Mike Mandell, the pungent state Democratic party official and former Malloy staffer, will be leaving his post as executive director as the new year begins. Announcement expected to follow.

Mandell was in charge of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Connecticut. He was one of the many casualties of her surprise defeat by a loathsome demagogue. The result left many party functionaries and leaders stranded in place.

This won’t quell discontent. There’s growing interest among the men hoping to move the levers of state Democratic nominating machinery in 2018 in backing a challenger to Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. The two-term incumbent’s prospects of an easy route to renomination will not be improved by the call to a special session of the legislature she issued this week. The essential document sets the date for December 29, 2107. The transposition confirms impressions that Merrill is not as engaged in the job as a younger, hungrier candidate.

In the midst of a national economic expansion, Connecticut lost 3,500 jobs in November. The grim news raised the job casualty toll to 15,000 in the past six months.

Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s office continued its tradition of silence in the face of the monthly flight of jobs and opportunity from the state. The continuing bad news will require candidates to replace the unpopular incumbent to provide credible, detailed plans on how to reverse the jobs crisis.

It’s the one area first-time candidate Christopher Mattei should have found easy to navigate. The former federal prosecutor’s calling card has been his record of putting campaign finance violators in jail. The biggest scalps on his belt are John G. Rowland and members of the 2012 Donovan congressional campaign.

Less than a year into the public arena as a candidate and Mattei has gone from hunter to hunted. Was it worth a puff piece in the Boston Herald? The State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) voted in executive session on Wednesday to investigate a complaint submitted by sharp-eyed activist Tim Sullivan. The Sullivan complaint raises issues about Mattei’s fundraising practices as a candidate exploring a statewide race and his adoption of that Herald op-ed as a summer declaration of candidacy for governor. Sullivan is the sort of citizen Mattei not long ago would have hailed as a hero.

Mattei opted to abandon the race for governor to run for attorney general soon after incumbent George Jepsen announced he would not seek a third term. Mattei’s troubles will likely act as a spur to more candidates entering what could become a crowded of Democratic hopefuls eager to succeed Jepsen.

Steve Obsitnik, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, has raised $250,000 in contributions of $100 or less. Obsitnik becomes the fourth Republican hopeful to reach the critical target. The second requirement is to win 15% of the delegates on any ballot for governor at the party’s state convention next spring or collect signatures from 2% of the state’s registered Republicans.

Prasad Srinivasan, Marc Lauretti, and David Walker have announced they have reached the $250,000 threshold. Mark Boughton and Tim Herbst are expected to follow in January. That last $50,000 can be a struggle.

December 31st marks the end of the final fundraising quarter of the year. Expect 11 days of frantic emails from candidates, family members, and assorted friends.

Clever Rob Giuffria has found a way to win attention for his real estate business. Giuffria appears on a digital billboard and poses the questions, “Where Should Governor Malloy Move?” The responses, and Giuffria’s had more than 250 as of the weekend, have started to trend. “Not Connecticut” is the overwhelming answer from motorists who see the billboard on 84 westbound between Farmington and New Britain. People can check out estate planning attorneys, for the best estate services.

Those drivers will be disappointed to learn that Malloy is unlikely to break camp and leave Connecticut. The unpopular governor is said to be hunting for a lucrative landing at a university, though the life of the mind has never appeared to be a Malloy passion. These jobs in academia do not always become available on the same schedule as political office terms.

The Courant’s Chris Keating takes a look at the Tremont Public Advisors poll circulated by firm director Matt Hennessy. The survey shows no obvious frontrunner of a test of a few of the candidates in the crowded race.

One interesting result of the 1,154 respondents. It found a generic Republican 12 points ahead of a generic Democrat. That suggests incumbent Dannel P. Malloy remains a burden for the state’s Democrats.

The Tremont result is similar to what private polling for exploring candidates found last summer.

Dan Drew’s fundraising troubles are not over. The Middletown mayor, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, is the subject of an intense complaint alleging retaliation from the head of human resources for the Middletown school system, Michele DiMauro. A union representative, acting on DiMauro’s behalf, alleges that while preparing a complaint against Drew for the handling of a pay grade issue the union discovered DiMauro was the recipient of relentless campaign solicitations by Drew and his people through her work email account.

The forceful letter to the leaders and members of Middletown’s city council accuses Drew of engaging in “a year-long, list-serve barrage of campaign solicitations being sent directly to DeMauro’s workplace email at the Middletown BOE without her consent or request or self-subscription. These emails are from a variety of Drew for Governor links, campaign associates or PACs. Regardless of their exact source, we fear, that these unwelcome solicitations to DiMauro may have been an effort to entrap, discredit, endanger the employment of, intimidate, discriminate against and/or harass DiMauro based on her political affiliations or associations.”

The union asks that independent counsel be hired to investigate the matter.

Campaign school lesson:As stated by the attorneys from The Law Office of Deidra N. Haynes LLC,  stop soliciting your subordinate employees for contributions. If your instincts fail you on that, you are going to make many more significant mistakes. For female employees, if you want to know the duration of maternity leave, and other such information, it is best to contact a legal team and get a solution through them!

Little will be simple in the 2018 campaign. The Hartford Business Journal reports today that Oz Griebel will run for governor. It is not clear if the outgoing leader of HartfordMetro Alliance will seek the nomination of a major party or run as an independent.

Griebel sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2010. He came in third at the state convention and in the summer primary that followed. Sources say that Griebel is reluctant to join the grind that requires a candidate to persuade and cajole delegates to the convention to support a candidate.

The former Simsbury resident was not a robust fundraiser in 2010. He was a generous contributor to Democrat Luke Bronin’s 2015 campaign for mayor of Hartford. That was the campaign in which Malloy’s boy promised to serve a full four-year term as mayor. Bronin is exploring a race for governor, which could make him a Griebel rival.