my voice in the public debate. They saw a chance to assail me and they took it, indifferent to the justice of the charge, because they do not want to be contradicted.
An apology means enough to me that I won’t offer it insincerely. I put hundreds of posts on Facebook every year, and some draw hundreds of responses. I can’t pretend to be responsible for all that, from supporters and opponents both. I guarantee that worse is said of me on my own pages than of all my colleagues combined, and those comments I mostly let stand.
I write and speak more than most senators, and more plainly too; I sincerely believe that elucidating my views is the best way to draw people to them. I am more interested in debating solutions to our crushing problems than quibbling over adjectives. We need to talk more and not less—talk as freely as we must, so that we don’t come to blows. As Americans, we inherited the inestimable blessing of an orderly republic; if we don’t respect that—and it is clear many of us don’t, on both sides—we will find out how hard it is to reconstruct it.
I offer no disrespect and would like this daily back and forth on this issue to end, but there is nothing for me to apologize for. My comments were legitimate. My reaction to the ugly post by a random person I don’t know was swift and appropriate.
I will always condemn violence and I will always behave with respect and dignity. There’s no place at all, never, for violence in this country. Lawlessness betrays our inheritance, a matchless constitutional system to insure liberty, equality, and domestic tranquility. If I have one message above all in these days, it is that we reject violence and respect the rule of law.
I beg of my colleagues in both parties to be the example of how differ with respect and collegiality that our country desperately needs at this time.
Senator Rob Sampson
