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Malloy’s ready to run for guv, but only if Blumenthal isn’t.

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Did Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy ever stop running for governor?

Officially, yes. He lost the 2006 Democratic primary to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano (who went on to get creamed by Republican Gov. Jodi Rell), locked up headquarters and went home to sleep off the $4 million campaign hangover.

Unofficially, no. Malloy relaunched his campaign website as a state politics forum shortly after Election Day. He began appearing on Sunday morning talk shows. Some treated him like a pre-ordained front-runner. And now Malloy's made it official: He's running for governor in 2010 — if Attorney General Richard Blumenthal doesn't run. State House Speaker James Amann is exploring a candidacy too, but as a less favored Democrat, isn't afforded Malloy's deference.

Why start so early? Because Malloy is virtually unknown to average voters and unlike 2006 he won't have $4 million to spend on biographical TV ads this time around. The 2010 race will be the first to use public financing, which limits candidates to spending $3 million. Rell, the most popular governor in modern state history, is extremely well known, and has already launched an exploratory committee, the first step in a re-election campaign.

We interviewed Malloy in his Stamford office last week and found an energized, almost manic, mayor at work on a half dozen major development projects in his city, and a candidate who seemed anything but exploratory. Edited excerpts:

Advocate: You're running for governor?

Malloy: If Dick Blumenthal doesn't run, I am. Increasingly, I believe that he may not. Dick Blumenthal, if he wanted, could run for governor in a year. Mere mortals, it takes two. And the problem for Dick is, he now recognizes that. Dick acknowledges that he's got to make a decision earlier in the process than he might want to make it, because the rest of us are mere mortals and we don't have his name recognition or approval. And I think the thing Dick doesn't want to be blamed for is a Democrat losing next time.

What motivates you to do it? What is the vision you want to execute?

I understand Connecticut is in much worse shape than most people in Connecticut understand today, and it is going to take extraordinary leadership to right Connecticut for the future. For job growth production and retention, we rank dead last for all 50 states. You take lower Fairfield County and the casinos out, and we are, as a state, in a job depression.

Let's say you are running against Gov. Rell in the general election. Will the couple million dollars you'll get through public financing be enough to catch her in name recognition?

I think Democrats will coalesce around a candidate sooner than they did in the past because we don't have a fund-raising advantage anymore, because we can't simply say we'll raise whatever it takes. The media's going to have to step up. Instead of thinking it's going to cover a governor's race for 90 days, it's got an obligation to cover a race for 12 months, or more.

How is Gov. Rell doing?

She is a delightful human being, who gets an A for the ability to respond to an incident. But when it gets to long-term vision of what the state needs to be or to manage against that vision to get the job done, she is unfortunately a failure. When the governor became governor, 94 cents [of every dollar] of the taxes on oil and gas were devoted to transportation. Now it's 67 cents. That's $400 million [not going to transportation projects].

A recent Connecticut Voices for Children study showed that one in 10 Connecticut children live in poverty, and in our biggest cities it's as high as 40 percent. What are we doing wrong?

No job growth. You want to know why people are living in poverty? It's because the jobs that would have allowed them to step out of poverty no longer exist in Connecticut. There is no clear-cut passageway from poverty to the middle class in Connecticut, particularly in the cities, because the jobs that used to provide it aren't there. Now, there are other reasons: We have abysmal education systems in some places. If the most you can aspire to is a minimum wage job in one of the most expensive states to live in, there's no way out.

Where is Connecticut's economic future? Where are we going to find these jobs?

You're not going to find them with a Republican-led administration, because Republicans [pause] don't produce jobs in this state. They've proven that. Green jobs. Green-collar jobs. A study came out yesterday, one of the accounting consultancy firms estimating at a minimum a million green jobs a year in America for the next 25 years.

Connecticut towns are pursing dramatically different solutions to the illegal immigration problem. Hartford and New Haven are welcoming, Danbury is empowering cops to act as immigration agents. What's your take on that?

The federal government needs to close the borders. They've failed miserably at doing that. In Stamford, we acknowledge that people are here, that they are deserving as human beings of our support and our love, that we will not discriminate against people that play a substantial role in making our community work.

Having said that they create lots of problems: zoning violations, building violations, competition for jobs, perhaps in some cases driving wages down. It's a real issue. Other places have said we'll give you ID cards. Listen, you want a library card in Stamford, we don't care where you come from or what your status is. You wanna play golf? You wanna use one of our parks? We don't discriminate, nor are we in the business of governmentally sanctioning.

I think any child who graduates from a Connecticut high school, after a meaningful period of time — two years, five years, whatever — should be able to go to a college in our school system as a resident of the state. These are kids whose parents brought them here as infants. It's the only place they've ever lived. I think that's a crime. That's a moral outrage.

abromage@newhavenadvocate.com