Category — Posts

It is more of a challenge to run a sustained campaign against a conspiracy theorist than civilians might think. The sane candidate can start to sound a little nutty repeating the outrageous but true.

Jeff Desarais, the 32nd Senate District Democrat returning for his third encounter with incumbent Republican and QAnon supporter Eric Berthel has found a pointed way to make a vital point. The district’s 13 towns are represented by a nut.

Berthel’s support for QAnon was no secret. He put a sticker with the group’s creed/slogan/threat on his car. The same car that had his legislative license plate. When asked about his support for the madness, Berthel said he believed in some things on the nutty QAnon menu but not others.

QAnon, according to Berthel, allows the disaffected to be part of “the conversation.” Desmarais sent an antidote for Berthel’s poisonous fantasies–a double-sided card–to voters that features Berthel in one of the essentials of loon’s modern uniform, a tinfoil hat. The Democrat, in QAnon parlance, has red-pilled voters. We’ll know next week if it enlightened enough of them to heave Bertel out of office.

Published October 29, 2024.

Governor Ned Lamont said Friday that he has asked State Comptroller Sean Scanlon to audit Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) Chancellor Terrence Cheng’s lavish spending on meals and travel. The audit is also expected to examine Cheng’s use of his housing and automobile allowance, including the use of a car service to ferry the New York resident around Hartford and the state. The black SUV was spotted several months ago and is pictured above.

The issue of Cheng’s spending was raised in a CT Insider investigation by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas in a Thursday article. Lamont’s referral to Scanlon comes on the heels of top state legislators calling for Cheng to turnover his personal spending records in the next 10 days. Cheng slow-walked complying with Thomas’s request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act for eight months. He has thus far disclosed about a third of the documents, according to Thomas.

The remaining 70% of the records are likely to add to public alarm at Cheng’s priorities. It is lost on no one but him that dinners with Lamont administration officials at Hartford’s Capital Grille came as Cheng ceaselessly complained that the 85,000 student system was underfunded.

Lamont earlier this year asked Scanlon to audit the records of the state’s Social Equity Council.

The audit of Cheng’s spending by Scanlon comes at an inopportune moment. Tuition at CSCU schools has been rising and the system’s Board of Regents has required a restoration of some student services, such as library hours. On Thursday, the board required Cheng to develop an extensive five-year sustainability plan, though that will likely be completed and initiated by Cheng’s successor.

The Cheng spending revelations are likely to grow more alarming as legislators and Scanlon obtain records that Cheng long denied Thomas. The insertion of Scanlon by Lamont into the issue has other implications as another reminder that the governor never turns to Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz to handle controversial or complicated matters.

Herr Schicklgruber has made a late and unexpected appearance in the presidential campaign 85 years after his German troops invaded Poland. Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric and contempt for much of humanity without blue eyes has been an underlying theme of Donald Trump’s years on the national stage. “Vermin,” “human scum,” and “the enemy within” have long served as reminders of Hitler’s hateful creed.

General John Kelly’s interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic confirmed what was written and discussed long ago. Many voters may not know much about Hitler. He shot himself in his Berlin bunker 79 years ago as the Allies closed in on the Third Reich.

The 1962 British musical Blitz! included a memorable number, a rousing anthem of defiant Britain standing alone against Hitler after the fall of France in 1940. “Who’s This Geezer Hitler?” captures one of the many attributes the British possessed as they saved civilization: mockery.

For anyone wondering what’s all this talk about Hitler, the song paired with the video above provide a reminder of a monster in power.

Published October 25, 2024.

Angry Democrats were sharing screenshots of a Working Families Party (WFP) mailer that features Governor Ned Lamont’s chief of staff, Matthew Brokman. The mailer, which also includes U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy (who as the mood seizes him portrays himself as a moderate), asks recipients to vote for the Working Families Party candidates on Line C. The problem for many Democrats is that they did not seek the leftwing party’s endorsement.

The Connecticut WFP says of itself, “We run aggressive issue and electoral campaigns across the state. We endeavor to abolish inequalities grounded in hierarchies of race, patriarchy, and wealth to raise standards for working families and achieve an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.” There is no mistaking who the party’s number one target must be: American aristocrat Ned Lamont, the wealthy Greenwich Democrat who belonged to a lily white country club until he decided to seek a U.S. Senate seat in 2006. Or perhaps U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, one the wealthiest members of the Senate.

Lamont’s office must be the center of class resentments on the rare days when more than a few staff members work on the second floor.

Brokman is married to Lindsay Farrell, WFP’s state executive director. She joins Brokman and two smiling moppets in a brochure photograph. Protecting children’s privacy appears not to be on the WFP’s long list of goals.

Moderate Democrats in at least two State Senate districts are seeking to oust incumbent Republicans. Lamont and others have strained to keep the state’s dominant party in the broad center ground. A WFP supporter in the center of power will do nothing to reassure wary voters.

Published October 24, 2024.

Poor Tony Hwang. The thin-skinned veteran Republican is flailing himself into incoherence as scrutiny of his record continues to reach voters in the competitive 28th Senate District.

The Fairfield Republican continues to respond to criticism of his votes on gun control and women’s access to abortion services with buckshot but no specifics. He howls at each roll call revelation. Hwang preaches civility but in the crunch, he abandons it. On Monday, he accused his challenger,Fairfield Democrat Rob Blanchard, of spreading “misinformation and manipulated narrative” to voters in Bethel, Easton, Fairfield and Newtown. Hwang, as is his custom, provides no facts, only an odd demand that “apologies must be made.”

Those apologies should start with Hwang. He mewls about campaign spending on mailers criticizing him. If he did not spend thousands on apparel, golf tees and balls with logos over the years, Hwang might have been able to add substance to his campaigns. Or perhaps not.

Hwang’s dismay about how public funds are spent in a campaign is a new concern. In 2023, Hwang reimbursed himself $2,624.48 for mileage incurred after the election, according to his campaign finance report. They must be post-election miles because the expense did not appear under the “incurred but not paid” section of the previous campaign finance report in 2022. That would be more than 4,000 miles at the allowable IRS mileage reimbursement rate in the second half of 2022 between five days before the November 7th election and three days before Christmas, when Hwang’s campaign committee paid him.

And then there is the curious 2023 post-election expense of $4,000 to a web designer for redesign of a site as well as to post content and photo updates. That expenditure also does not appear in a pre-election report as incurred but not paid. Two months after the 2022 election, Hwang used taxpayer money to pay $6,000 for video taping and editing on January 11, 2023 for services, the report reveals, that were incurred during the entire campaign, but they appear nowhere else, a violation of long established campaign finance rules.

Hwang would have more money to address issues if year after year he did not spend thousands in public funds on shirts, embroidery and food. He does love his embroidered Lacoste clothes–until he started altering photos of them. Perhaps he and his campaign people learned how to do that in the photography class taxpayers paid for them to attend in a previous campaign.

And now with his outbursts of vague outrage, Hwang has taken up a different type of embroidery.

What’s the Lacoste of Tony Hwang? Very high indeed.

Published October 22, 2024.

A 2011 Yale police report accuses Nick Simmons, the Democratic candidate for state senator in the state’s 36th Senate District, as misdirecting and lying to campus police as they sought to apprehend an intruder into a neighboring female student’s apartment bedroom in a building occupied by students, two blocks from the Yale campus.

The report arose out of a complaint by a Yale student who had been confronted by an unfamiliar drunk and agitated male in her apartment at 10:45 p.m. on February 16, 2011. The woman was sitting on her bed when the man entered her bedroom, screamed at her and then lunged at her as he attempted to grab her arms. The woman student was able to flee to another bedroom in the apartment, blocking the door with the aid of an apartment mate. Several minutes later, the two female students took refuge behind a locked bathroom door, as the male Yale student screamed at them and caused damage in the kitchen and other bathroom. From the locked bathroom, the two students were able to call a neighbor for help.  

Two of the seven students who responded to the call for help recognized the intruder. One of them escorted him to a nearby apartment on the same floor “where he was left with his close friend, Nicholas Simmons.”

The police report continues:

Two Yale police officers arrived, spoke with the students and learned the intruder had been taken to Simmons’s suite. One of the officers left voice messages on [the intruder’s] and Simmons’s phones. 

At approximately 24:00 hrs., Simmons returned this officer’s telephone call. Upon advising him I was with the YPD investigating the above incident, Simmons hung up the telephone. 

Shortly thereafter, Simmons again telephoned this officer to inquire as to why we wished to speak with him. Simmons stated he had been asleep in his room for the past three hours. While Simmons was making this call, I was standing outside his apartment. The doors to his apartment were still wide open and the apartment was clearly still unoccupied. At this point I realized Simmons was actually standing in the first floor hallway making the above telephone call. As I walked down the stairs, Simmons fled to an unknown location. 

While checking the exterior of the building Simmons again telephoned this officer and once again said he was in his room. Upon returning to room #302 I met with Simmons in the hallway. He stated he had been in his apartment all night and insisted he had no knowledge of [the intruder’s] whereabouts. Simmons was once again clearly lying. I explained to Simmons if he told any further lies or again misdirected these officers in our investigation, he would be charged with Interfering With a Police Officer, (53a-167a).

The incident ended when police located the intruder at 12:20 a.m. at an entry way to Berkley College. He stated he had consumed 15 shots of vodka and numerous glasses of beers at a party that night. His difficulty walking and speaking caused police to call an ambulance and refer him to Yale administrators. 

Reached Monday, Simmons wrote, “Nearly 15 years ago while I was in college, a person I knew, who was a sophomore when I was a senior was brought into my apartment by friends who said he was making a scene in our building while heavily intoxicated. It was clear this individual had way too much to drink and I told him to leave our building and then escorted him out downstairs. I was unaware of his actions until they were explained to me later that evening and the following morning. As a bystander in this situation who learned of the events after they occurred, it was crystal clear then and remains today that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, should not be tolerated, and must be avoided moving forward.”

The intruder was charged with breach of peace. It takes little imagination to know the incident would likely have been handled far differently in different neighborhoods several blocks from the privileged environs of Yale University.

The 2011 incident was not Simmons’s first encounter with members of the Yale police force–who are vested with all the powers of other police officers in Connecticut. In 2007, two plain clothes officers in the Community Impact Unit were patrolling on York Street near a “an extremely large crowd exiting from Toad’s Place.” The officers, according to their report, “saw Nicholas Simmons emerge from the large crowd in front of Toad’s Place. Simmons walked up alongside the building and began to urinate in plain view in front of the large crowd, all the while talking on the cell phone.”

Simmons was charged with Creating a Public Disturbance, a violation of Connecticut General Statutes §53a-181a. Simmons downplayed his arrest, writing Monday,  “I’m sure many of us would like to go back in time and smack our 18 year old selves for being idiots.”

Simmons is challenging incumbent Republican Ryan Fazio in the district that includes Greenwich, New Canaan, and part of Stamford.

Published October 21, 2024.

State Representative Steve Weir will be off the campaign trail for a few days to join other helicopter pilots as they fly spotters around the Asheville, North Carolina, area look for the bodies of the missing in the continuing aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Weir left Connecticut early Sunday morning for the six-hour helicopter flight for the staging area at a Harley Davidson facility in Asheville. The Hebron Republican is traveling with National Guard CW3 John Behuniak. They will fly rescuers and their cadaver-detecting dogs to areas that cannot easily be reached by motor vehicles or on foot. It is dangerous but essential work that requires skilled helicopter pilots like Weir.

Weir has answered the call. He texted this morning as he prepared to take his first team into the mountains. It is, Weir wrote, “sobering to realize this has gone beyond search and rescue and now” has become a search and recover mission.

Published October 20, 2024.

A close call averted–for now. CVS installed a new president overnight, replacing Aetna veteran Karen Lynch as the head of the troubled giant healthcare company.

The company’s new leader, David Joyner, spent part of his successful career at Aetna before joining the complex and controversial world of pharmacy benefits management (PBM). Lynch had recently added running Aetna to her portfolio after the abrupt departure of Brian Kane after another disappointing earnings report.

CVS Health Corp.’s stock fell by 12% in the aftermath of the announcement of changes at the top of the company and guidance lowering expected earnings in anticipation of third quarter results to be released on November 6th.

Aetna has been a leader in creating and selling popular Medicare Advantage programs. Profits from the policies millions of older Americans enroll in each year have been targets of the Biden administration and elected officials. Efforts to control the cost of government subsidized healthcare will continue to highlight profits made by major health insurance companies providing Medicare Advantage.

Joyner and CVS board of directors chairman Roger Farah, who will serve as executive chair, told the Wall Street Journal the company will move forward intact. That decision will reassure nervous Aetna employees that the company will not be sold as its stock value continues to suffering a nearly yearlong decline.

Published October 18, 2024.

Democrat Brandi Mondato unleashes the fury of facts on embattled Republican incumbent state Senator Paul Cicarella in the 34th Senate District. A mailing from Mondato to voters in Durham, East Haven, North Branford, North Haven, and Wallingford tells the story of Cicarella’s array of legal issues and adds a paragraph on his support for weakening background checks for gun purchases.

The mailer is a vivid presentation of the disabled Cicarella’s years of state workers’ compensation benefits from a fall on a wet state prison floor. Hearst newspapers investigative reporter Jacqueline Raab Thomas revealed Cicarella’s alleged failure to disclose income while receiving $123,000 in workers’ compensation and disability pension benefits. Cicarella worked as a wrestling coach, private investigator and real estate investor while also receiving disability benefits for the injury he suffered after working for 18 months as a correctional officers.

The Mondato mailer adds the strange odyssey of the two-term Republican building a pool on a neighbor’s property–after the neighbor had warned Cicarella he was encroaching on land that did not belong to him. Nevertheless, Cicarella proceeded. Litigation followed. The terms of the settlement are not public but do include a nondisclosure agreement. The wronged neighbor recently returned to court because, he claims, Cicarella failed to perform his obligations under the secret settlement.

Cicarella has been texting voters in the district that he is “one of us.” That is a blank slate approach to persuasion, inviting voters to attribute whatever their background and beliefs are to the candidate seeking their vote. Defining Cicarella’s notion of “one of us” by revelations this year can mean a nightmare neighbor who plays fast and loose with state workers’ compensation and disability rules. There are not enough voters in the district to form a majority in any of its five towns.

Published October 17, 2024.

Democrat Nick Simmons has raised a hefty $279,000 in his campaign to unseat Republican Ryan Fazio in the 36th Senate District. Fazio is relying on $124,000 in public funds and the $17,000 he raised in small contributions to qualify for the taxpayer money.

Simmons received a maximum individual contribution from state Senator Norm Needleman, the Essex Democrat who serves as the co-chair of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee. Fazio is the Senate’s ranking Republican on the committee that has been at the center of complicated issues that will continue to have a profound impact on Connecticut’s future. The committee’s work requires its leaders to possess more sophisticated knowledge than most other legislative committees.

Needleman and Fazio have appeared to enjoy a productive relationship. They worked together on a major piece of legislation in 2023. The state’s urgent energy needs will not be solved with partisan rancor–and the two have kept it out of the committee’s work in this fractious age.

It came as a surprise to see that $1,000 contribution from Neddleman to Simmons, who served as Governor Ned Lamont’s deputy chief of staff before launching his campaign in the spring. There are a few lines left in state politics that one does not cross for the sake of a wider good. Chairs and ranking members trying directly to oust one another from their seats in the legislature was one of them. No more.

Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter’s political action committee gave $1,500 to Simmons. House Democrats have not runout of candidates who could use a late boost, but Ritter has interests beyond the legislature. Greenwich, New Canaan and Stamford send a lot of delegates to Democratic state conventions. An early deposit in the Simmons favor bank may provide a bigger return than helping a couple of struggling Democrats who have been written off by caucus leaders. They too will likely be delegates one day–with their own tales to tell.

Published October 16, 2024