Republican gubernatorial Mark Boughton hopeful is caught in his own web. The popular Danbury mayor’s tight alliance with disgraced Republican Lisa Wilson-Foley (formerly Wilson Foley) is undermining his bid for governor a month before the party nominating convention. He’s having trouble explaining the $375 maximum contribution he received last fall from Wilson-Foley and her nursing home magnate husband Brian Foley.

Boughton was Wilson-Foley’s most prominent supporter in her 2012 bid for Congress. He delivered a hefty chunk of delegates to Wilson-Foley in May of that year, though she fell short of winning the party endorsement. The Simsbury Republican’s primary bid collapsed after the federal criminal investigation of her secret scheme with felonious former governor John Rowland became public.

Two weeks ago, the Foleys appeared in a Hartford courtroom to plead guilty to federal charges arising out of their grimy conspiracy to make secret payments to Rowland through their nursing home operation for services to Wilson-Foley’s 2012 campaign. Rowland was indicted last week.

Boughton’s close relationship to Wilson-Foley has become a handicap as delegates for May’s nominating convention begin making up their minds in the race for governor. He said in a text Monday evening that when the Foleys contributed to his committee “no charges had been filed. They hosted a fundraiser for the Simsbury First Selectman (sic) candidate at their home and they were donating to Town Committees (sic), the State Party (sic), etc.”

The ongoing investigation, however, was widely known, last fall, particularly among Wilson-Foley’s coterie of hangers-on in the Farmington Valley. Boughton took a high hard one from the New Haven Register over his curious relationship with the Foleys. Boughton split a hair when he claimed in a reply that the discredited Foleys did not contribute “qualifying” funds to his campaign for governor.

The $750 from the Foleys may prove expensive for Boughton.

For Monday of Holy Week or any other day. Mahalia Jackson was an event, and she liked to sing with Dinah Shore.

Erratic Connecticut Democratic party chair Nancy DiNardo is at it again. The Trumbull Democrat has been spewing unsubstantiated charges against Republican gubernatorial Tom Foley over the indictment of felonious former governor John G. Rowland for alleged campaign finance violations. DiNardo says Foley has some explaining to do over support he received from Rowland in the former ambassador’s search for delegates in his 2010 campaign for the Republican nomination for governor.

DiNardo has had nothing to say, however, about a chilling connection that ought to have her on the warpath. Rowland raised money for U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) in his 2008 campaign for re-election to the House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 5th District. DiNardo let the mask slip last year when she proclaimed her political philosophy: “In politics, nobody does something for nothing.” Jon Lender’s Government Watch column from 2008 ought to have DiNardo issuing screeds at regular intervals.

Here’s the column:

  When Republican Gov. John G. Rowland faced impeachment in 2004 for accepting favors from state contractors, state Sen. David Cappielloof Danbury was among the first members of the governor’s party to say he should resign. Cappiello’s stand seemed vindicated when Rowland was forced to quit and then went to prison in 2005. But in Rowland’s home Waterbury area, close associates grumbled that it was a betrayal they wouldn’t forget. Four years later, it looks as if they haven’t. Cappiello now is the Republican 5th District congressional nominee. But the Republican ex-governor isn’t helping him and, in fact, Rowland is quietly trying to raise campaign money for Cappiello’s Democratic opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy of Cheshire. In a Sept. 12 e-mail a copy of which found its way to The Courant,  Rowland urged friends and political associates to attend a fundraising reception for Murphy, at $250 a pop, this coming Tuesday at the Roma Ristorante in Oakville. “We want to have a good Waterbury turnout,” Rowland wrote. “Please let us know if you can attend.” The list of e-mail recipients included some familiar Waterbury-area family names such as Cicchetti, Mengacci and Sousa, that were attached to top state appointments or lucrative contracts during Rowland’s years as governor, and even now. Even if anyone claims it makes political sense for Waterbury business types to back the incumbent, it’s clear that a big motivator for the Rowland crowd is payback, said a veteran state Republican operative, adding that Cappiello “is dead to them.” 

    Asked about this, Cappiello said simply: “I have no comment. Rowland did not return a call from The Courant. Murphy met with Rowland and other constituents during the summer at Domar’s, a restaurant and political watering hole in Waterbury, but “it wasn’t a fundraiser or a planning session for a fundraiser,” said his campaign manager, Kenny Curran. He said he was unaware of Rowland’s efforts to promote the fundraiser, but noted that Murphy and Rowland “are on the same side now in trying to bring back a city that is desperately in need of help.” Out of prison since 2006, Rowland is back on his feet now that influential allies have installed him in a controversial, taxpayer-funded economic development promotion job at Waterbury’s chamber of commerce. One of his longtime friends, Waterbury lawyer Gary B. O’Connor, is hosting Tuesday’s Murphy fundraiser. O’Connor is a registered Democrat, but goes way back politically with Rowland. In 1995, Rowland’s first year as governor, a political action committee cofounded by O’Connor announced plans, later dropped because of legal questions, to pay for a Rowland advertising campaign against state employee pay raises. Murphy is not the sort of conservative-edged candidate Rowland has favored in the past. On his campaign website, Murphy calls himself a “strong advocate for ethics reform” and bemoans Washington’s “culture of cronyism” in recent years. He says he wants to “tackle government corruption” and remove “private money … from the political process.” And now Rowland, who presided over a “culture of corruption,” according to his successor, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, is helping to round up private money for the youthful Democrat with the reformer’s image.

From the former governor’s website promoting his skills as an inspirational speaker:

“Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with it that counts. No one learns from success, you really only learn from your mistakes and failures.”
John G.Rowland

He appears not to have lived by his own bromide.

You can’t complain about a run of 93 years. It ended Sunday. Mickey Rooney could always summon the sprite in a performance, a rare talent as the years go by. Here he is performing with exuberant Ann Miller the highlight of their improbable 1979 Broadway smash, Sugar Babies.

Rooney had recently completed shooting a film. He had greasepaint in his veins.

Veteran Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti will make an impressive fundraising showing in his first quarter as a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Daily Ructions can report. Lauretti confirmed Thursday that he has raised more than $100,000 in small contributions since launching his campaign at the start of the year. A candidate needs to raise $250,000 in contributions of $100 or less to qualify for taxpayer funding of his campaign.

The twelve term mayor and former restaurant owner collected his haul from 1370 contributors. He sounded confident of his prospects to build on his first quarter success. Lauretti, who knows how to deliver a barb, points out that his fundraising success this year was not preceded by five years of hankering after the state’s top job. He means you, Tom Foley and Mark Boughton.

Catch more of the confident Lauretti at next week’s Hartford Courant/Fox CT debate at the Mark Twain House.

October 25, 2011 was a busy day for John Rowland. The conniving former governor had a noon meeting with Brian Foley, Lisa Wilson-Foley, and Christopher Healy to discuss his criminal scheme to become a secret consultant to Wilson-Foley’s doomed bid for Congress. It was not, however, his first meeting with Brian Foley that day. At 10:30 a.m., according to page nine of the document released Monday in conjunction with the Foleys’ convictions, Brian Foley and John Rowland met with a lobbyist.

Federal law enforcement authorities describe the mystery gust as “[a potential lobbyist for the Nursing Home Company].” This suggests that Rowland was shopping around lobbyists as part of his unusual and lethal mix of business interests. Who could it have been?

Convicted federal election law violator Lisa Wilson-Foley ought to have taken her buddy Janet Peckinpaugh’s crisis communications seminar. Here’s Peckinpaugh explaining what happens when trouble strikes. At no point does the former news anchor and political candidate advise, “Lie boldly for two years.”

Take a look at Wilson-Foley in a Peckinpaugh-produced Apple Rehab commercial, the subject of some debate with not-so-secret consultant John G. Rowland.

Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst has made a fast start on his bid to qualify for public financing in the race for the Republican nomination for state treasurer. Herbst, who began his campaign in January, has raised more than $56,000 in qualifying contributions toward the $75,000 requirement. He is on track to ring the fundraising bell before the party’s May nominating convention.

Christopher Dodd devotee and Herbst rival Bob Eick released an ad that appears intended to boost his chances of winning the race. You be the judge.

The former Brian Foohey and his wife, Lisa Wilson Foley, entered guilty pleas Monday in federal court to campaign finance violations arising out of their illegal conspiracy with felonious former governor John G. Rowland. Lisa Wilson Foley was an unsuccessful Republican congressional hopeful in 2012. She placed a poor third in the Fifth District Republican primary.

The Foleys, generous donors to Democratic U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy during his rise from the state legislature (he was so fresh and full of new ideas), are said to have turned on Rowland late last year. The investigation was threatening to engulf both of the one-time canoodling Yale MPA students.

The nursing home magnates denied Rowland was working on Lisa Wilson Foley’s congressional campaign—until they no longer did. Read the document setting forth the grimy conspiracy. For $35,000 and third place? A big price to pay.

Lisa Wilson Foley appears not to be crippled by remorse. She’s off to a skiing vacation in Colorado. She follows that with a month in Asia to celebrate the graduation of one of her children.