Lee Elci Talks Politics, Policing and Personal Freedom Off the Air

These days, longtime conservative talk personality and first-time state Senate candidate Lee Elci finds himself at the sound board rather than behind the microphone. 

Known by his audience as the “voice of freedom,” Elci sat for an interview last month at his Ledyard studio in front of a silent microphone. He currently works behind the scenes, coordinating guests and running segments. Interim hosts have included Mary Powell-St. Louis and Mitchell Etess of Lyme, outgoing state Rep. Devin Carney of Old Lyme and former state Sen. Paul Formica of East Lyme. 

Elci has been off 94.9 FM since mid-August, just days after announcing his bid for the 20th District seat held by two-term incumbent state Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London. That’s when his opponent sought access to the airwaves under a Federal Communications Commission rule that requires broadcasters to give opposing candidates equal time on television and radio. 

Negotiations between the radio station and Marx’s campaign ended with an agreement for Elci to stay off the air until the polls close on Election Day. Both candidates said they were not involved in the talks. 

Fuller on Saturday said the station and Marx’s campaign reached the agreement after long, expensive discussions with lawyers about how to handle her equal airtime request and uncertainty over whether providing it would constitute an in-kind campaign contribution under state election law. The discussions cost the station more than $20,000 in legal fees, according to Fuller.

Elci called the agreement disappointing. 

“I thought I was going to be able to stay on the air the entire time, because I had come out and said ‘I will never talk about the campaign,’ which I never would have,” he said. “I understand that there’s two sides to this, but the truth is they wanted me off, and that’s what they got.”

The 60-year-old, who grew up in Waterford and lives in East Lyme, has spent more than 20 years on the radio discussing politics and other topics. Despite his conservative credentials, Elci sees himself as an independent voice. He estimated he agrees with the president only 20% of the time. 

“People sort of lumped me into the Trump train, which I am not,” he said.

When he changed his voter registration from unaffiliated to Republican just days before his Aug. 9 campaign announcement, he said he made the switch “reluctantly.”

“And that’s not a knock on the Republicans. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to be as nonpartisan as I possibly could doing this job,” he said.

Making Noise

Elci, a self-described “big mouth,” said he’s out of his element on the campaign trail after a quarter century of engaging elected officials, political commentators, police officers, academics and newspaper columnists in discussions on issues.

According to the radio host, it’s small talk he’s bad at. 

“I see politicians are masters at small talk, and I am not,” he said. 

Rather than trying to change that – “I’m not a politician and I don’t want to be one,” he said – he laid out plans for bringing his outspoken style to Hartford to call out excessive spending, government overreach and a progressive shift in Connecticut politics.

He acknowledged that getting Republican priorities through the General Assembly will be an uphill battle in a state where Democrats hold majorities in both chambers and the governor’s office. 

One issue where Elci expects to face resistance is his call to repeal Connecticut’s 2020 police accountability law, enacted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer. The law expanded civilian oversight of police departments, created a new inspector general to investigate police use-of-force cases and changed the standards governing when officers can use deadly force, among other provisions.

He said the law has demoralized police officers and made recruitment more difficult.

“Obviously nobody wants bad policing,” he said. “A police officer acting inappropriately should get the full brunt of whatever punishment is in front of them.” 

For Elci, winning a Senate seat would offer a chance to amplify his concerns even without the votes to make immediate change. 

“If nobody wants to address any of the issues that I want to address, I’ll just make a lot of noise,” he said. “I’ll just scream and yell as loud as I can about certain things that I see and try to make a point out of it.”

Cost of Living

Elci, who identified affordability as a major theme of his campaign, pointed to rising fuel prices as the driving source of voter discontent.

He said the problem could be traced in part to the Trump administration’s actions in the Middle East.

“And that’s sort of an albatross that’s going to hang around the Republicans’ neck,” he said.

But Elci said there are ways state and local officials can address other cost pressures, including property taxes and local education funding, that are straining households and municipalities.

He cited governmental overspending as one area where his views align with Trump’s. According to Elci, Connecticut could benefit from an effort modeled on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Proponents of DOGE argue the department shrank the federal workforce and identified hundreds of billions in savings. Critics argue it fell short of its targets and likely overstated the cuts it did make.

“I know DOGE didn’t work on a national scale, but why can’t we try Connecticut DOGE of sorts, where we look at programs that don’t work and figure out how to get rid of them,” he said. 

He said the combined cost of his mortgage, taxes and insurance has risen by $600 a month over the past two years. On the campaign trail, he’s heard from older residents who can no longer afford those kinds of increases. 

He credited Waterford First Selectman Rob Brule with suggesting a freeze on property taxes for qualifying seniors. 

“You’re living in a house for 30 years, and all of a sudden you can’t pay your taxes anymore because they’ve gone up beyond what you can afford,” Elci said. “I think that’s terrible.”

He criticized a recent state law, known as Public Act 25-1, that Gov. Ned Lamont signed almost a year ago to address the state’s housing shortage. Lamont had vetoed a previous iteration months earlier. 

The law limits the ability of zoning commissions to require off-street parking for residential developments with 16 or fewer units, streamlines the approval process for multifamily projects with two to nine units in commercial districts and requires municipalities to plan for housing growth. 

He argued housing mandates can require costly investments by taxpayers and transform a town’s identity.

“Some folks, you work your whole life to move to a certain place because you want to live a life a certain way. You don’t want a lot of traffic. You don’t want somebody on top of you. And I think those people sort of get lost in the shuffle in this housing debate,” he said. 

Acknowledging that part of the housing debate involves increasing lower-income households’ access to communities with strong schools and other resources, he called for giving families more choice about where their children can receive an education. 

“I think if you live in New London and you want to go to an Old Lyme school, you should be able to go to an Old Lyme school,” he said. “Education should come across the boundaries of town lines.”

In the Arena

Elci’s campaign message revolves around personal freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. 

“If you want somebody to babysit you from cradle to grave, then you don’t want me,” he said. 

Elci predicted he would not vote with his party on every issue if elected, contrasting his approach with Marx’s voting record.

A 2025 report from the state Office of Legislative Management, cited by CT News Junkie, found Marx voted against the Senate majority twice in 437 votes that year, or 99.5%. She also had perfect attendance during the session.

“She is simply just a tool of the Democrat Party,” he said. “I don’t know how else you can say it. I can’t imagine that anybody agrees with anybody else 100% of the time.”

He attributed his decision to run this year to two main factors: the “drastic shift” to the left within the Democratic Party, combined with his increasing desire to do more than talk about the country’s political decline. 

The consummate talker also leaned on the rugged individualism of former President Theodore Roosevelt in a 1910 speech about being a contender rather than a critic. A video about it came across his feed on social media and he “just took to it,” he said.  

The speech celebrated the “man in the arena” who takes risks and makes mistakes rather than criticizing from the stands. 

“It is not the critic who counts,” Roosevelt said. 

Elci said he regrets not having served in the military, a decision he revisited after finishing his professional baseball career in his late 20s and again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“I just didn’t make the leap,” he said. “If I had one regret to look back on at life, it’s probably that.”

This time, Elci said he’s choosing to act. 

“Instead of talking about it, let’s just go in and shake it up,” he said.