A candidate lending great big chunks of change to his campaign is a sign of confidence or a signal that fundraising has disappointed.

Democrat Eric Coleman, a former state senator and retired Superior Court judge, made a an $80,000 loan to his campaign on June 28th as a thin campaign finance period was two days from closing. Coleman raised just $23,615 from supporters. Including the $80,000 loan, Coleman had $146,873 in cash-on-hand when the period ended on June 30th.

Former Eddie Perez top aide Matthew Hennessy began his late bid for city treasurer with a $50,000 loan. Hennessy defended Perez and was critical of the state’s prosecution of the disgraced mayor for corruption. Perez plead guilty to accepting a bribe and attempted extortion in 2017. Hennessy was one of Perez’s dyslexia explainers in the Democrat’s 2010 criminal trial.

Hennessy and his wife were plaintiffs in a much-commented on lawsuit against Hartford Golf Club and one its members. According to one document in the dispute, “The complaint stems from an alleged argument and physical altercation which occurred at a members’ holiday party in December 2016. Following the events at the party, the club took disciplinary action, suspending Fairbanks for a four-month period, during the winter months.” Hennessy was in a twist over the winter suspension (when there’s not much golf played in West Hartford).

In addition to his own $50,000, Hennessy received $250 from former Connecticut resident Joseph I. Lieberman, who served four terms in the U.S. Senate. Lieberman was elected to his fourth term in 2006 as an independent. (The same people who hailed the late Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., for winning election as governor in 1990 as a petitioning candidate took a different view of Lieberman’s bid 16 years later.) Lieberman was famously supportive of Senator John McCain’s 2008 bid for president against then-Senator Barack Obama.

Lieberman is listed in Hennessy’s report as a lawyer employed by KBT–that would be Kasowitz Benson Torres. That firm and its lead partner long represented loathsome demagogue Donald Trump, including $1.6 million from the campaign from November 4, 2020 to the end of the year. The firm also represented the risible Trump University in a fraud investigation that ended with a $25 million settlement to students traduced by Chancellor Trump and his minions.

Democrat Adam Wood, a lobbyist, contributed $250 to Hennessy and has also made fundraising calls. Hennessy must be a tough sell. The campaign reports just $6,800 in individual contributions.

Incumbent Democrat Carmen Sierra has raised $43,156 in individual contributions. Sierra became treasurer when controversial treasurer Adam Cloud resigned in 2022 after a decade in office.

Published July 11, 2023.

Monday’s funeral of former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., featured a variety of tributes that highlighted some of the memorable events of his political career. Speakers were spoiled for choice as they prepared their remarks.

The former Greenwich Republican-turned-A Connecticut Party leader was hailed for his willingness to take on issues others ducked or ignored. Weicker’s independence included his taste for taking a poke at fellow Republicans when he was in the Senate–and after. (It was a surprise to hear references to a house on fire and “the big bear who loves to get out of the cave and roar.“)

The tributes prompted a thought about an urgent contemporary issue. What would Lowell Weicker have done when he was governor if more than a thousand nursing students, nearly all of them women of color, had been locked out of their school? The Lowell Weicker who was eulogized Monday would not have allowed them to languish in a frustrating and expensive limbo for five months–so far.

Lowell Weicker would not have been indifferent to his administration’s failure to find meaningful solutions for dispossessed students trying to improve their career prospects in Connecticut. He would not have given those students a long, silent shrug.

Eulogies mark an end but they can also point the way forward.

Published July 11, 2023.

James Wade, a discreet, shrewd political adviser, as well as one of Connecticut’s top lawyers, has died at 86 after a long illness.

Decades of Democratic governors, senators and other political notables sought Wade’s advice and, often, his help in a dodgy moment. They came and went; Wade endured, a leading member of the informal government or the government-in-waiting, always consequential.

The Robinson & Cole law firm partner began counseling governors in his 30s with John Dempsey, who served from 1961 until 1971. Ella Grasso recognized Wade’s value during her historic five years leading the state. Her successor, Bill O’Neill, often relied on Wade during his under-appreciated decade as governor.

After O’Neill left office in 1991, a Democrat did not win the governorship for 20 years—a long stretch in the wilderness. Wade sustained his influence and reputation as a savvy force. A mention of James Wade signaled something of note was happening—or was about to be buried.

Wade’s talent for steering the powerful away from or out of trouble overshadowed his lifelong work as a lawyer. He long enjoyed a place among the state’s most respected lawyers, a man to see.

He left this world with many secrets.

Published July 3, 2023.

Municipal control over traditional democratic decisions of local government rules were dramatically altered in the state’s annual bond package. Not content with authorizing billions in spending in the final hours of its regular session, the legislature grabbed power from local charter revision commissions.

The provision was the work of Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons. The first-term Democrat has seen her authority slipping as she engages in a ceaseless public and private battle with the progressive wing of the local party. Seen as a force-in-formation in state Democratic politics, Simmons could be derailed if she continues to face opposition in Stamford from disaffected Democrats. The heavy-handed charter intervention may enflame the former state representatives growing number of detractors.

A charter revision commission has been toiling for more than a year developing and debating changes to the foundation document. Their efforts would go before voters but that may have become moot with the legislature’s pre-emption of local decision-making. The city council—not a center of goodwill for the Greenwich-raised Simmons—will be dismayed to see it is restricted from having its own legal counsel.

The danger with a vanity show of force like this one is that the legislation is broad and affects other towns. Simmons has managed to dismay plenty of Democratic activists nearly three years before the first delegate to the 2026 Democratic state convention is selected.

The requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act will be flying from Stamford to Hartford to assemble the threads of Simmons’s anti-democratic gambit.

Published June 22, 2023.

Donald Trump lawyer and campaign operative Justin Clark will return to Connecticut to front a Bridgeport Republican Town Committee August 17th event.

Formerly of West Hartford, Clark managed Tom Foley’s 2010 losing campaign for governor and his unsuccessful 2014 rematch with Democrat Dannel P. Malloy. Clark began the 2016 on the Chris Christie campaign. After Christie’s campaign ended in tears in New Hampshire, Clark followed the former New Jersey governor to the tumultuous Trump campaign. Clark rose from his perch in the Connecticut Trump campaign to Deputy National Political Director.

Clark did a turn in the Trump White House before moving into the campaign consulting business and the losing 2020 Trump campaign. Clark has also served as a soldier among Trump’s short term recruits army of lawyers.

In 2019, Clark inadvertently provided a recorded preview of the 2020 Trump campaign. In a meeting with Wisconsin Republicans, Clark contended, “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” but accused Democrats in the state.”

Harriet Hageman, who in 2016 called Trump “racist and xenophobic, hired Clark’s consulting firm to helm her 2022 Wyoming race against steadfast patriot Liz Cheney. Hageman, who was endorsed by Trump, won the Republican primary and the general election by large margins.

What a singular political journey Clark has traveled from Gore 2000 to representing Trump in his efforts to stymie the work of the House January 6th committee. It is a tale of the sudden and dark unraveling of a broad major political party into the home of grievance and resentment. A party that held high the torch of freedom applauds the embracing of despots and disdains our democratic allies. And so much winning.

That ought to be some revival meeting in Bridgeport on August 17th. No wonder Abraham Lincoln looks bleak on the invitation.

Published June 19, 2023.

The 37 counts in the indictment of Donald Trump make bewildering reading. New York University’s Ryan Goodman explains them in this episode of Conversations with Bill Kristol. It’s also available as an audio podcast.

Goodman, a professor of law, sets out what the government will need to prove, the challenges of introducing classified documents to a jury, and the role of the judge in shaping the course of the case.

In a week marked by posturing, threats of retribution, and much talk of an apocalypse, Goodman provides an informative view of the perils on the path to justice.

Published June 16, 2023.

Greenwich Republicans will welcome presidential hopeful Vivek Ramawamy to a joint fundraiser this Saturday night at an undisclosed private home. Greenwich has long been a lucrative stop for Republicans (and now more often Democrats) looking to raise a heft haul of campaign donations.

The Ramaswamy event commands a top ducat price of $6,600. For that hefty chunk of change, a donor gets “Call with Vivek, Photo with Vivek, VIP Roundtable, VIP Parking, Program Recognition, Party & Book,” according to the invitation posted on Twitter. The sliding scale of enticements ends at $250. Contributors at that level are entitled to “Keynote & Book.” That presumably means a chance to listen to Ramaswamy and leave with a copy of his book.

Ramaswamy, who lives in Ohio, flirted with a run for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut against Richard Blumenthal in 2022. He appears to have concluded he has a better chance to become the Republican nominee for president than he does to win one of Connecticut two seats in the Senate.

The 37 year old pharmaceutical entrepreneur is making his mark in the campaign as a devoted acolyte of Donald Trump, one of his opponents in the contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Ramaswamy is an unrepentant defeatist in freedom’s battle with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The Ramaswamy plan for Ukraine is to allow Russia to keep what it has taken in exchange for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin agreeing to end his military alliance with China. Ramaswamy would give Putin 72 hours to decide. He would consign millions of Ukrainians to enslavement and genocide under the Russian yoke.

Do not be surprised if Ramaswamy appears in Greenwich carrying an umbrella and wearing a pair of striped pants.

Republican National Committee member from Connecticut Leora Levy may make a courtesy call on the Saturday night event. National committee members often greet presidential candidates when they visit their state. Levy, who was the party’s 2022 U.S. Senate candidate, was in New Jersey Tuesday night. The Greenwich Republican attended Donald Trump’s post-plea party at his “but now I can’t” declassify Bedminster club and summer residence, according to the Washington Post.

Levy may want to drop in on Saturday’s event to amplify Ramaswamy’s threat to pardon Trump if he is convicted by a Miami federal jury. Trump gave Levy a final heave over the finish line with a late endorsement in her Republican Senate primary against party-endorsed candidate Themis Klarides and Peter Lumaj.

Published June 14, 2023.

It’s never enough. Insatiable legislative partisans have used the annual bond package to thicken the lining of party coffers. A jarring provision in the bill written by House and Senate leaders raises the maximum annual contribution to a state party committee by an individual from $10,000 to $15,000.

The advent of a generous public campaign finance bill and the proliferation of self-funding moguls has left party committees scrounging for dough—and even missing a payroll now and then. Such suffering.

Provisions of the bond package also expand the public campaign finance bill by establishing grants of taxpayer money for convention campaigns. The bill also allows more coordination between largely lobbyist-financed legislative caucus campaign committees.

With just over two hours remaining in the legislature’s regular session, the public interest continues to take a battering.

Published June 7, 2023.

The purchase of the Journal Inquirer by Hearst Communications has brought quick and dramatic changes, marking the inevitable transformation of a singular Connecticut newspaper. Few family-owned newspapers endured as long as the JI in the last two decades of print retrenchment.

Nothing will diminish the JI’s years of fearless reporting in north central Connecticut. When I was first elected to the legislature in 1988, I was surprised to learn from colleagues that few represented two-newspaper towns. They knew nothing of the joys and benefits of newspapers competing with each other for stories in what was affectionately known as JI Land, the more than a dozen towns the paper covered with brio.

Reporters stayed to the end of town council, board of education and zoning meetings. Nearly every town had a reporter on the beat full-time. They all made friends with town hall and other local employees. And they were fearless–if they were not they learned how to conceal doubts.

Reporters knew how to use the business end of the Freedom of Information Act–a national model when it was enacted in 1975 with Governor Ella T. Grasso’s support during her first year in office. The paper had a particular knack for discovering mayors who’d operated their cars in ways the law did not permit but sometimes the police did. At least two thought unbeatable were defeated on the strength of JI reporting.

The paper kept a close eye on local zoning boards. Land use has long been a hive of manipulation, favors and outrage.

A reader survey a few decades ago, according to Joe Courtney (we all liked to know who was reading what), revealed readers paid the most attention to the paper’s coverage of school sports. Second were the commentary pages. Battles would break out on the letters to the editor page and rage for weeks. Campaigns hustled to submit letters from supporters before the election cutoff.

JI reporters were fixtures in local courthouses. Sometimes judges–who can be sensitive to public attention–took offense at the paper’s reporting and would disparage the paper from the bench or, in one case, wait for an opportunity to strike in a courtroom. It never worked.

The Ji newsroom was long a rollicking place doing serious work. The reporters were often young and tireless in the pursuit of a story. Their editors were supportive and savvy. For the subjects of a story, the hours between a call from a JI reporter and the paper’s publication in the afternoon could be marked by some trepidation.

Presiding over it all from her office near the front entrance was publisher Elizabeth Ellis. It’s for the best that democracies do not produce many citizens who are able to sustain a regal air. Mrs. Ellis–as she was always known–did. She possessed presence, a formidable air derived from never countenancing bullies. She did not flinch in the face of threats–and they came by phone, letter and over the transom. She reigned for five decades in the service of truth and the joy of a free press.

The day after I first won an election, I went to the JI in Manchester to place an ad thanking the voters of the 14th House District for narrowly electing me. As I sat in the waiting area, Mrs. Ellis emerged from her office, walked in my direction (I thought, “I wonder where Mrs. Ellis is going.”) and congratulated me in her distinctive voice. That I remember it clearly 35 years later is a measure of our own Mrs. Pinchot’s stature.

The Elizabeth Ellis JI made Connecticut a better place to live, serve and participate. Among her many gifts, she nurtured a newspaper with a personality, one that celebrated its own feisty reporting. On some afternoons, the paper practically vibrated with delight in telling what others had done. It was often an adventure to read and sometimes you knew you were witnessing its golden age.

Published June 7, 2023.

The state budget gives the Travis Simms Foundation $150,000 a Youth Services Prevention grant, a program administered by the state’s Judicial Department. State Representative Travis Simms (D-Norwalk) has been attempting to launch and sustain a youth boxing program bearing his name for nearly a decade.

Simms made a previous bid for public funds for the foundation in 2014 when he was the minority leader on Norwalk’s city council. Nancy on Norwalk reported the details.

The Travis Simms Foundation, Inc., was dormant for six years and scheduled for dissolution this month until an annual report was filed with the Office of the Secretary of the State in March of this year. The document lists Sandra Stokes as a board member and Travis Simms, Jr., as founder and executive director. The foundation describes itself as “promoters of performing arts, sports and similar events without facilities” in its revised filing.

The $150,000 grant is the fifth largest of the 281 listed in the section 39 of the budget.

Both Simmses list the home they share with Representative Simms as the business address of the Travis Simms Foundation. Representative Simms was a light middle weight champion boxer in his youth.

The legislature moved the generous grant program from the jurisdiction of the Office of Policy and Management–which has many resources to monitor the spending of state funds–to the Judicial Department–which is given little money to keep a close eye on where the millions given away each year go–several years ago.

It is rare to include a program named after a legislator and run by his or her family in the grant bonanza.

Published June 5, 2023.