Democrat Brandi Mondato unleashes the fury of facts on embattled Republican incumbent state Senator Paul Cicarella in the 34th Senate District. A mailing from Mondato to voters in Durham, East Haven, North Branford, North Haven, and Wallingford tells the story of Cicarella’s array of legal issues and adds a paragraph on his support for weakening background checks for gun purchases.

The mailer is a vivid presentation of the disabled Cicarella’s years of state workers’ compensation benefits from a fall on a wet state prison floor. Hearst newspapers investigative reporter Jacqueline Raab Thomas revealed Cicarella’s alleged failure to disclose income while receiving $123,000 in workers’ compensation and disability pension benefits. Cicarella worked as a wrestling coach, private investigator and real estate investor while also receiving disability benefits for the injury he suffered after working for 18 months as a correctional officers.

The Mondato mailer adds the strange odyssey of the two-term Republican building a pool on a neighbor’s property–after the neighbor had warned Cicarella he was encroaching on land that did not belong to him. Nevertheless, Cicarella proceeded. Litigation followed. The terms of the settlement are not public but do include a nondisclosure agreement. The wronged neighbor recently returned to court because, he claims, Cicarella failed to perform his obligations under the secret settlement.

Cicarella has been texting voters in the district that he is “one of us.” That is a blank slate approach to persuasion, inviting voters to attribute whatever their background and beliefs are to the candidate seeking their vote. Defining Cicarella’s notion of “one of us” by revelations this year can mean a nightmare neighbor who plays fast and loose with state workers’ compensation and disability rules. There are not enough voters in the district to form a majority in any of its five towns.

Published October 17, 2024.

Democrat Nick Simmons has raised a hefty $279,000 in his campaign to unseat Republican Ryan Fazio in the 36th Senate District. Fazio is relying on $124,000 in public funds and the $17,000 he raised in small contributions to qualify for the taxpayer money.

Simmons received a maximum individual contribution from state Senator Norm Needleman, the Essex Democrat who serves as the co-chair of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee. Fazio is the Senate’s ranking Republican on the committee that has been at the center of complicated issues that will continue to have a profound impact on Connecticut’s future. The committee’s work requires its leaders to possess more sophisticated knowledge than most other legislative committees.

Needleman and Fazio have appeared to enjoy a productive relationship. They worked together on a major piece of legislation in 2023. The state’s urgent energy needs will not be solved with partisan rancor–and the two have kept it out of the committee’s work in this fractious age.

It came as a surprise to see that $1,000 contribution from Neddleman to Simmons, who served as Governor Ned Lamont’s deputy chief of staff before launching his campaign in the spring. There are a few lines left in state politics that one does not cross for the sake of a wider good. Chairs and ranking members trying directly to oust one another from their seats in the legislature was one of them. No more.

Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter’s political action committee gave $1,500 to Simmons. House Democrats have not runout of candidates who could use a late boost, but Ritter has interests beyond the legislature. Greenwich, New Canaan and Stamford send a lot of delegates to Democratic state conventions. An early deposit in the Simmons favor bank may provide a bigger return than helping a couple of struggling Democrats who have been written off by caucus leaders. They too will likely be delegates one day–with their own tales to tell.

Published October 16, 2024

Republican Mike France’s second campaign for Congress in Connecticut’s 2nd Congressional District continues to provide his party with a grim reminder of the high cost of running a serious campaign. France raised $639,859 as of September 30th, according to his campaign finance report. A significant chunk of that has gone to consultants and fundraising, leaving the former state representative with only $65,859 in the critical final five weeks of the campaign–if he does not pay the campaign’s $26,445 debts before Election Day.

Democrat Joe Courtney, the popular nine-term Democrat, raised $1,204,021, through the end of September. He had nearly half of that, $628,178, left for the final sprint to November 5th. Courtney has a loyal statewide network of donors, so he could quickly raise more if he needed it. The former state representative also has a long records of successfully promoting submarines as a critical part of the nation’s defense. Groton-based Electric boat has a workforce of 23,000 and orders for 19 submarines.

In the House, Courtney has become an important and respected voice in the AUKUS security alliance of democratic nations protecting freedom in the Pacific region.

Published October 16, 2024.

A confidentiality agreement precludes the public from knowing the details, but a September 30th motion by Andrew Koutroumanis against state Senator Paul Cicarella in the dispute over Cicarella building an in-ground pool in considerable part on Koutroumanis’s property reveals the matter continues to combust on the extensive court docket.

Koutroumanis claims that the settlement agreement in the action that was initiated in 2023 included an obligation on both parties “not to make public or to disclose to any other persons, including the news media,” the terms of the settlement agreement between the neighbors. Koutroumanis claims he has performed whatever the agreement required of him. Cicarella, the plaintiff asserts, has met neither of the requirements he agreed to in the voluntary settlement.

“The [settlement] agreement sets forth two separate deadline dates for the defendant [Cicarella] to perform various affirmative obligations,” according to Koutroumanis. He claims in his motion to enforce the terms of the agreement, that Cicarella has failed to perform his obligations by the two deadline dates. Koutoumanis asks to court to enforce the agreement since Cicarella has ignored the detailed notice of his default provided by the plaintiff.

This disregard of the agreement is costing Koutroumanis money. Students of Cicarella’s extensive litigation will recall that Koutroumanis showed Cicarella that if the North Haven Republican proceeded with his construction plans, he would be encroaching on Koutroumanis’s property. Cicarella declined to listen.

In another lawsuit, the litigious Cicarella recently withdrew his claim for damages for extensive injuries suffered in a motor vehicle collision in New Haven. The public record contains no details of how the case was resolved. He had been seeking $490,000.00 for his injuries, including surgery on a toe and a 25% permanent disability of his cervical spine.

Cicarella has been the subject of unflattering coverage of his state worker’s compensation benefits. Those arose out of an injury he suffered in 2009, 18 months into his job as a corrections officer. He would later be cleared to return to work on light duty. Cicarella never returned to any job with the state, but he did received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state benefits and has worked as a wrestling coach and private investigator.

Cicarella’s various injuries are likely impeding his ability to knock on doors, remain standing, and exposing himself to sunlight as he seeks a third term.

Published October 7, 2024.

Rob Blanchard, the Fairfield Democrat running in the 28th Senate District, has scored an early October surprise, Daily Ructions can report. Blanchard is the only Democratic Senate challenger to receive the endorsement of the Police Officers Association of Connecticut.

The POACT endorsement will keep incumbent Republican Tony Hwang further on the back foot as he struggles to respond to a savvy challenger occupying the broad middle ground in the four-town district. Republicans have long thought they owned the copyright on public safety issues and police support. That began to crumble when they remained silent in the face of Republican Donald Trump’s assaults on the rule of law. It has grown worse.

Hwang will find it difficult to perform renovations on his reputation in the final weeks of the campaign. Photoshopping his campaign logo from clothes purchased with public campaign funds is an odd way for the former executive searcher freshen his campaign for a sixth term.

The Fairfield Republican was given no opportunity to exercise a small-minded veto of the police association endorsement of Blanchard, like he exercised with the Sierra Club.

POACT “is an organization dedicated to keeping its members informed on legislation being debated at the Capitol which directly affect police officers, their working conditions, their wages and benefits and public safety, and to promote the involvement and action of police officers in such debates.”

The endorsement of the police officers comes on the heels of expressions of support for Blanchard by two gun safety organizations. Mom’s Demand Action designated him a Gun Sense Candidate distinction. He received an “A” grade from Connecticut Against Gun Violence (CAGV).

The 28th Senate District is comprised of Bethel, Easton, Fairfield, and Newtown.

Published October 2, 2024.

Former state Representative Mike France is as bad a candidate in his Second Congressional District bid as he was two years ago. He thinks a pink ribbon will hide his record.

France today posted on Facebook what he may think is a clever acknowledgement of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There’s something he does not want voters to know. The Republican was one of just three members of the state House to vote against requiring state regulated health insurance plans to cover the cost of 3D mammograms. France cast that vote in April 2016. The tally still tells the tale: 139 yes, 3 no.

The 3D technology largely paid for itself with its advanced technology in providing clear results that significantly reduced the number of doubtful mammograms that required additional imaging. In the long, excruciating march to a cure for breast cancer, advances in technology are in the vanguard. It will profit us nothing if we do not make it widely available through the cost-sharing of health insurance.

In this fractious age, 139 members of the House, Republican and Democrats from across the political spectrum agreed. Only France and two other Republicans voted no.

Now, when France talks about breast cancer, he starts with a joke

Check your breasts, please. And then check France’s record. There’s nothing funny about it.

Published October 1, 2024.

Jeff Desmarais is running as a Democrat in one of the state’s handful of reliably Republican state Senate districts, the 32nd. It takes some brass to run a race like that and take the fight to the incumbent. Desmarais is meeting the moment.

The Watertown Democrat is reminding that Republican Eric Berthel voted for the 2017 Millstone deal that left ratepayers howling this summer. Berthel is the Q-Anon-supporting legislator who saw some virtues in the loony conspiratorial minded shadowy organization that is fixated on nonexistent Satan-worshippers who drink blood and control the media–while running child sex rings.
Bethel, Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Middlebury, Oxford, Roxbury, Seymour, Southbury, Washington, Watertown and Woodbury, that is your state senator.

QAnon came into public view in 2017–the same year Berthel voted for the Millstone deal. What must his fellow conspirator hunters think of that?

Desmarais texted supporters, in part, today:

A growing number of Independents are supporting Jeff Desmarais for State Senate. Our current senator, Eric Berthel, has become a career politician who is only in it for himself: regularly voting against us just to get his name in the paper.

Berthel voted against the largest tax cut in state history, and for the 2017 Millstone-Eversource deal that’s responsible for the recent spikes in our electric bill. 

Jeff Desmarais believes in cutting taxes and holding big corporations accountable to lower costs for our families.

A text message is not a policy seminar but Desmarais’ ought to prompt voters to seek fuller explanations–a debate, even–on the critical issue of the supply and price of electricity in Connecticut.

Berthel, not known for his interest in the details of legislation, was on the wrong side of the Senate Republican internal coup earlier this year.

Published September 27, 2024.

Supporters of Governor Ned Lamont, including former staff members, are expressing consternation that the two-term Democrat is considering Natalie Wagner as his new deputy chief of staff. Wagner, currently serving in the Department of Administrative Services as the $164,000 a year Director of Strategic Operations and Partnerships. That curious title is bureaucratic language for Executive Assistant, one of the great prizes of state government. It is outside the merit system and is often bestowed without competition upon the connected.

Wagner, Daily Ructions readers may recall, was Lamont’s deputy budget director for two months at the start of his first term. She left that position when astonishingly ugly text messages between Wagner and a former member of the state’s highest court, came to light within the Lamont administration. They were later published on this site. That former Supreme Court justice, Joette Katz, had spent eight years as the haughty head of the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Wagner was a budget office liaison to DCF.

In 2017, Wagner and Katz exchanged text messages that were stored on a state issued mobile phone Katz turned in at the end of her tenure at DCF. The messages revealed their animus for Perry Rowthorn while he served as Chief Deputy Attorney General under George Jepsen. The highly regarded Rowthorn, as well as Jepsen, refused to support Katz’s misbegotten plan to take critical DCF budget authority away from the legislature. Abuse followed. Katz called Rowthorn a “fucking ass hole [sic]”and a “weasel.” Wagner appeared to agree and added another name to the weasel category.

The same issue, the handling of the Juan F. consent decree, had several months before caused Wagner and Katz to turn their venomous keyboards on state Representative Toni Walker and then-state Senator Len Fassano. The two serious legislators joined in bipartisan opposition to Katz’s Jaun F. gambit. Wagner and Katz speculated that Walker and Fassano were engaged in a sexual affair. For Katz and Wagner diversity of opinion was a transgression that required a malicious response.

The Daily Ructions posts revealing the texts are below. It bears repeating that the comments about Walker revealed anti-feminist tropes by Wagner and Katz. Wagner texted Katz after one public meeting at which Walker and Fasano appeared, writing, “And I think Toni’s remarks were some kind of code about where they should meet up for an afternoon delight.”

Six years in high office can change a person, but one is usually completely formed at 70 years old. The ugliness that Katz and Wagner trafficked in properly offended Ned Lamont in 2019. People who have worked for the success he enjoys in his sixth year in office are alarmed that Lamont may have lowered his standards for those who he chooses to serve at the heart of his administration.

Published September 27, 2024.

Erin Stewart disclosed her political ambitions to WTNH’s Dennis House. She will not seek a seventh two-year term as mayor of New Britain and is moving closer to a second bid for governor.

Stewart performed the rare feat of maintaining her popularity in Democratic New Britain in six elections, sometimes carrying the rest of the Republican ticket into office with her. Stewart made her formal announcement that should would not seek re-election in 2025 in a video posted on social media.

Stewart made a run for the Republican nomination for governor in 2018. It failed to strike a chord with Republican donors and convention delegates. On the eve of the party’s nominating convention she switched to the contest for lieutenant governor snd qualified for the August primary. Stewart managed only a distant second in the three candidate race, running 15% behind Southington Republican Joe Markley, the party-endorsed candidate.

Bob Stefanowski, the Republican nominee for governor in 2018 and 2022, gave serious consideration to selecting Stewart as his running mate two years ago. He chose Fairfield Republican Laura Devlin for the second spot on his losing ticket.

Published September 24, 2024.

Five South Windsor Republicans have for the third time in two days scheduled a special meeting to remove the sixth Republican on the Town Council, Audrey Delnicki, as mayor. It will be a surprise if the five can each find their way to the South Windsor Town Hall at 6 p.m. on Friday.

It’s scheduled for a time that appears intended to limit public attendance and participation. The most recent agenda repeats the quintet’s complaints that Delnicki does not share information with them and has failed to provide leadership. Their inability to be able to complete the task of calling for a special meeting in one simple move suggests it may not be possible to lead them.

Local voters issued a firm rebuke of the six incumbent Democrats when they sought re-election after using a revaluation to enact a punishing tax increase. The victorious Republicans promised voters they would cut taxes. The five unhappy winners, Richard Balboni, Michael Buganski, Carolyn Carey, Toby Lewis, and Deputy Mayor Matthew Siracusa form a majority on the nine-member body. They have the votes to deliver their promise. Siracusa does not need to be mayor for them to lower the town’s mill rate–if they can accomplish the difficult task of addressing spending.

The odious phrase that a fish rots from the head comes to mind. This is the contemporary Republican Party. Perhaps the five can convince Marjorie Taylor Green or Matthew Gaetz to provide greeting for Friday’s meeting.

Voters expect the people they elect to lead their local government to sort out their differences quietly and with regular public displays of competence, not spectacle.

Published September 18, 2024.