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State Senator Stephen Harding ought to be campaigning with his four caucus colleagues in difficult races. Instead, the Brookfield Republican needed assistance on the final weekend of the campaign from his caucus booster, state Senator Heather Somers (R-Groton). Somers was one of the two Republicans behind the 2017 legislation that has become known as the Millstone bill and continues to cost ratepayers hundreds of millions dollars.

Harding, who is seeking a second term in the 18-town 30th Senate District, became the Senate Republican leader in the spring when Somers and others organized a coup in the 12-member caucus, ousting Kevin Kelly and installing Harding as the figurehead for chief of staff John “Johnny Angel” Healey.

The political weather has changed in Harding’s northwest district. Many pandemic newcomers are Democrats who may not want a committed Donald Trump supporter as their senator. Harding was a Trump delegate to this year’s Republican nominating convention. He has praised Trump running mate JD Vance.

Harding faces an energetic challenger in Democrat Justin Potter.

A sign of Harding’s distress has been his need to bleed the caucus campaign fund of tens of thousands of dollars. Usually the leader is a net contributor to the caucus campaign committee.

Members who survive what could be the Senate Republican annus horribilis will not be able to ignore the hard truth that Harding was more burden than benefit in the campaign. Other members could have used the resources grabbed by their leader. or they could have been saved for future campaigns.

Published November 3, 2024.

Tragic. Connecticut legislative candidates do not often get invited to appear in interviews on broadcast television. When state Senator Tony Hwang did this week, he donned his best embroidered Lacoste, attached a microphone, and stood in a spot that allowed him to be identified by letters on the side of a food truck over his left shoulder. The segment appeared Sunday morning on WTNH’s popular Capitol Report.

Hwang may have skipped the photography class public financing of his campaign paid for a couple of cycles ago. Or the tensions among 28th Senate District Republicans over Hwang’s bid for a sixth term may have caused a campaign worker to have helped set up the memorable shot.

Hwang is known to exhaust the patience of Senate Republican staff members with his requirements that they accompany and photograph him. They may have had enough.

Hwang faces Democrat Rob Blanchard in the district that includes Bethel, Easton, Fairfield and Newtown.

Published November 3, 2024.

A quiet presidential primary day in Connecticut. Polls are open until 8 p.m. and voters will cast ballots at their regular polling place.

The state’s first presidential primary was held by the Democrats in 1976. Jimmy Carter edged out Morris Udall by 2,500 votes. With an endorsement by Ella Grasso, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson came in third with nearly 18% of the vote, 11 days after withdrawing from the race. Such was the power of Ella Grasso 48 years ago.

Published April 2, 2024.

Wilton’s Analisa Stravato wants one of Connecticut’s two seats on the Republican National Committee—the one occupied by Leora Levy.

Because Republicans hold no statewide or congressional offices, minor posts take on significance among frustrated activists in a party in decline. The party’s state central committee members elect the two Connecticut members of national committee. Grumbling grows that a firm date has not been announced for the vote. Republicans are particularly sensitive to some deviations in voting procedures. The “r” word has been whispered.

Levy, who won the 2022 U.S. Senate primary over party-endorsed candidate Themis Klarides by a wide margin, is seeking re-election. Levy won the endorsement of Donald Trump shortly before the primary. Incumbent Richard Blumenthal defeated Levy by 15%—nearly 200,000 votes—in the general election.

Trump nominated Levy in 2019 to serve as ambassador to Chile. Levy’s confirmation hearing was not a success. The Senate did not act on her nomination.

Levy, Stravato and incumbent John Frey faced off on a remote forum last week. Levy’s formidable fundraising record reminded voters what they will lose if they elect Stravato, who served as the party’s vice chair from 2015-2017. She is currently the Republican registrar of voters in Wilton.

Under the anachronistic rules, a state must elect one man and one woman. Frey is unopposed. He is not considered one of the state party’s top fundraisers.

Some people are saying party chairman Ben Proto favors Stravato. This is raising the temperature in the tiny hothouse of state party politics.

Published March 3, 2024.

“Nobody ever wins the Games. Period.” Employees of the Office of the Attorney General will be pitted against one another in a live auction at their annual holiday party. The top prize is a Tong Tasting cooking event featuring General Tong (as he prefers to be addressed) and the Deputy. Everybody loses.

Second prize is not two Tong Tasting events. No, it is Tong’s often vacant parking space. Let them eat cake becomes bid for my space. Third prize is she who shall not be named’s parking space—the Deputy’s space.

State lawyers and other agency employees shall mark the holiday season on Friday afternoon by engaging in a competitive auction in front of their bosses for a culinary event with their top two bosses. By the nature of the cringe-inducing event, Tong and the Deputy will know who bid the most on this tasting event.

A bidding war among colleagues for Tong’s favor is an unseemly method to raise money for the Office Culture fund. It feels particularly grubby by Tong, whose favored mode of travel remains the high horse, who lobbied for years to claw civil rights jurisdiction into his office.

Tong declared in the fourth year of the Lamont administration that every day in Connecticut is a struggle. If this is Tong’s notion of how to pay for Orwellian Work Culture activities, the fund is better empty. Tong can call off his Hunger Games.

Published December 12, 2023.

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For something completely different from the Tong Tasting Hunger Games, read and subscribe to Now You Know—The Cultural Lives of Others, a free Substack newsletter. This edition’s guest is political analyst and writer Chris Cillizza. He explains his passion for Friday Night Lights and All the King’s Men.

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon will mark the end of the municipal primary season by raising money from lobbyists for his Sound CT PAC. The Guilford Democrat has invited lobbyists and others to join him at J Restaurant I Bar, the “midtown Hartford gem.” (When did Hartford get a midtown?) The 90-minute event takes place on September 14th.

Lobbyists may handover $100 each. Individuals (lobbyists are denied their personhood under the state’s campaign finance law and are not considered individuals) may donate $1,000. Other PACS in the world of PACS supporting PACS are capped at $2,000.

Campaign finance reports reveal the Scanlon committee serves as a fund for the former legislator to sprinkle money on local Democratic campaigns. In June, Scanlon dropped $1,500 contributions on Democratic candidates for mayor in Danbury, Middletown and Waterbury. Helpful for the candidates and some seed money for Scanlon when he spies a chance to reach for a higher rung on the ladder.

PACs run for the benefit of politicians who receive millions in taxpayer funds for their own campaigns have become a common means of chipping away at the purpose of public financing. What’s unusual about the Scanlon PAC is that he continues to serve as its chairman. Connecticut’s comptroller has many duties and responsibilities, as well as significant authority in certain spheres of public policy. There is a bit of the unseemly in him serving as the chair of a PAC that solicits lobbyists, individuals and PACs that may have business before him–or hope to do business with him.

Attorney General William Tong provides a contrast. Nancy DiNardo, the reliable state Democratic party leader, chair’s Tong’s Firewall Fund PAC. Tong and Scanlon may be destined to highlight contrasts between themselves as each seeks to squeeze through the state’s crowded bottleneck of political ambition.

This early round goes to Tong.

Published August 30, 2023.

Daily Ructions has been where Connecticut’s news begins for nearly 14 years.

Something new begins on Monday, August 28th.

Published August 21, 2023.

It’s never enough. Insatiable legislative partisans have used the annual bond package to thicken the lining of party coffers. A jarring provision in the bill written by House and Senate leaders raises the maximum annual contribution to a state party committee by an individual from $10,000 to $15,000.

The advent of a generous public campaign finance bill and the proliferation of self-funding moguls has left party committees scrounging for dough—and even missing a payroll now and then. Such suffering.

Provisions of the bond package also expand the public campaign finance bill by establishing grants of taxpayer money for convention campaigns. The bill also allows more coordination between largely lobbyist-financed legislative caucus campaign committees.

With just over two hours remaining in the legislature’s regular session, the public interest continues to take a battering.

Published June 7, 2023.

Introducing Stone Academy students to National Guard recruiters at an emergency career fair was not enough. More than 800 students who were locked out of the for-profit school regulated by the Office of Higher Education (OHE) want a fair deal and some help. OHE Executive Director has provided neither.

Nursing and health aide students with vivid signs took to the street Tuesday to protest Larson’s dithering. The former East Hartford mayor, airport administrator and state senator is looting the fund limited to reimbursing students who lose tuition when a school regulated by OHE closes. The 27-employee agency is paying an accounting firm $200,000 to audit student records, an unprecedented action that has historically been performed within OHE.

The students–mostly minority women–were locked out of their classes when Larson failed to reach an agreement for a teach-out that would have allowed then to complete the academic period. The Stone closing has generated heated accusations and performative press conferences, but no immediate relief for students trying to grab a rung on the ladder of advancement.

Stone has waited for a restive calm to return before beginning its fightback. That has begun.

Published March 30. 2023.

Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump belittled John McCain’s military service in Vietnam. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump of McCain at a Family Leadership Summit. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain spent 5 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison camp after being shot down over Hanoi while on his 23rd flight mission. When the Communist government of North Vietnam tried to score a propaganda victory by releasing McCain after his father became commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, McCain refused to violate the POW code of accepting release before fellow prisoners who had been captured earlier.

Governor Ned Lamont sounded a lot like Trump recently when he spoke of replacing state hero Nathan Hale with lexicographer Noah Webster. Hale was hanged as spy by the British in 1776. Lamont observed that Hale was a “nice enough guy who was captured after a week at the inn. If he had two lives to give for his country, he would have been a spy for us for two weeks.”

Lamont seems to think of himself as a public personality in addition to being governor. He often compares himself to the title character in the series “Ted Lasso”. Now the governor has reduced Hale to material for the Democrat’s strained comic act. If Lamont does believe Hale is no longer worthy of being Connecticut’s state hero, then the governor has revealed something far more unsettling.

Hale was a distinguished student at Yale and joined the Connecticut militia in 1775. He fought in the Battle of New York when the British overwhelmed the Continental Army, forcing George Washington’s troops to flee across the Hudson River under cover of a thick fog.

Washington needed intelligence on British movements and asked for volunteers to disguise themselves and return to New York. Hale volunteered, entered New York, and was caught by the British. They executed him by hanging on September 22nd. He is famously said to have declared at the gallows, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Webster, born in West Hartford in 1758, was a teacher who became an important dictionary and textbook writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Webster was also one of the Federalists’ busiest proponents of private wealth over personal virtue as the foundation of a free nation. Webster’s American history textbook did not mention slavery. He is a curious figure for Lamont to champion as a means to denigrate Nathan Hale.

Published March 16, 2023.