Lesser working a corner on holiday weekend to raise lobbyist dough for MATT PAC. He’ll even sell you an ad.
State Senator Matthew Lesser (D-Middletown) has his eye on some lobbyist money–again. Lesser collected enough in small contributions to qualify for public financing of his race for secretary of the state in the spring. Lesser retreated from that contest when he fell far short of winning the party endorsement at May’s nominating convention. He made have made his crucial error when he ceded the party nomination for comptroller to Sean Scanlon.
Lesser declined to primary Stephanie Thomas, the party endorsed candidate for secretary of the state, after she made short work of him. Thomas and her sharp floor operation administered a final humiliation that day by giving Lesser some mercy delegates to insure she’d face him in the convention’s final ballot.
The campaign calendar allowed Lesser to find refuge at his state Senate convention and seek re-election from the four-town district. He defeated a Republican challenger in November.
Lesser’s Middlesex Area Team for Tomorrow (MATT PAC) is offering lobbyists the chance to “Ring in the New Year With Senator Matt Lesser.” The event is January 2nd at the Red Rock Tavern at the edge of the Capitol village. Lesser, who left Wesleyan University before graduating to work on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, is workin’ the same old corner. A lobbyist ducat goes for $100. Other PACs can give up to $2,000 to attend. Businesses can buy an ad in a program book for $250.00.
Lesser held a similar event in pre-pandemic 2019. Much of the money for his PAC came from lobbyists. The organization’s connection to its name has grown tenuous with Lesser’s ambitious. In the fall, it made contributions to Democratic town committees in Ansonia, East Windsor and Vernon. It also gave some of the green stuff that folds to the Working Families Party.
There was a time when a plague of PACs was deemed contrary to the public interest by people much like Lesser. They were seen as an instrument for lobbyists to purchase a disproportionate amount of influence over elected officials. Now, the public finances campaigns and legislators establish slush funds filled with money from lobbyists and their clients. That seems worse than what came before.
Published December 29, 2022.