Mattei Taking Improper Contributions.

The transition from enforcing campaign laws as a prosecutor to a candidate who must abide by them can be a challenge. Witness Democrat Chris Mattei. The elite prep school graduate (Loomis Chaffee ’96) came to the public’s attention by prosecuting former Governor John G. Rowland, nursing home moguls Brian Foley and Lisa Wilson Foley, and members of former House speaker Christopher Donovan’s 2012 congressional campaign staffers and contributors for campaign finance violations. Mattei may be more sympathetic with that roll call of the guilty now that he’s having so much trouble wrestling with reporting for his own exploratory committee.

The maximum contribution to an exploratory committee is $375. It is not $400, $500, or $750. It is $375. Mattei and his campaign people struggle with this basic rule.

The Hartford resident’s 3rd quarter report is replete with contributions exceeding the limit that had to be returned. Others, however, have yet to be sent back. They include $400 contributions from Matthew Jasinski and Leonard Crone, $500 from Susan Miller, and $750 each from Adam Neuheus and Boston “consultant and chocolatier” Caitlin Welby. This is the sort of reporting that can lead to trouble.

Mattei’s wrestling with math may provide the beginning of an answer to one of the persistent questions of the campaign: Why won’t he talk about the state’s grim financial problems? He may be terrible with numbers.