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Ann Brookes announced Tuesday on Facebook that she is abandoning her bid for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. She will instead apply her efforts to electing Steve Obsitnik governor.

Brookes had been shopping around for a gubernatorial running mate but could find no takers. Her fundraising never took off and the magic $75,000 in small contributions needed to qualify for public financing seemed an elusive target as the party nominating convention grew nearer.

Brookes made a late bid for the Republican nomination for Congress in the Second Congressional District in 2016, losing by a few votes. She is the second candidate to vamoose from the campaign for LG. State Representative Liz Linehan (D-Cheshire) ended her bid for the office when running mate Dan Drew withdrew from the race for governor last year. Linehan, who was billed as a progressive Democrat, made news recently when she voted against the nomination of Associate Justice Andrew McDonald to become Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, providing a reminder that sometimes you never know what you are getting in a running mate. How was Dan Drew to know?

Attorney General George Jepsen, the Connecticut’s most popular state officeholder, will announce his endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Ned Lamont Monday morning, Daily Ructions has learned. Jepsen is the first significant Democrat to offer public support of a candidate for governor in what has so far been an unusually quiet contest.

Jepsen was an early supporter of Lamont’s 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate. That was the year the wealthy Greenwich Democrat scored a stunning upset over incumbent Joseph Lieberman in an August primary that received attention around the world. Lieberman defeated Lamont three months later as an independent candidate in the general election. Lamont lost the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010 to Dannel P. Malloy.

Jepsen, who lives in West Hartford, is serving his second term as attorney general and announced in November  that he will not seek a third.

Law school deans will not be pleased. Governor Dannel P. Malloy is offering a transaction. He’s willing to appoint a Republican to the state Supreme Court in exchange for the state Senate confirming his pal Andrew McDonald as Chief Justice.

Republicans are not biting on the tawdry offer. The Republican prospect whose name was dangled by the Democrats, Andrew Roraback, possesses sensibilities that would be appalled to be included in the dirty deal. If Malloy declines to nominate someone who can be confirmed before the regular session of the legislature ends in May, Roraback will be a contender for the court’s top spot if a Republican is elected governor in November.

Where are those voices that only a few weeks ago were alarmed at the intrusion of politics in judicial nominations?

Bridgeport mayor and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Joseph Ganim has written to party chairman Nick Balleto to complain about the makeup of candidate forum audiences. Ganim refers to dozens of town committee forums around the state and concludes, “It is obvious to any observer that those in attendance at these forums are almost all white, even though almost 33% of Connecticut residents are black or Latino.”

Ganim urges Balletto to act to reverse the trend.  “As Chairman of Connecticut’s Democratic Party, I urge you to use your good office to lead the effort to set up statewide candidate forums that specifically reach out to Democratic voters in communities of color in order to increase access and participation by all in our state.”

Is 20 years too long? Is he leftwing enough? A Democrat is using the services of Public Policy Polling to test a challenge to popular First District U.S. Representative John B. Larson (D-East Hartford).

Deep into the poll, the inquiries got to the point. Would you be likely to support a challenger to Larson if it came from a woman with 16 years in public service in two congressional office, is a breast cancer survivor, and comes from a military family? Would you? Those were some of the questions, reports a Democrat who was polled and shared details with Daily Ructions.

Insiders are saying that describes the Director of the Women’s Leadership Center at the University of Saint Joseph, Shannon Kula.

Kula would probably need to collect signatures to get on the primary ballot as winning 15% of the convention delegates in May would be a reach.

Larson was first elected to the House in 1998 after defeating West Hartford Democrat Miles Rapoport in a hard-fought primary. Larson went on to make short work of Republican and Rowland favorite Kevin O’Connor that fall. He has been re-elected without incident nine times.

It shouldn’t be this hard. A vote on a casino bill in the legislature’s public safety committee would usually be granted as a courtesy to the leaders and committee members supporting MGM’s Bridgeport casino proposal. Placing an item on a committee agenda does not mean it will pass, but it does give proponents an opportunity to argue their brief.

State Senator Timothy Larson (D-East Hartford) brings a curiously opposition to voting on the bill. Observers and others note that Larson has been a notably bullying proponent of a slot shack to be operated in East Windsor far from reservation land.

Larson may have lost some credibility with his committee colleagues when he secretly applied to become the head of the state’s lottery agency while serving as co-chair of the committee that oversees it.

Local legislators are making calls on behalf of the casino bill. They have been joined in their efforts by mayors Toni Harp and Joseph Ganim.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Mark Boughton suffered a seizure at a candidate event in Avon Thursday evening. Boughton was conscious when EMTs assisted the Danbury mayor into an ambulance.

Boughton underwent surgery for the removal of a brain tumor last summer and has appeared to enjoy a robust recovery.

The well-attended candidate forum was held at the North House. Candidates had finished speaking to the crowd and were mingling with the audience when Boughton collapsed.

Updates as they are received.

Bob Stefanowski does not understand that there are still some standards left in the political discourse of this dark age. Using a photo Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s appropriately emotional reaction to the December 2012 Sandy Hook shootings to criticize the Democrat crosses every line of decency in the public arena.

The Madison Republican sent the tweet posted above. The photo of a tearful Malloy appeared in the Wall Street Journal accompanying a story describing that “brutal week.” It’s not sufficient to describe Stefanowski as an amateur. There’s something pernicious at work when it does not occur to the candidate or his handlers that perhaps there’s a somber reason the governor is wiping away a tear in the photo they propose to use for a snarky tweet.

Nothing is off-limits in the crowded party competitions for governor. Even a candidate’s hometown is fair game. Look at Republican hopeful Mike Handler. He’s the attraction at a local event in Glastonbury on March 20th. Rival Prasad Srinivasan’s Glastonbury.

Srinivasan won the endorsement of the Glastonbury Republican town committee last fall after local leaders lobbied some committee members not inclined to support their local Republican state representative’s bid for governor to stay home the night of the vote.

Handler’s Glastonbury supporters include Lorraine Marchetti, who nearly won a state Senate seat in 2016.

Handler announced Monday that he has exceeded the $250,000 threshold required to qualify for the state’s generous campaign finance program. He has asked the State Elections Enforcement Commission to begin its pre-application review of his fundraising. Handler will need to win 15% of delegate votes on one ballot of May’s party nominating convention or collect signatures from at least 2% of the state’s registered Republican voters.

State Senator Beth Bye (D-West Hartford) found a curious way to spend Thursday’s International Women’s Day.She piled on the bullying of state Senator Gayle Slossberg over the Milford Democrat’s decision to recuse herself from voting on Justice Andrew McDonald’s nomination to the State Supreme Court’s top spot.

Slossberg, who announced Friday she will not seek an eighth term, has a history with McDonald that includes the jurist launching a 2012 face-contorting rant on his former colleague when McDonald was Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s legal counsel. Slossberg voted for Democrat McDonald’s high court nomination in 2013–along with 29 other senators. Bye is confused as to why Slossberg recused herself this time. (It’s not as if Slossberg took a job with an entity she obtained state money for, as Bye famously did.) Bye does not seem to understand that Slossberg appears to have reasonably believed McDonald’s personal animus toward her–known to both of them and witnesses to the attack–would have been enough to cause McDonald to recuse himself from participating in deliberations on cases involving David Slossberg, Gayle Slossberg’s busy attorney husband.

Gayle Slossberg filed a jaw-dropping affidavit in a 2014 case before the Supreme Court as part of a motion seeking McDonald’s recusal. He declined and participated in overturning a substantial verdict David Slossberg had won for his client.

There was a time–until a couple of weeks ago–when we applauded recusals as virtuous acts. A public official understands that circumstances will bring into question his or her ability to exercise sound judgment. Often officials, including Connecticut judges, will recuse themselves without stating a reason. Slossberg has met the standard we set for officials in Connecticut as they discharge their public trust. Bye is offended by this.

Bye was not a witness to McDonald’s 2012 verbal bludgeoning of Slossberg. Nevertheless, Bye dismisses it as “a tense conversation.” McDonald has not denied the ugly attack. He’s had almost six years to apologize and has not.

Almost two weeks after Slossberg’s explosive affidavit became widely known, no witness has stepped forward to contest its content. There’s a simple reason why. It’s true. Every Capitol denizen knows it’s true. Other women could, if fear did not rule the Capitol village, testify to their own unforgettable bullying encounters with a furious McDonald. They believe Gayle Slossberg.