State Senator Norm Needleman asked lobbyists to solicit their clients to purchase advertisements for three Senate Democratic PACs holding a joint fundraiser Thursday. Needleman is sponsoring the event at the Essex Corinthian Yacht Club. The co-chair of the legislature’s energy and technology committee, Needleman states in a follow-up to his original request to communicator lobbyists that he is not asking them to violate state law by soliciting clients. The plain meaning of Needleman’s message contradicts that claim.

When Needleman’s first appeal for the his event did not elicit the expected avalanche of ads at $250.00 for each PAC, Needleman suggested there had been some confusion. Thus, the request that lobbyists solicit their clients for a trio of checks.

“I am aware that many of you have been asked multiple times to give to these PACs. That is one of the reasons why I am asking for business checks for advertising in the program books, an area that may have been overlooked.” Needleman began his detailed instructions with a claim that he was “humbled by the response I have received to the fundraising event.” Humility is not usually associated with a further twisting of the screws on lobbyists and their clients.

“Particularly for the communicator lobbyists–I am asking you to reach out to each of your clients and have their businesses write 3 business checks at $250 each, one ad for each program book. I believe they are a number of organizations who have not so. While I recognize you cannot directly solicit, you are able to share this information with them,” Needleman continued. The Senate Democrats are taking names.

Asking lobbyists to “reach out to each of your clients and have their businesses write 3 business checks at $250 each” is requesting lobbyists to solicit their clients. Needleman claiming he is not asking lobbyists to solicit does nothing to dilute his specific request that the lobbyists “have [clients’] businesses write 3 business checks….” The Essex Democrat provides specific directions to lobbyists that include soliciting for three $250 checks, one for each Senate Democratic PAC. It is not ambiguous.

The legislature enacted in the aftermath of the Rowland scandals a generous campaign public financing program that has cost taxpayers scores of millions of dollars. Its purpose, sponsors and supporters claimed, was to eliminate in political campaigns the influence of lobbyists and businesses that needed lobbyists. Needleman’s instructions to lobbyists tells them to violate the law. They are not allowed to solicit. Asking lobbyists in a second solicitation for his event to instruct their clients how much they must pay and to whom they must pay it is asking lobbyists to solicit their clients.

Communicator lobbyists know they are not allowed to solicit their clients for campaign fundraising. They also are aware that Needleman is keeping a list of whose clients are giving and whose are not. “I try to operate in a way that ‘makes sense‘ for all involved, hence the program book business advertisement check request.” Some lobbyists may decide that It “makes sense” to risk violating the law rather it does to make Needleman’s list of whose clients did not pony up three $250 checks.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission may want to seek a copy of those advertising books and determine who bought ads, when they paid for them, and who brought the opportunity to give to their attention.

Published October 10, 2022.

Leaders of public universities usually know to stay out of partisan politics. University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel P. Malloy is no ordinary public higher education executive. The former two-term Democratic governor of Connecticut attended a Democratic Governors Association event for donors in Portland, Maine in July.

The DGA event was held not long after the Essex Democrat nearly lost his job in June over making an embarrassing bollocks of an unsuccessful attempt to hire a University of Maine at Augusta president—a “mistakes-were-made” mess that may cost Maine taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next several years.

As governor, Malloy used public higher education as a safe harbor for members of his administration on the hunt for pension boosts. Attending an exclusively partisan event that aided Governor Janet Mills’s re-election may be seen as compromising a public education institution that most expect to stay well-clear of party politics. The DGA has been running ads boosting Mills in her race with Republican Paul LaPage, who served two terms before losing to Mills in 2018. LaPage has promised to oust Malloy if he defeats Mills in November. LaPage won two three-way contests for governor, winning in 2010 and 2018. Maine’s unusual term-limits provisions prevented LaPage from seeking a third consecutive term but is eligible to run again after four years out of office.

Trustees of the University of Maine System in July gave Malloy a one-year extension on the three-year contact that expired in June. They also froze his salary for 2023 and denied him a 2022 bonus.

The July 13th DGA event took place while the National Governors Association held its summer meeting in Portland. Nineteen governors attended the conference, which began on the 13th and concluded two days later.

The DGA event included a brief reunion between Malloy and Governor Ned Lamont, who did not hesitate during his 2018 campaign for governor to rate Malloy’s eight years in office a failure. Both Cathy Malloy and Ann Huntress Lamont attended the DGA event in Portland. Mrs. Lamont was heard expressing her regrets that she’d not had time to catchup with Mrs. Malloy.

Published October 9, 2022.

Louis Jacobson, longtime student of Connecticut politics, analyzes the nation’s gubernatorial campaigns in US News. Jacobson concludes Democrat Ned Lamont is on course to win a second four-year term.

Republican Bob Stefanowski, Jacobson notes, ran against Lamont four years ago “as a strong Trump supporter in a solidly blue state.” The Madison Republican’s abrupt late August shakeup of his campaign team, he writes, was “not exactly the sign of a campaign on a roll.”

With just over four weeks left the campaign, a consensus is emerging among observers, Republicans and Democrats that the race has slipped away from Stefanowski barring a late seismic event. A game changing development is unlikely to come from the cautious Lamont in his fourth self-financed statewide campaign. If Stefanowski had something compelling to say to voters he ought to have unveiled it months ago.

Published October 7, 2022.

Republican Senate nominee Leora Levy will never be a United States Senator from Connecticut, but her campaign will make one dream come true. The Greenwich Republican will hold a campaign fundraiser at Mar-A-Lago on October 18th.

Tickets for the joint event with the National Republican Senatorial Committee range from $1,000 to $25,000. That top contribution gets the donor a photograph with the manager and maitre ‘d of the club.

Levy, who made a splash in the party primary by opposing women’s access to abortions, received a boost with an endorsement by phone a few days before Republicans went to the polls. Levy has not harvested many $2,900 maximum contributions to her campaign, but she did receive one from Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski.

Levy has made loans to her campaign and also paid some back to herself with supporters’ contributions. Levy’s post-primary fundraising has been thin. She was excluded from a September Florida fundraising tour of Florida by the party’s top prospects.

The retired commodities trader has stood out by highlighting the blessings of freedom she has enjoyed in the United States as a refugee from the island prison of Cuba while revealing herself as a shrill opponent of bestowing them on others fleeing despotism.

Published October 4, 2022.

Vice President Kamala Harris will launch a rescue mission for Rep. Jahana Hayes, the two-term Democrat struggling in her contest against Republican George Logan. Harris is expected to visit Connecticut on Tuesday or Wednesday and will likely include a stop in vote-rich New Britain. With Connecticut’s economy contracting by 4.7% in the second quarter of the year, Hayes is facing some unexpected local headwinds that will be hard to explain to restive voters.

State and national Republicans are investing their hopes in Logan to provide a high profile victory in a year that has seen their optimism for other races collide with reality. The sprawling 5th District runs from the western Hartford suburbs to the New York border and extends as far south as Cheshire.

Hayes has faced one tough race—her 2018 primary campaign against Simsbury Democrat Mary Glassman. Hayes scored a landslide over the Glassman, who was once closely aligned with Governor Ned Lamont and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy. Hayes has won two general election victories by wide margins.

Logan has known only hard races. He defeated a veteran Democratic state senator in 2016, eked out a narrow re-election in 2018 as more experienced Republican colleagues were falling in a Democratic wave, and lost his bid for a third term in 2020. Logan brings prodigious energy and an air of goodwill to his campaigns. National Republicans appear to have recognized his potential and are providing significant resources.

Hayes, who first came to wide notice a national teacher of the year award, is not known among party regulars for a consistently welcoming manner. Staff turnover and the tales that accompany swift departures continue to concern Democrats.

The Harris visit is only one signal that Democrats do not want to spend the next five weeks fretting about Hayes in deep blue Connecticut. The Wolcott Democrat is running an ad highlighting her bipartisan credentials by claiming to have worked with loathsome demagogue Donald Trump during the two years they were in Washington at the same time. The ad is the most vivid sign the race with Logan is tightening. there’s no other reason Hayes would debase herself on voters’s screens. The ad reveals that the former high school teacher needed only two terms to become an ordinary politician whose taste for being an insider has overwhelmed the instincts voters first embraced four years ago.

Published October 2, 2022.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped some terrible news on the people of Connecticut and Governor Ned Lamont on Friday. The state’s economy contracted by 4.7% in the second quarter of the year. It was the second worst state decline. Only energy market-dependent Wyoming had a bigger fall at 4.8%.The national economy declined by 0.6%, according to the report featured in the Hartford Business Journal.

Connecticut was last in personal income growth at 2.2%, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association pointed out Friday. CBIA calls the figure “a key economic indicator of economic competitiveness.” It said the two statistics highlight “the fragile nature of the state’s recovery and growth prospects.”

The double-barreled bad news comes as Lamont, a Democrat seeking a second term. seeks to portray the state on a dramatic upswing after eight years under his surly predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy.

The chilly dose of reality may force Lamont to give a rest to his happy talk campaign and drives a hole through his upbeat narrative. The Democrat may need to shift his odd fixation on the state having the best pizza to explaining the failure of the state’s economy to continue to lag far behind the rest of the nation–and the region–in economic growth. The Greenwich aristocrat has one streak of unbroken luck: He faces Republican Bob Stefanowski on November 8th, a rematch of their 2018 contest. Saudi Bob has been mired in cultural issues, a choice he appears to have made as his campaign falls further behind Lamont in public and private polls.

Stefanowski has put at least $10 million into his campaign, a he pledged to do when he launched it early this year. He may have added more since his summer campaign finance report. The payday lender executive who appears to have had a lucrative second career in the Desert Kingdom as a consultant to senior managers made more than $36 million between 2019 and 2021. He may find that fortune is not as big as it looks when confronted with the fourth generation wealth amassed by Governor and Mrs. Lamont, who have spent more than $50 million in four statewide campaigns, including this year’s, since 2006.

Published September 30, 2022.

Trustees of the University of Connecticut are expected to announce their choice of a new president on Wednesday. Interim President Redenka Maric, sources tell Daily Ructions, has emerged as the frontrunner for the top public position at the state’s premier public university.

The choice of Maric will signal the weakness of the board and the continuing influence of UConn’s top administrators. A Maric presidency will confirm the sclerotic preferences of the board and their bureaucratic overlords. A new president from outside UConn would bring a new team and change. Power would devolve from the people who have made many errors to new ones who may usher in a new era of accountability. Preventing that new era is the chief goal of insiders manipulating the search. An outsider might require the administration to adhere to the state’s hiring practices.

Only a late intervention by Governor Ned Lamont could save UConn from a serious mistake by championing opportunity and renewal over the celebration of connivance and cementing family members of the influential into the extended UConn ecosystem. Lamont, a Harvard and Yale graduate, has shown little interest in the state of public higher education.

Published September 27, 2022.

Republican nominee for governor Bob Stefanowski appears to have a one-person company registered to operate in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as records indicate it is, Daily Ructions can report. Stefanowski says contracts preclude him from discussing his clients.

Stefanowski has a Connecticut entity registered as Lolo Consulting, LLC, with the Secretary of the State. The other Lolo is a ”one-person foreign entity” registered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and described as “providing senior management consulting services,” according to a commercial registration filed in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Reached by phone Monday night, Stefanowski, who has loaned his campaign $10 million, refused to say if he does or does not do business in Saudi Arabia. The Madison Republican said he enters into non-disclosure agreements with clients as to their names and locations. If the former payday lender executive has not been doing business in Saudi Arabia ”providing senior management consulting services” there would be no non-disclosure provisions in contracts that do not exist. There is no penalty for denying a contract you do not have.

Stefanowski disclosed in an early September summary earning $36.8 million in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Stefanowski on Monday accused his Democratic opponent in their rematch this year, Governor Ned Lamont, of filing his income tax return separately from Ann Huntress Lamont, the governor’s highflying venture capitalist spouse.

Saudi Arabia has been widely condemned for its brutal and continuing human rights abuses, including the execution of 81 people in one day in March. Stefanowski is unlikely to have mentioned human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia.

The Lolo registration to conduct business in Saudi Arabia was filed in February 2020 and expires in June 2023.

Stefanowski and Lamont on Tuesday will have the first of just two general election debates. it will be streamed live on NBC Connecticut at 12:30 p.m. and broadcast at 7 p.m.

Published September 26, 2022.

Days of Awe indeed. They know how to send it over the footlights to welcome 5783.

Published September 25, 2022.

Democrat Christine Maine ended her appearance on a local radio debate Friday with a startling analysis. Asked by WINY moderator John Mahan posed the innocuous question from a listener: How can police recruit more officers? Maine, her party’s candidate in the 51st House District, shared her experience as a magistrate in Newport News, Virginia.

Maine said her job brought her into contact with thousands of officers presenting her with search and arrest warrants. Maine told Quiet Corner listeners she was “shocked” when she learned ”some of them joined because they wanted to beat people up with impunity, they wanted to have sex because the uniform attracted women and they wanted to speed.”

Maine concluded her answer by observing that current testing methods of new recruits do not keep out the psychopaths. We need, according to Maine, fewer combative and more friendly officers.

Maine faces two-term incumbent Republican Rick Hayes for the Killingly, Putnam and Thompson seat. Hayes, a retired Putnam police chief was nonplussed when given the opportunity to respond and close the hourlong debate.

Maine is no fringe candidate. She qualified for public financing of her campaign with contributions from public safety committee co-chairs Senator Cathy Osten and Representative Maria Horn, as well as Democratic senators Saud Anwar, Richard Lopes and Norman Needleman. Maine also received a contribution from former Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. Alex Kasser, former state senator from Greenwich, contributed $100. Kasser describes herself in the Maine campaign finance report as an unemployed lawyer living in New Milford.

Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz joined Maine at a local Democratic even in Killingly last week.

Published September 25, 2022.