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The new state motto : ego autem in hac honores vultum potentis Annie. “I will defer to Annie on this….”

Emails from Governor Ned Lamont’s office reveal Ann Huntress Lamont as a center of power in the Lamont administrations confusing effort to create health insurance policies for individuals and small business groups that would save 30% on premiums and provide networks that would attract customers. Ned Lamont notes in a March 23rd message that his own business had trouble finding affordable health insurance.

As the elements of a plan (there would be many changes) come together, the governor delegates considerable authority to Mrs. Lamont, a healthcare venture capitalist.

Appalling Robert Hyde is hoping to be the Republican nominee for Congress from Connecticut’s Fifth District.

Keep an eye on this. The period for submitting proposals to assist the Lamont administration in restructuring state government ends at 3 p.m. next Friday. The comprehensive invitation for proposals has received little attention.

Read it here. The request for proposals was prompted by the prospect of thousands of state employee retirements beginning in 2022. The successful bidder will work with the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) on finding opportunities for change how state government operates.

Prospective respondents to the RFP have not been given much time to prepare a bid. They might give themselves an advantage by slipping in a few paragraphs on how to address turmoil and lift morale at OPM.

Governor Ned Lamont’s top advisors were excited in June when the Wall Street Journal opinion section agreed to publish a letter from the Greenwich Democrat. Lamont’s missive was a response to a Journal editorial on UTC’s merger with Raytheon and the companies’ decision to locate its headquarters in Boston. The Journal blamed the decision to move UTC out of Farmington on the state’s tax policies.

Lamont’s reply highlighted his first budget. He concluded with a call to stop your complaining, “Part of what ails Connecticut is a willingness to harp on the past instead of focusing on the great assets we have.”

An enthusiastic message from Yale leadership dean to Ann Lamont prompted the governor’s wife to tell communications director Maribel La Luz, “This should be amplified in social media with a paid buy.” La Luz, who soon departed the office for the Department of Economic Development (DECD), didn’t think the taxpayer could be tagged with the bill.

Mrs. Lamont disagreed. “Out of promotion for the state-it’s not political. I consider this a defense of CT and good for business and tourism as it’s a positive piece about the state.” If the public could not foot the bill, could the Democratic party pay for some social media boosting.

The party did pay for a social media buy. When Sonnenfeld did not see the piece going viral, he expressed his disappointment to Mrs. Lamont, who made an inquiry of Ryan Drajewicz, the governor’s chief of staff. Seems the Wall Street Journal did not take down its successful paywall for a letter from Ned Lamont, so anyone interested in the letter but not a subscriber only saw the first paragraph.

Emails obtained from Governor Ned Lamont’s office by a request under the Freedom of Information Act reveal Ann Lamont, the governor’s venture capitalist wife, puts a premium on data. In May, Mrs. Lamont was not best pleased with comparisons between her husband’s popularity and that of his predecessor, surly Dannel P. Malloy.

Every governor of Connecticut will struggle as long as the state is hindered by longterm labor agreements and public mistrust of its leaders continues to grow. Ned Lamont’s quick tumble into unpopularity after taking office in January may have surprised him and his family. There are many differences between Ned Lamont and Dannel Malloy, almost all of them reflecting well on the Greenwich Democrat. The one that vexes Ann Lamont is that her cheerful husband’s unpopularity came faster than Malloy’s.

The comparisons between Lamont and Malloy may not be exact, but they are not, as Ann Lamont tells her husband’s chief of staff, “insane.”

Once more a Lamont wants the staff off defense.

Venture capitalist Ann Lamont was not well-pleased with what she viewed on the May 5th edition of WFSB’s popular public affairs program Face the State. In a haughty message to her husband’s chief of staff, the wealthy Greenwich Democrat expresses alarm that the program’s viewers had the opportunity to participate in a survey on tolls.

Mrs. Lamont knew what the result would be and was vexed—even if, as she claims, “not many people watch” the program. She asks chief of staff Ryan Drajewicz if “we can put some pressure on them to ask it differently or have a second question?”

“Pressure” tells the tale.

A March 9th email from Ryan Drajewicz, Governor Ned Lamont’s chief of staff, indicates he reported to Ann Lamont while copying the governor on the message to Mrs. Lamont. The plan called for the creation of an “aggressive and offensive strategy” for Ann Lamont to review by the end of the day on March 11th.

The initial plan included a request from Drajewicz to Ann Lamont to put him “toe to toe with a Republican next week.” Drajewicz may not have realized that Connecticut’s radical transparency means the partisan divide of the legislature is public information. His fellow Democrats enjoy decisive control of each chamber. Those are the elected officials the Lamonts needed to persuade to support them.

Drajewicz hoped for a week of push back and “grabbing ‘one-liners’ which are easily understood and replayed.” That week of magical thinking continues to prove elusive.

State Representative Raghib Allie-Brennan (D-Bethel) will be bringing his  brand of “energetic and thoughtful leadership” to U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes’s office. The first term 2nd district Democrat will work in Hayes’s district office, moving Allie-Brennan a step closer to realizing his own objective.

Full marks to Hayes for showing enough confidence to hire someone with an eye on the job she holds.

This will be the first most readers have heard of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s plan to hike his state’s gas tax. It seems to have caught Governor Ned Lamont’s attention as he pondered how to seize the initiative after an uneven launch of his new administration.

Capping legislators’ health benefits was unlikely to win friends in the Democratic legislature.

Ryan Drajewicz, Governor Ned Lamont’s chief of staff, tries to explain to Ann Lamont why integrity means abandoning a key campaign pledge three months after her husband was elected governor. This may be a twisted derivation of the “radical candor” philosophy practiced at the Bridgewater hedge fund where Drajewicz worked as an administrator before joining Lamont.

Ann Lamont responds with a realistic assessment of the price her husband will pay.