Concern grows over divisive candidate for Lamont deputy chief of staff. Who will be the f*@%^&g weasel this time?

Supporters of Governor Ned Lamont, including former staff members, are expressing consternation that the two-term Democrat is considering Natalie Wagner as his new deputy chief of staff. Wagner, currently serving in the Department of Administrative Services as the $164,000 a year Director of Strategic Operations and Partnerships. That curious title is bureaucratic language for Executive Assistant, one of the great prizes of state government. It is outside the merit system and is often bestowed without competition upon the connected.

Wagner, Daily Ructions readers may recall, was Lamont’s deputy budget director for two months at the start of his first term. She left that position when astonishingly ugly text messages between Wagner and a former member of the state’s highest court, came to light within the Lamont administration. They were later published on this site. That former Supreme Court justice, Joette Katz, had spent eight years as the haughty head of the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Wagner was a budget office liaison to DCF.

In 2017, Wagner and Katz exchanged text messages that were stored on a state issued mobile phone Katz turned in at the end of her tenure at DCF. The messages revealed their animus for Perry Rowthorn while he served as Chief Deputy Attorney General under George Jepsen. The highly regarded Rowthorn, as well as Jepsen, refused to support Katz’s misbegotten plan to take critical DCF budget authority away from the legislature. Abuse followed. Katz called Rowthorn a “fucking ass hole [sic]”and a “weasel.” Wagner appeared to agree and added another name to the weasel category.

The same issue, the handling of the Juan F. consent decree, had several months before caused Wagner and Katz to turn their venomous keyboards on state Representative Toni Walker and then-state Senator Len Fassano. The two serious legislators joined in bipartisan opposition to Katz’s Jaun F. gambit. Wagner and Katz speculated that Walker and Fassano were engaged in a sexual affair. For Katz and Wagner diversity of opinion was a transgression that required a malicious response.

The Daily Ructions posts revealing the texts are below. It bears repeating that the comments about Walker revealed anti-feminist tropes by Wagner and Katz. Wagner texted Katz after one public meeting at which Walker and Fasano appeared, writing, “And I think Toni’s remarks were some kind of code about where they should meet up for an afternoon delight.”

Six years in high office can change a person, but one is usually completely formed at 70 years old. The ugliness that Katz and Wagner trafficked in properly offended Ned Lamont in 2019. People who have worked for the success he enjoys in his sixth year in office are alarmed that Lamont may have lowered his standards for those who he chooses to serve at the heart of his administration.

Published September 27, 2024.