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He’s the head of the White House Coronavirus task force. Vice President Mike Pence should be wearing a mask–and so should the crowd of campaign workers he’s addressing.

Does Mother not remind him as the day begins to wear his mask and keep it on?

Pence deleted the above tweet.

Middletown businessman Chris DiPentima has been chosen to serve as the next President and CEO of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, Daily Ructions has learned. DiPentima was the head of his family business Pegasus Manufacturing, which is located in Middletown, until it was sold.

CBIA’s board will confirm the executive committee’s recommendation on Thursday. DiPentima will begin his duties on August 1st at as the state’s largest business advocacy group grapples with a recession marked by the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs this year. The association’s health insurance business has also been buffeted by these challenging times.

DiPentima is on CBIA’s board of directors and a past board chair. He is also on the executive committee, which recommended him for the job.

Federal District Court Judge Janet C. Hall upheld Connecticut’s primary petition access law, denying an injunction sought by three Democratic hopefuls and a Democratic voter. The Plaintiffs complained the requirement to obtain signatures of registered Democrats on primary petitions during the COVID-19 pandemic makes it impossible to qualify for a primary. The Plaintiffs sought to have the number of signatures reduced from 5% to 1% of registered party voters in a district.

Governor Ned Lamont used executive orders to extend the signature collection period from 14 days to 16 days. He also reduced the number of signatures required from 5% to 3.5% of registered party members in a district. In addition, Lamont eliminated in person signatures and allowed signatures by mail or electronic means, with no requirement of a witness to the signatures.

Plaintiffs argued that the reduced requirements put an unconstitutional burden on their ability to gain access to the ballot or the right to participate in a primary.

The Plaintiffs in the motion for the injunction are voter Lorna Chand and aspiring candidates Andy Gottlieb, Jason Bartlett, and Richard Lacourciere. The court found “Plaintiffs have not provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that their inability to to obtain the required signatures reflects the near impossibility of meeting the statutory requirements and is not the result of, for example, an insufficient or ineffective effort.”

The plaintiffs have until June 16th to submit petitions to qualify for a primary challenge to the endorsed candidate in their contest.

Fifty-two years ago today Robert Kennedy won the winner-take-all California primary, scoring a four point victory over Eugene McCarthy. Moments after delivering his midnight victory address in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, RFK left through the kitchen, paused to greet hotel workers, and was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. He died the next day.

Above is his 1966 “Ripple of Hope” speech, delivered before the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students on June 6th. If you are assisting with distance learning, consider sharing this speech with your homebound students. Here’s a teaching guide to accompany it.

The speech is a memorable example of individual change. In 1966, RFK was serving in the United States Senate from New York. Three years earlier as attorney general in his brother’s administration, Robert Kennedy had authorized the FBI to engage in wiretap surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Toby Moffett. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s lobbyist is not happy that ordinary standards of transparency caused Dalio Philanthropies to withdraw from a publicly and privately financed initiative. Moffett wrote an opinion piece that appears in CTMirror.org blaming Republicans for wrecking the projected $300 million project by seeking standard accountability in the spending of public funds. Moffett makes no mention of what appears to be the shabby treatment of the education organization’s accomplished executive director.

Those with long memories may recall Democrat Moffett was elected to Congress from Connecticut’s Sixth Congressional district in 1974. Moffett was part of the post-Watergate reforming class. That was the Congress that championed, among other issues, open government legislation.

Moffett declined to challenge fellow congressman Christopher Dodd for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination for the seat of retiring incumbent Abraham Ribicoff in 1980. Instead, Moffett took on Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. of Greenwich, in 1982. Weicker defeated Moffett by nearly 50,000 votes, with the Democrat running far behind other statewide Democratic candidates.

Moffett’s agony in defeat became a long running story in Connecticut’s sympathetic media. In 1986, Moffett challenged often underestimated incumbent William O’Neill for the Democratic nomination for governor. Moffett failed to garner enough state convention delegate votes to qualify for a primary. Four years later, Moffett suffered a crushing defeat when he attempted another resurrection, this time in the open Fifth Congressional District seat. Waterbury Republican Gary Franks beat Moffett and became the first African-American Republican to win a seat in the House in nearly 60 years.

Between comeback bids, the Nora Desmond of Connecticut politics did a stint as a local television news anchor and reporter. He went on to lobby for chemical manufacturing giant Monsanto.

From 2007 until 2012, Moffett lobbied on behalf of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Moffett formed a lobbying company with Democrat John Podesta and right wing former Republican U.S. Representative Robert Livingston to represent the Egyptian tyrant. The Arab Spring in 2011 brought the overthrow of Mubarak, who with his family looted as much as $70 billion from the Egyptian people. Amnesty International condemned Mubarak’s government for its legacy of “mass torture and arbitrary detention.”

A 2012 New York Times story reported the the end of the lucrative lobbying deal:

Lobbyists for the Egyptian government in Washington have ended their contracts with the country because of growing tensions after a raid by Egyptian authorities on several American nonprofit organizations.

The Egyptian government has refused to let employees of the organizations leave the country. The detained workers include Sam LaHood, son of Ray LaHood, who is the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation.

The lobbying firms include the Livingston Group, run by former Representative Robert L. Livingston, Republican of Louisiana; the Moffett Group, run by former Representative Toby Moffett, Democrat of Connecticut; and the Podesta Group, owned by Tony Podesta, one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. Mr. Podesta has close ties to the Obama administration. 

The firms were widely criticized for distributing talking points defending the Egyptian government’s raid. They shared a lobbying contract worth more $1.1 million a year to represent Egypt’s interests in Washington, according to documents filed with the Department of Justice.

Defending the raid of American nonprofit groups that monitored elections and government transparency in Egypt. That’s the Toby Moffett mocking calls for transparency in spending $100 million in taxpayer funds and ignoring the account of a woman who was hired to run the project and mysteriously suspended. This isn’t Mubarak’s Cairo. It’s Connecticut. His talking points will do him no good. We do things differently here.

State Senator Mae Flexer (D-Killingly) accused the Hartford Courant and veteran political reporter Chris Keating of racism for not including state Senator Gary Winfield (D-New Haven) in an article about requiring the wider use of police body cameras. Flexer wrote on her Twitter account that the Courant and Keating “completely erased the incredible work of black legislators like @10SDDem Gary Winfield.”

“You are part of the problem,” Flexer tweeted at the newspaper and Keating, adopting a favorite line of loathsome demagogue Donald Trump in blaming the press for the nation’s ills. Trump has repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people.”

Keating, contacted by Daily Ructions, says that Winfield was the first legislator he called Tuesday morning for a comment on the story and left a message for the New Haven Democrat. Winfield did not return Keating’s call.

In Connecticut, when reporters talk to the four Democratic leaders who set the legislative agenda, they speak to white Democrats because there are no minority members in the top positions in the House and Senate. Flexer would know that because as a member of the House and now the Senate, she has cast her vote for those positions for fellow white Democrats. The Senate Democrats, where Flexer serves as co-chair of the government administration committee, have chosen only white Democrats as their top two leaders for decades.

Winfield, who is African-American, is the co-chair of the legislature’s judiciary committee and is thought to have a chance to oust Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff for the Senate’s number two spot after November’s election.

Flexer has expressed interest in the top Senate jobs, but has been concerned she would have to stop soliciting lobbyists for donations to underwrite her salary with a political organization.

Connecticut begins its 12th week Monday under a state of emergency. The declaration gave Governor Ned Lamont extraordinary authority over every aspect of life in the state during an extended public health crisis. He has exercised his vast temporary power with appropriate prudence. The curve of coronavirus infections has been bent. The state’s healthcare system has not collapsed.

Our work is not done. We must continue to maintain practices that have become habits. Keep wearing a mask, washing your hands, and practice social distancing. Together, we’ll keep the curve bent and reduce the chances of a lethal second wave in the fall.

Lamont’s authority comes with the burden of setting an example in an age of suspicion. That includes wearing a mask in public—as his executive orders require us to do. The public is watching. When Lamont posed for a photo Friday with the proprietor of a Stamford cafe, there were no masks and nothing resembling social distancing. The photo appeared briefly on the cafe’s Facebook page. Comments ensued until it disappeared.

The weekend dustup prompted an ill-considered response of a three tweet thread from Lamont flack Max Reiss, who seemed to miss the point. A weary public looks to Lamont as we erratically make our way out of the lockdown the governor imposed and now struggles to lift with a consistent plan. Reiss will run dry of snark before the public depletes it’s interest in the example Lamont sets, by design or inadvertence, each day.

A second wave later this year or early next will test us all. It will require the public’s confidence in Lamont’s leadership match what it felt this spring. We will need to trust him more than he does us. For the months ahead, little things like photos will continue to mean more than they did before the deluge that arrived in March.

It must be Friday. Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo is at it again. The second-term Democrat is allowing gyms to open while Connecticut’s remain closed. The former venture capitalist was pleased to point out Friday that the Ocean State is ahead of Connecticut and Massachusetts in gym reopenings.

Raimondo, according to ABC affiliate WLNE, “said the state’s opening of its gyms and fitness studios, along with restaurants, put it ahead of neighboring states Massachusetts and Connecticut.”

The Providence television station reported Raimondo posed and answered her own question. “Why? Because I trust you, “I trust you to follow the rules and do the right thing.” Raimondo and trust are not two words that often appear in the same sentence without “don’t” included.

On May 18th, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont delayed the opening of barbershops and salons from May 20th to June 1st to placate Raimondo and coordinate the neighboring states’ actions. Last Friday, Raimondo declared Rhode Island restaurants would offer indoor dining beginning June 1st, weeks before Connecticut restaurants, depositing a plateful of eggs on Lamont’s face.

The Greenwich Democrat appears resistant to an iron law of politics: Do not trust Gina Raimondo.

The Department of Public Health released an urgent warning Thursday to hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living facility that coronavirus test vials provided by the Department of Health and Human Services may produce a chemical reaction that releases deadly cyanide if used with bleach.

The risk occurs when vials are used on Hologic Panther or the Fusion Panther Platforms, DPH’s Jafar Razeq, warned in the memorandum.

Popular Democratic party chair and former lieutenant governor Nancy Wyman will leave her post leading the state party organization. Wyman will take one of Connecticut’s spots on the Democratic National Committee. Wyman will be replaced by Nancy DiNardo, who served as state party chair during the Malloy years.

The DiNardo years were marked by state Democrats being tagged with the the largest campaign finance violation fine in the state’s history. DiNardo was said to have been marginalized in her role by enforcers doing Dannel Malloy’s bidding, though the same could not be said of her executive director, Jonathan Harris. Harris, launched a sputtering campaign for governor in 2018 and currently serves in the Lamont administration.

Wyman became the state party chair in 2019. She replaced Nick Balletto, who had led state Democrats to sweeping victories in 2018. Wyman was a compromise choice after Lamont declined to support U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy’s choice for the position.

Lamont is said to be supporting DiNardo’s return as party chair. The position has long been considered in the gift of the governor. The late Ella Grasso, was the rare exception. She wanted political operator Peter Kelly to serve as party chair in the mid 1970s. State party committee members dealt Grasso a rare defeat when they chose instead a state legislator from East Hampton, Bill O’Neill.