This August, Connecticut voters will go to the polls to select the Democratic and Republican nominees for Governor. Already the press releases are flying. Some are valuable, illustrating the strengths and ideas of various candidates. Some are simply annoying whining. To help make sense of this and to encourage candidates to show their strengths and help build a stronger Connecticut, I am instituting the Connecticut Gubernatorial Whine Index.

Last year, I established the CTNewsWire. It is a Google Group that politicians, candidates, advocacy organizations and government agencies can send press releases to in an effort to reach bloggers, citizen journalists, and other interested parties. So far, the press releases are predominantly from Democrats, with both of the Democratic Gubernatorial candidates sending their press releases.

To calculate the index, I read the press release and assign a whininess score. When a candidate lays out a position on an important issue, they get five points. When they make a comment that positively reflects their character by highlighting an endorsement, expressing concern about a recent development in the state, and so on, they get three points. Updates about coming events also score a point.

On the other hand, they lose points for whining about their opponent. If the whine has merit, they may only lose a single point. Typical whines lose three points, and when the candidates start behaving like spoiled kids in the back seat, they lose five points.

I went back to June 20th as the current start of the index. Over time, I intend to add any new press releases and perhaps dig back through older press releases.

For the current scores, I’ve looked at seven press releases from the Lamont campaign. Two are whiny, and the current Whine Index for the Lamont campaign is 3. The Malloy campaign has issued fifteen press releases covered by the Whine Index. Four of them are whiny. For a total score, the Malloy campaign currently stands at 9 on the Whine Index.

The Malloy campaign has issued about twice as many press releases as the Lamont campaign and about the same percentage of them are whiny. Let us hope that both campaigns focus a little bit more on the strengths of their candidates and how they can make Connecticut a better place, instead of wasting time whining about their opponents.