Category — Uncategorized

Diversity of thought and the exercise of free speech rights are under siege in the tony shoreline town. More proof of the assault on traditional rights came in an overheated Facebook post by Jennifer Baldwin, an independent member of the town’s board of education.

Baldwin took offense at a candidate placing a door hanger on her door. Baldwin’s Facebook post expresses alarm that a candidate would knock on the door of a home with his opponent’s sign on the lawn. Most candidates know that a lawn sign does not mean everyone in a household is committed to the candidate displayed on the lawn. It is possible, even in 2022, for most people to live in a household with people who do not cast identical ballots.

Richard DiNardo is the candidate who is the target of Baldwin’s scorn and suspicion. His response–also on Facebook–expressed bafflement at Baldwin’s fury in his own bemused Facebook post. He’s the Republican nominee in the 98th House District and faces Democrat Moira Rader on Tuesday for the open seat. Rader, who serves on the board of education with Baldwin, won the Democratic primary for the nomination in the House District, which includes Guilford and part of Branford.

Baldwin is the Independent party nominee for state treasurer. In addition, she is an assistant public defender in New London. She strikes some discordant notes in her Facebook screed for a public defender. Calling the police because a candidate knocked on your door? Most public defenders would roll their eyes in contempt at such nonsense. Baldwin is confused as to “what intimidation looks like.” By any reasonable standard, it does not look like a candidate leaving a piece of campaign literature on a door. Instead, it looks like a Facebook post in which the writer announces she will be contacting “the police to issue a no trespassing order.”

The most alarming Baldwin bit comes at the end where Baldwin reveals a taste for 21st cruelty. “[P]lease shame him.” It is unhinged. Public defenders are often seek prosecutors and judges to act with restraint and mercy in viewing criminal defendants. Baldwin appears unfamiliar with those virtues.

Poor Rob Hotaling.

Published November 4, 2022.

Republican state Senate candidate Pietro ”Rocky” Camardella responded to Democratic incumbent Cathy Osten’s recent xenophobic campaign mailer with a celebration of America’s beautiful mosaic.

Published November 4, 2022.

The loan shark was in full flower during tonight’s second and final debate in this long race for governor. Republican Bob Stefanowski continued his mewling about the state’s rainy day fund. He wants to pillage it and leave the state without the means to cope with the recession Republicans insist is about to descend upon us. Stefanowski is using loan shark math when he claims Connecticut residents would be better off by letting Payday Bob deplete the rainy day fund.

Robert of Arabia might want to ask his running mate for a tutorial on the historic 2017 bipartisan budget that set a course for repairing the state’s battered finances. State Representative Laura Devlin (R-Fairfield) voted for it.

Stefanowski has a business background in payday lending. He sprang from the grimy world of loan sharking. Savings are kryptonite for the loan shark. Payday lenders offer the loan of last resort. Connecticut’s rainy day fund is the loan shark’s nightmare in technicolor.

The test of Stefanowski’s philosophy of sending government funds to the people came before this campaign started. Robert of Arabia is making millions from the Saudi sovereign fund. One suspects the Madison Republican has not urged his Desert Kingdom overlords to return the hundreds of billions in the authoritarian government’s fund to the people of the nation.

Published November 1, 2022.

Democrats are on maneuvers. The party is sending foot soldiers to the 5th Congressional District to save two-term incumbent Jahana Hayes’s faltering re-election campaign. The Wolcott Democrat is in her first tough race. She won an easy primary victory in 2018 as the challenger to the party-endorsed candidate, followed by convincing general election wins in 2018 and 2020.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy was Hayes’s most influential early supporter and is credited with providing her with a ready-made organization in the 2018 nomination brawl, Hayes’s first time as a candidate. Murphy has been alarmed at Hayes’s uneven campaign to see off surging Republican challenger George Logan. A Hayes defeat would not reflect well on her initial sponsor.

Murphy began early in October asking the party’s most effective organizers outside the 5th to abandon local campaigning and send workers to help Hayes navigate Republican headwinds. The request has not gone down well with some Democratic candidates and party leaders. They planned to aid Democrats seize opportunities (or guard against surprises) in other parts of the state. Murphy, meanwhile, has been campaigning for candidates in states other than Connecticut as Hayes struggles.

Democratic campaign pros have seen enough. They no longer view Hayes campaign insiders as credible sources of reality. With nine days before Election Day, campaign professionals from outside Connecticut continue to express alarm at the ill-prepared state of the Hayes campaign.

Logan, in contrast to Hayes, has only known tough races in his three previous campaigns. He ousted a veteran Democratic a state senator in 2016 and eked out a narrow re-election as Republican colleagues were losing easier districts two years later. Logan lost his 2020 bid for a third term. Logan and his team have given realistic assessments of the state of the race to hardened party operatives who can regulate the flow of dough to a campaign. They continue to be impressed by Logan, who has in return embraced 2020 election deniers as the price of admission.

Logan brings further advantages to his campaign. The people working on his campaign like him. No one on the Logan campaign works harder than the candidate.

Published October 30, 2022.

State Senator Cathy Osten plays a tough brand of politics. The Sprague Democrat reminds voters of that in a sledgehammer campaign mailer festooned with purple and yellow flowers on its lower border. She declares, “I only serve one flag: ours.”

It’s an odd point to raise unless Osten wants to emphasize a contrast with her opponent, Pietro “Rocky” Camadella. The Norwich Republican tells his stirring American tale on his campaign website. He was born in Naples, Italy and served in the Italian Navy, reaching the rank of sergeant.

Like may Italian immigrants and the descendants of millions of Italians who came to the United States in the 20th century, Camardella holds dual citizenship. He speaks English with an Italian accent.

Italy is our ally. It belongs to NATO. Immigrants have brought the riches of its culture to the United States and introduced generations of Americans to its beauty. On appropriate occasions, plenty of Americans have saluted the Italian flag.

Ella Rosa Giovianna Oliva Grasso (née Tambussi) was the daughter of Italian immigrants who settled in Windsor Locks. Take a moment to ponder what the nation’s first female governor elected in her own right would think of Osten’s ugly sentiments.

This is Trump level xenophobia dressed up as patriotism. What a low opinion Osten must have of the people of Columbia, Franklin, Hebron, Lebanon, Ledyard, Lisbon, Marlborough, Montville, Norwich and Sprague to think they share her base instincts that there are no standards in the pursuit of re-election.

Here is a video antidote to Osten’s ugly use of public funds to stir anti-Italian sentiments. Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti)with Caterina Valente (born in France to Italian parents and living in Paris today at 91) singing Antonio Carlos Jobim’s One Note Samba. A beautiful mosaic that Cathy Osten want to poison with their pursuit of office.

Published October 21, 2022.

Robert Kennedy led the tributes to President Kennedy at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. The evening was scheduled for a night after delegates nominated Lyndon Johnson. Johnson feared RFK’s appearance on the podium would cause delegates to nominate the martyred president’s brother if they had not yet picked their nominee. Johnson’s fear of Robert Kennedy would distort the Texan’s administration until Kennedy was assassinated nearly four years later.

Published August 27, 2022.

Republican Mary Fay, the party’s candidate for State Comptroller, issued a terse statement Monday afternoon. The West Hartford town council member has not endorsed Themis Klarides in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary.

Fay has not endorsed a candidate in what has become an intense contest between Klarides and Greenwich Republican Leora Levy. She appeared to be gaining ground on party-endorsed Klarides for several weeks. Levy’s sharp turn to the right was magnified when she sprang a rambling, grievance-laden endorsement from Donald Trump on party voters Thursday night. The brief ode to Levy was surrounded by unhinged rants about Blumenthal and Republicans who have won elections.

The Klarides campaign, which has struggled to organize itself and present a substantive message, was not prepared for the Trump intervention. It has turned to social media and paid texts to unleash a torrent of endorsements by Republicans in elected office, including one purporting to be from Faye.

Fay, who is in a race to qualify for public financing of her campaign, understands there is nothing to be gained by inserting herself into the Senate campaign between Klarides and Levy.

Fay faces state Representative Sean Scanlon in November. Scanlon is the executive director of Tweed New Haven Airport, one of the great prizes of the state’s political hackarama. No job posting, no competition, just have the right friends.

Published August 8, 2022.

Themis Klarides’s Senate campaign appears stalled at the worst time—less than a week before the August 9th primary. There are small signs of the failure of party loyalists to engage with the party-endorsed candidate.

One appeared Wednesday on Twitter. Klarides asked supporters to retweet an ”I’m Voting for Themis” graphic. After nearly nine hours, Klarides had 26 retweets. The comments were mostly critical, which is not unusual. A campaign with some troops can be prepared for that.

The eleven-term former state representative faces Greenwich Republican Leora Levy on Tuesday. Levy has been courting anti-gun control Republicans in her lurch to the right. The Cuban refugee and ”career American” is virulently anti-immigrant.

Fairfield Republican Peter Lumaj is the third candidate on the ballot.

Published August 3, 2022.

The State Election Enforcement Commission has voted to initiate an investigation into Brock Weber’s campaign for secretary of the state. The Republican operative submitted an application for a primary grant to finance his campaign at the beginning of June. The SEEC did not act on the application for more than $400,000 in public funds.

Weber abandoned his campaign two weeks ago with a terse statement that it would no longer be possible to carry on. On July 22nd, the committee announced Weber had withdrawn his application and terminated his candidacy. It voted to begin a rare investigation of for submitting fraudulent contributions in order to receive public funds.

You can see the commission acting in a brief video at the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/ctseec/videos/351479350505462

Updates as events require.

Published July 29, 2022.

Full marks to Mark Lauretti, serving his 16th term as mayor of Shelton. The Republican was joined by Governor Ned Lamont and Ann Huntress Lamont at a local July 4th fireworks display Saturday. Lauretti and Lamont, a Democrat, posed for cheerful photos. That’s state Representative Chris Rosario (D-Bridgeport) between them.

No poisonous nonsense from either Lamont or Lauretti about the other being an enemy bent on destroying the state or the nation. Two politicians who hold public office doing what comes naturally on this holiday. Not long ago their cordial encounter would have been unremarkable. Today it is reassuring.

Lauretti joined Lamont’s Republican opponent, Bob Stefanowski, at a parade Monday—as former gubernatorial hopefuls sometimes do.

Published July 4, 2022.