Category — Posts

The French film director Jean-Luc Godard has died in Switzerland at 91. The New Wave innovator directed created one of film’s most memorable dance scenes after the Golden Age of Hollywood had ended in 1964’s Band of Outsiders.

Published September 13, 2022.

A new survey of likely voters by  WTNH / The Hill / Emerson College Polling finds Governor Ned Lamont leading Bob Stefanowski by 10 percentage points in their rematch of the 2018 election. Democrat Lamont, according to the poll, has the support of 48.5% of those surveyed, with Republican Stefanowski winning 38.4% of 1,000 likely voters.

The poll’s most challenging result for Stefanowski as the campaign enters its final seven weeks is Lamont’s favorability rating among respondents. In his fourth campaign statewide campaign, the Greenwich Democrat is viewed favorably by 55% of likely voters. Stefanowski trails by 10% in that metric as well.

Four years ago at this point in the campaign, a Sacred Heart poll found Lamont ahead of Stefanowski by 6%, 43%-37%. Lamont went on to defeat the Madison Republican 49%-46%, a margin of 44,000 votes. In 2018, Democrats enjoyed tailwinds created by the first two years of Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy. Polls have shown the advantage Republicans expected voter discontent to create a red wave for them. That appeared to dissipate over the summer. Since 2006, has often run distinctly contrary to national trends in statewide elections.

Today’s poll contains a finding that may mean Stefanowski faces an impossible task in his self-funded campaign. A majority of likely voters, 53%, believe Connecticut is headed in the right direction. That is a distinct shift from the eight years Dannel P. Malloy served as governor and the pre-pandemic years of Lamont’s administration. Satisfied voters do not often remove incumbents.

Published September 13, 2022.

Observers expect a contentious meeting of the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) board at its Wednesday meeting. It begins at 5:30 p.m. Members of public may listen to the meeting by dialing (415) 655-0001. The access code is 43808661#.

Board members face a full agenda. It includes a report from the Internal Audit Committee on the sharply disputed issue of MDC payments for legal services to the firm of Sandler & Mara. A summary:

The Internal Audit Committee has been busy. It alleges that MDC Commissioner Alvin Taylor attempted to bypass the committee’s investigation into legal fees paid, claimed or owed to Sandler & Mara by attempting to negotiate a settlement with a representative of the law firm and “thereafter contacted one or more Commissioners to solicit their support” for a settlement. The committee requests the board refer the matter to the MDC Ethics Advisory Committee (which probably has not done a lot of business over the decades) for its review of Taylor’s alleged unauthorized intervention.

There’s more. The Internal Audit Committee requests the commissioners authorize the sum of $50,000.00 to retain outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation into 2021 and 2022 Sandler & Mara, P.C. invoices. This suggests the investigation has become more complicated than the committee–recently reconstituted–can handle.

Another document from the committee notes that it has submitted questions to MDC’s longtime chairman, William DiBella, concerning the Sandler & Mara, P.C. billing issue. The report does not indicate if it received answers from DiBella by its September 1st deadline.

DiBella has recused himself from the Sandler matter because, as DiBella stated at the critical August 1st board meeting, the Old Saybrook denizen who established his residency in Hartford by keeping his toiletries at his son’s home overlooking Bushnell Park, is a personal and business client of Sandler.

Published September 7, 2022.

State Senator Eric Lesser lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts Tuesday. The Longmeadow resident made expanding rail service between Springfield and Boston his top priority during his four terms in the senate. A recent plan adds service to Pittsfield.

The Springfield to Boston rail line is central to providing modern train service between Hartford and Boston.

Lesser, who served in the Obama White House as an aide to David Axelrod, had hoped to overcome the advantages candidates from the Boston area traditionally enjoy in statewide campaigns against rivals from the sparsely populated western part of the commonwealth. With nearly 90% of the votes counted, Lesser was trailing Salem Mayor Kimberly Driscoll by 88,000 votes. Lesser was a prodigious fundraiser but found himself competing with a well-funded super PAC as the primary campaign neared its conclusion.

Driscoll joins Attorney General Maura Healey on the Democratic ticket. Healey is the overwhelming favorite to win the race for governor in November. Republicans chose Geoff Diehl on Tuesday to face the popular Healey. The most recent campaign finance report shows Diehl begins the general election campaign with less than $20,000 in cash on hand.

Springfield developer and Connecticut Republican Anthony Ravosa made news last month when he helped organize a fundraising event for Driscoll. Daily Ructions readers may recall that Ravosa was a lobbyist for Enron with close ties to former Governor John Rowland before the deluge.

Published September 7, 2022.

Evidence that Greenwich public schools discriminate against Roman Catholic and older teaching applicants have roiled the state. A Project Veritas video reveals a Greenwich administrator blabbing about how he is able to hire teachers who fit his narrow profile of who can be trusted to inculcate students with his acceptable political message. Catholics need not apply.

Attorney General William Tong lobbied the legislature during his first term for expanded powers to investigate and pursue civil rights violations in Connecticut. This is the Stamford Democrat’s moment as he seeks a second term.

The victims may not know who they are. Tong can exercise his authority to find them through records from the Greenwich school administration.

Greenwich is a privileged and insular world by design. The police department has a reputation for suppressing bad acts rather than acting on them. It may have the least welcoming beaches in the state. And now Catholics and fully formed adults who represent diversity of thought appear to have been the targets of a noxious administrator. Tong ought to be preparing to launch his investigation as this post is published.

The attorney general will render his new power meaningless if he does not use it to confront Greenwich and its vast experience in keeping poisonous secrets.

Published August 31, 2022.

UPDATE: State Republicans are relieved to learn that the “Kill Bob” sign that greeted and alarmed them at their Greenwich office this morning is not a threat. The sign is from the neighboring dojo. The sensei attaches it to a dummy named Bob to inspire his karate students to beat the daylights out of Bob. He forgot to take it inside at the end of last night’s class. A dummy named Bob.”

Ajarring morning for Connecticut Republican party leaders. They arrived this morning at their Greenwich office on Putnam Avenue to be greeted by a menacing sign that says, “Kill Bob.” The sign appears to refer to Bob Stefanowski, the party’s nominee for governor.

The message is clear and reprehensible. The flowers drawn around the tape letters are creepy.

The matter has been reported to the local police. Party chairman Ben Proto is expected to release a statement shortly.

Published August 30, 2022.

Norwalk lawyer Jessica Kordas has submitted an application for public financing of her campaign for attorney general. The Republican made the deadline for the $986,000 bonanza with her Sunday filing. Kordas reported raising $91,648.02 in contributions not exceeding $290 each. That gives Kordas a $5,000 buffer over the $86,,600 required for the state’s generous campaign financing program.

This will be the first time all four Republican under-ticket candidates have qualified for public financing, giving their party an unusual amount of cash to spend in the final two months of the campaign. That’s a lot of t-shirts, sweatshirts and baseball caps for candidates who cannot resist wasting a chunk of the dough.

Published August 29, 2022.

West Hartford Republican Mary Fay’s campaign for comptroller gets a major boost this weekend. Fay told supporters in an email she has raised the $86,600 in small contributions needed to qualify for $968,000 in taxpayer funds for the sprint from Labor Day to Election Day.

Fay faces Democrat Sean Scanlon, who qualified for public funds early in the campaign. Scanlon will have been busy this weekend coping with an oil spill at Tweed New Haven Airport, where the Democrat was parachuted into a political plum post as executive director in 2019.

Published August 28, 2022.

Governor Ned Lamont may doubt his own polls. The Greenwich Democrat’s internal polls, Daily Ructions has learned, find him enjoying a wide lead over Republican Bob Stefanowski in their rematch. Lamont’s Thursday tweet from his campaign account, posted above, was unusually harsh.

Lamont has spent millions from his fourth generation family fortune cultivating an image as a nice guy in touch with everyday life. (The frequent use of the word “folks” is often a sign of a public plutocrat straining to seem ordinary.) It’s unusual for Nasty Ned to show his public face.

Stefanowski may have prompted Lamont’s disproportionate response by highlighting the federal criminal investigation of the State Pier project in New London and its escalating costs. Stefanowski called the increasing price tag of for the redevelopment of the State pier into “a state-of-the-art heavy-lift capable port facility” part of a “corruption tax” that the Madison Republican intends to talk more about in the final two months of the campaign.

The cost of the New London project has increased from $93 million to $255 million with little more than shrugs from state officials. The Day’s David Collins reported recently that federal law enforcement authorities have subpoenaed six years of Connecticut Port Authority records. The port authority has been a persistent headache for Lamont. He appointed his then-deputy budget director, Kostantinos Diamantis, to oversee the project in 2019. It was, Lamont declared, “up to Kosta to deliver the goods.” Diamantis, whose name Lamont will not say, departed from the administration last October. Federal criminal law enforcement authorities have also sought documents related to him.

Lamont now and then allows his penchant for displays of petulance slip into public view. The abandonment of discipline is never good. A governor confident in his record and the campaign he’s running this year, does not need to revive the “PayDay Bob” theme from 2018. Ned Lamont is not built to complain about how other people made their money. This is the provenance of surrogates and mouthpieces.

Stefanowski made his fortune made his fortune in the grimy world of payday loans. We know that. It’s one reason Lamont won a 3% victory over Stefanowski on his third try for statewide office. It’s imprudent of Lamont to invite the origins of his and Stefanowski’s wealth to occupy the campaign’s centerstage. The founder of the Lamont family fortune, Thomas Lamont, was a world famous financier who bankrolled Benito Mussolini’s fascist government. Thomas Lamont, according to acclaimed historian Ron Chernow, was Mussolini’s “accomplice.” Lamont, Chernow discovered in his research, advised “Benito Mussolini to liken his invasion of Ethiopia to the heartwarming settlement of the American West.”

This seems like an imprudent path for Lamont to trod. Scrutiny of the accumulation of great wealth always tells a tale the beneficiaries of a fortune would rather remain vague. It’s not how Thomas Lamont’s most notable descendant should want to spend the next 10 weeks.

Published August 26, 2022.

Melissa McCaw, Governor Ned Lamont’s former budget chief, will teach a class in budgeting at the University of Connecticut. McCaw served as Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management from January 2019 until she resigned in February to become head of finance for East Hartford.

McCaw will teach Public Finance and Budgeting to Master of Public Administration Fellows on five Saturdays between October 22nd and December 3rd at UConn’s Hartford branch.

At OPM, McCaw presided over two programs, school construction and the State Pier project, that are the subject of federal criminal investigations.

McCaw’s friend and colleague Kostantinos Diamantis expressed interest in the MPA Fellows program, according to an April 22, 2021, email the sent to Mohamad Alkrady, Director of the School of Public Policy. Diamantis told Alkadry that he was not the only Diamantis interested in the MPA program. “Also my daughter who is EA to Chief States Attorney is also interested I added her to this email.” [sic]

Anastasia Diamantis is no longer an executive assistant to the Chief State’s Attorney. Richard Colangelo retired as Chief State’s Attorney after coming under fire in an independent investigation of his hiring of Ms. Diamantis in 2020. Kostantinos Diamantis was suspended from OPM and retired from his position as head of the state’s school construction financing program in 2021. He has attempted to rescind his retirement.

Published August 25, 2022.