Governor Ned Lamont stood in a room with some of the most powerful Democrats in Connecticut and called a Republican challenger an “absolute idiot asshole.” State Senator Martha Marx pointed at the camera and said she had an “asshole running against me.” Attorney General William Tong, Congressman Joe Courtney, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz, and Senator Richard Blumenthal were right there. They laughed and smiled.

That video is now running as a 30-second ad on Lee Elci’s Facebook page. The Hartford Courant reported the comments this morning. State Republican Chairman Ben Proto said he had never heard Lamont talk like that and that the governor owes Elci an apology.

Lamont’s campaign spokeswoman Lauren Gray called it a joke that was taken out of context. Then she did the standard pivot: where is the outrage when Elci calls people protesting Donald Trump “hypocritical idiots” or talks about Muslim immigration as a plot to “conquer the West”?

Those are not equivalent. One is a sitting governor, surrounded by the state’s top elected officials at a Democratic event, using vulgarity to describe a private citizen who is running against one of their own. The other is a talk-radio host whose job for the last two decades has been to have opinions on the air. The power dynamic is not the same. The setting is not the same. The audience is not the same.

The Courant frames the episode as standard campaign rough-and-tumble. Proto is quoted calling Marx “as dumb as a stone.” Marx, a nurse, says she tells it like it is and doubts Elci’s feelings are hurt. Elci himself says he has thick skin and that the comments are part of the campaign. All of that is reported. What is softer is the larger context.

Connecticut families are living with some of the highest energy costs in the country. Heating oil is running near $6 a gallon. Electric bills remain a constant complaint. Property taxes and the cost of living continue to push people out of the state. Democrats have controlled the legislature and the governor’s office for years. A radio host in southeastern Connecticut has spent years talking about those results. Now the people who produced those results are on video treating him like a punchline.

This is the same group that lectures everyone else about civility, tone, and the need to lower the temperature. When the cameras are on, the language is about protecting democracy and rejecting hate. When the doors close at the Democratic event, the language is vulgar and the reaction is laughter aimed at the guy who might take one of their seats.

Proto is right that the language was unusual for Lamont and unbecoming of the office. Whether the governor issues an apology is almost beside the point. The video already shows how the people who have run this state view the voters who are tired of the results. The elite smirk is the story. The rest is spin.

Voters in the 20th Senate District—New London, East Lyme, Waterford, Old Lyme, Salem, Bozrah, and parts of Montville and Old Saybrook—will decide on November 3 whether that attitude is the one they want representing them in Hartford. Lee Elci has spent years on the air talking about the issues that actually affect the people in that district. The top Democrats in the state just showed how they talk about him when they think the cameras are off.

That gap between the public lecture and the private joke is worth reading between the headlines. The people who set the rules for everyone else just demonstrated that the rules do not apply when they are among friends. Connecticut voters have heard the lectures for years. Now they have the video.