Kevin Kelly clips Johnny Angel’s wings. Healey replaced as Senate Republican chief of staff.

That didn’t take long. Farmington Republican John Healey will no longer serve a chief of staff to the Senate Republican Office. Veteran Republican Gary DeFilippo, former Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner in the Rowland and Rell administrations, will fill the vacancy as the dozen members of the minority caucus brace themselves for some serious headwinds.

Healey, seen first and foremost as a loyalist to popular New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, has been perceived as having Stewart’s interests as much in mind as the caucus’s, which are urgent. Stewart, re-elected to a sixth term in November, has not thrived in state party politics. She dropped her 2018 bid for governor on the eve of the state convention to make a late run at the second spot on the ticket. Stewart lost the lieutenant governor primary to Southington Republican Joe Markley.

Healey came into public view in May 2013 when he was revealed on a FBI recording as carrying illicit cash from then-House Republican Leader Lawrence Cafero’s office to a law enforcement co-operator who had put the money in Cafero’s office refrigerator. Cafero had Healey, who he dubbed Johnny Angel, take the money to FBI informant Raymond Soucy. Neither Cafero nor Healey notified law enforcement authorities of the bribery attempt.

Veteran staffer Jack Shannon remains.

The regular session of the legislature begins Wednesday.