One thing that gets lost if the shuffle of political speculation here in Connecticut is the muddy state of the Clean Elections law, which currently sits under the cloud of a very unfavorable federal judgment. The legislature is supposed to fix it, but the legislature seems to have trouble agreeing on a take-out Chinese food order. Fixing something with this many moving parts may be beyond its capacity.
It strikes me that none of us really know how a statewide election looks with the law in full flower because it's so new. And we also don't know if the law will be in force.
There are dozens of ways the law can affect the race, but let me just cite one right here. The way I understand it: If the law remains undisturbed and Ned Lamont were to self-fund in a primary, Susan Bysiewicz, just for example, would be eligible for compensatory public funding. Lamont, in effect, would be writing checks that would trigger taxpayer funding of his opponent's campaign. The position of Richard Blumenthal, should he enter the governor's race, would be a little more complicated. Blumenthal, in all likelihood, could raise enormous amounts of money in the conventional way. It probably doesn't matter, because if Blumenthal gets in, Bysieiwcz probably gets out and maybe runs for Attorney General. In the general election, a voiding of the Clean Elections law probably favors Blumenthal, who could raise more money than any imaginable conventional Republican adversary.
If the judge were dissatisfied with the progress toward a rememdy, the state would probably ask the court to leave the current law temporarily undisturbed through Election Day 2010, based on the argument that the process has already begun to unfold under the standing Clean Elections law. The person who would ordinarily be charged with making that case to the court is ...Richard Bumenthal.
I don't know that the judge, having found the funding system to be unconstitutional, can leave it in place through the election. You are correct in your assessment that the fix to the law is not easily done politically. It would essentialy allow a challenger to an incumbent to lose the party nomination and thereafter declare himself or herself as a candidate of a new minor party and receive the same amount of public funding as the major party incumbent. Not an easy pill to swallow for the Legislature, which by definition is made up of incumbents. I believe the law sunsets in April, 2010 unless it is revised. All of this favors wealthy candidates who can write their own checks (McMahon, Lamont).