Scattered reports suggest bitter Republican U.S. Senate hopeful August Wolf will fall short of the 8,079 signatures he needs to force a summer primary with party endorsed candidate Dan Carter, a three-term state legislator. Wolf’s numbers are so paltry in many towns that he’ll need enormous hauls of verified  signatures from Greenwich, Stamford, Norwalk, Fairfield and Danbury.

Wolf took a battering at May’s Republican state convention as late entrant Carter swept the convention in a race Wolf entered a year before.

Pessimistic Connecticut voters are offering a harsh verdict on Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s “new economic reality,” according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. The survey finds a meager 24% approve of the job the second term Democrat is doing. Just 16% approve of Malloy’s handling of the state budget, an issue likely to continue to dominate state policy decisions.

The poll of 1,330 voters found only 28% satisfied with the state’s direction, a new low.

Earnest Republican John Board, according to his Facebook page, served as an intern to New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart from January of this year through May 16th. The Redding Republican performed a crucial task for the ambitious second term mayor: reserving domain names for a bid for higher office. In late December of last year, Board reserved four domain names for five years. The names, each conveying a grim future for beleaguered Connecticut, are erinstewartforct.com, stewartforct.com, stewartforgovernor.com, erinstewartforgovernor.com.

No word on how political domain collector Jason Perillo missed these.

Dennis House had New Britain’s Erin Stewart on Face the State last weekend. The second term mayor says she’s not ruling out a run for governor in 2018, perhaps in competition with her friends volatile Tim Herbst (who had trouble getting re-elected as first selectman in Trumbull last fall) and Mark Boughton, two-time gubernatorial hopeful and longtime mayor of Danbury.

Expect Stewart’s announcement that she thinks she could handle the state’s top job to exacerbate tensions among the trio. Herbst and Boughton require no additional reasons to continue their loathing of each other, but Stewart has found a way to ratchet the tensions.

A letter from Head of School Shelia Culbert to the Loomis Chafee community. This could not have been easy to write.

There’s a fundraiser this afternoon in the 18th Senate District for Democratic hopeful Timothy Bowles. The event hosted by Governor Dannel P. Malloy crony Scott Bates. The sign on the truck summarizes the guest list. Bowles must be having trouble reaching the $15,000 threshold to qualify for public funding of his campaign.

When your candidate for president is this:

You forfeit your right to complain about tactics like this:

One could argue that state Representative Themis Klarides’s support for loathsome demagogue and misogynist Donald Trump invited candidates like August Wolf to engage in the sort of Trumpian attack he launched from Twitter. She abandoned her few standards in April and this is the result.

Dilma Rousseff, the left wing president of Brazil, may be regretting fiddling the national budget deficit numbers during her re-election campaign. Brazil’s legislature has moved Rousseff briskly along the road to impeachment. She’s been suspended from office as the Senate prepares to put her on trial. Her support has crumbled.

Imagine the consequences if it becomes a trend to boot officials from office when post-election deficits appear in the immediate aftermath of sunny campaign declarations and a “new economic reality” is unveiled.

Unhappy Republican U.S. senate hopeful August Wolf, humiliated at Monday night’s nominating convention, announced he has made a rendezvous with failure. The Fairfield County Republican announced Wednesday that he’ll seek to collect more than 8,000 signatures to force a summer primary against endorsed candidate Dan Carter, a state representative.

Wolf, like all who came before him, is about to be surprised. Republicans are dispersed around the state, making the collection of signatures a long march. Getting the required number and a buffer for errors requires a lot of Republican boots on the ground. Wolf ended with 123 delegates at the convention. The volatile candidate lost significant support during the treacherous switch phase of the balloting.

The aging former athlete found drug testing a challenge in his heyday. That will be nothing compared to corralling disinterested Republicans into collecting signatures over the next four weeks. Wolf will not be making friends with party loyalists (the ones who know how to get signatures) with his mewling that the nominating convention was rigged by party bosses. No one can ever name a boss in the state party’s affairs.

Wolf may have one unexpected advantage. Carter appears to be relying on perennial Republican hanger-on Ben Proto for campaign advice. Veterans will test their gray cells trying to recall a candidate Proto helped across a November finish line first.

Republican convention schooled first-time candidate August Wolf on Monday night in how a shambolic campaign will cause them to seek shelter in a safe harbor called Dan Carter. Wolf displayed his unhappiness in an angry day after tweet. It’s the sort of thing that makes a fella want to slam a minivan door so hard it breaks.