This is not what the top tier of the House Democrats expected. They dismissed rumors that House Majority Leader Jason Rojas would hire fellow East Hartford Democrat and House member Jeff Currey as his chief of staff, replacing the ousted Christy Scott. A lot of people say Speaker Matthew Ritter and his faithful majordomo even have the receipts that Currey would not be getting the plum spot with a handsome salary and little heavy lifting.

It must have been a miscommunication or some texts read out of context that caused the savvy Democrats to think Currey was out of the running–even when in the summer he left the field of battle by giving up his nomination for re-election. There was considerable speculation what awaited the accomplished meddler in party doings. No, some insisted, it would not be to join Rojas.

Currey may be as much symptom of the tensions as cause. Ritter has planted himself as speaker and appears to have no intention of leaving. His roster of committee chairs reveals his clever scheme to keep newer caucus members on side. The child of privilege has overseen his mother snagging a spot on the state’s highest court, the mommy seat. A brother-in-law got a trial court robe. His father, ex-speaker and lobbyist Thomas Ritter, continues on the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees, far beyond his sell-by date. Matthew Ritter trades what he must as both agent and servant of the fourth and most independent branch of government, UConn.

Ritter’s fealty to the bloated UConn bureaucracy costs innocents across the state. Customers of Aquarion Water Company are the most recent to be sacrificed to Ritter’s service to and protection of UConn. Nothing comes free in the Capitol Village.

Ritter, like Mrs. Thatcher days before the fall, pledges to go on and on as speaker. While there is no open revolt, there are the elements of quiet conspiracy taking shape. If Ritter and Rojas remain in place, no women will have occupied the lower chamber’s top jobs for years and years. That does not seem right to many. The Senate has also been without a female in one of its top two jobs since the great Dell Eads was its president pro tem thirty years ago.

Enter a Currey. East Hartford may not be as robust a training ground in the dark arts as, say, New Haven and Bridgeport, but you can learn some ugly business there. Currey knows how to stir a pot while wielding a stiletto.

Ritter may find comments about certain lobbyists’ unfettered access to his office and authority suddenly becomes louder than careful mutters. Full-time caucus employees have plenty of time to chatter and plot and shape the political weather. There may be more storm clouds than the Democrats’ overwhelming majority suggest in December would appear by, oh, April or May.

Who will be Ben Hur? And who will be the broken Messala, who refused to play by the rules?

Published December 13, 2024.

Former federal prosecutor David X. Sullivan is trodding a murky path. Sullivan, the 2020 Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut’s Fifth District, has let the word go forth that he would like to be the state’s next U.S. Attorney.

How one snags a position that will require a nomination by a Republican president to serve in a state dominated by Democrats can be a mystery. And tricky. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy use a committee that, if recent federal nominations are any indications, gives little weight to courtroom experience beyond the informal arena of small claims contests.

Connecticut’s Republicans remain fractious and without a winning leader as they wander among the ruins. George Logan would have enjoyed outsized influence had he won his second bid for Congress, but he suffered a bruising defeat last month. Logan, an Ansonia Republican, lost by more than 10 times the margin of his 2022 defeat by incumbent Democrat Jahana Hayes. Republicans lost members in both houses of the state legislature.

Eight years ago, then-Greenwich Time reporter Neil Vigdor listed a host of possibilities for the state’s top federal prosecutor to succeed talented inside operator and Lamont lawyer Deidre Daley. The position went to veteran prosecutor John Durham. He would go on to blot his copy by heading a dubious investigation of Robert Mueller’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s hundreds of contacts with Russian influence-peddlers. The effort was so questionable by what was left of normal standards that Durham loyalist Nora Dannehy, now a member of Connecticut’s highest court) walked away from the team.

Linda McMahon, the state party’s most prominent member, stayed busy promoting the campaign of loathsome demagogue Donald Trump. She has been co-chair of the of the shuttered Trump University’s chancellor’s transition committee. The results of those efforts–Gaetz for Attorney General, the horrific Hegseth to Defense, Assad booster Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, medical Luddite Kennedy to lead health policy–cause one to wonder what happened to the moderate Republican who spent $100 million to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. These nominations are stains that will not soon fade. They are not people the 2010 and 2012 Linda McMahon, now Secretary of Education-designate for dismantling, would have supported for vital positions.

Justin Clark, formerly of West Hartford, is said to be on the lucrative inside of the perpetually Blame America First Trump inner circle. The former Al Gore campaign employee is a Trump advisors in what their leader calls “the garbage can of the world.” Clark, who ran Greenwich Republican Tom Foley’s two losing campaigns for governor, was an assistant to the egregious Steve Bannon in 2016 and a key figure in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, the won he lost by 7 million votes.

Trump is likely to run out of family members and children’s spouses and ex-fiancès before he gets around to filling the U.S. Attorney post in Connecticut. So someone with a law degree and at least a modicum of law enforcement experience may get the job.

Sullivan spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor before retiring to run for Congress four years ago. He is a lawyer with the well-known firm McCarter & English and teaches trial practice at Yale Law School. Sullivan, 65, said in an interview Friday that he “would be the person to enforce our laws fairly.” That would usually be a prerequisite to consideration for the job but these are different and ominous times. A pledge to enforce laws fairly may be disqualifying for the next four years.

Published December 13, 2024.

Brazil is not a Hispanic country but is Latino. Portugal is neither Hispanic nor Latino. The Thanksgiving tutorial became necessary Wednesday as Governor Ned Lamont began telling Democratic party organization regulars that he has chosen Roberto Alves, first term mayor of Danbury, as the party’s next chairman.

Alves is the child of a Portuguese father and Brazilian mother. Portuguese, not Spanish, is the language of Brazil. Hispanic Connecticut Democrats have long felt overlooked by their party. They hold none of the big prizes statewide office in government or the party.

A holiday revolt among the 72 members of the state party committee was forming Wednesday as Lamont’s chief of staff Matthew Brokman (this year’s Working Families Party campaign pinup) made calls announcing plan to replace outgoing party stalwart Nancy DiNardo with Alves.

The job could give Alves a head start for a spot on the state ticket should an opening occur. This has also roiled ambitious Hispanic Democrats.

Lamont’s interest in naming the next party chair has sent augur observers into a frenzy of speculation that the Greenwich Democrat may be preparing to seek a third term and mount a fifth self-financed state campaign.

Published November 27, 2024.

Governor Ned Lamont’s flawless timing comes into view Monday. The Greenwich Democrat will use the start of the busiest travel week of the year “to give an update on the state’s ongoing effort to prevent instances of wrong-way driving.”

Lamont will also “discuss the importance of road safety” on his trip to Naugatuck. That should lead the governor to share his reaction to the jarring revelations in Marc E. Fitch’s Inside Investigator report of high ranking Lamont adviser Jonathan Dach’s misuse of state vehicles at recklessly high speeds.

Fitch discovered Dach appears to have engaged in the prolific personal use of a state vehicle and on three occasions drove more than 100 mph.

Dach served as Lamont’s third chief of staff before resigning this summer and continuing on the state payroll as an undefined minister without portfolio.

Monday morning’s Naugatuck event will include State Police leader Ronnell Higgins, providing him the opportunity to explain whether Dach was ever stopped for speeding and issued a ticket.

Published November 24, 2024.

Linda McMahon will not be joining the Trump administration as secretary of Commerce. Donald Trump announced Tuesday the post goes to Howard Lutnick, Mrs. McMahon’s transition committee co-chair. For Lutnick, the appointment serves as a consolation prize from his ill-judged bid to head the Treasury Department. Mrs. McMahon, according to Semafor, is said to be “pissed” that Trump has not given her the top Commerce job.

Lutnick received a push for the Treasury post from Elon Musk over the weekend on his social media platform, X. Some people are saying that Musk’s exertions on behalf may be seen as overstepping his place in the hierarchy at the Palace of Palm Beach.

Mrs. McMahon, 76, had been mentioned as the likely choice for Commerce secretary, a considerable step up from her perch at the Small Business Administration (SBA) in the first Trump administration. She had also been mentioned for something at Commerce eight years ago.

The former wrestling executive resigned from SBA after two years to lead a Trump Super PAC, America First Action, for the 2020 campaign, which Trump lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes. McMahon was one of Trump’s most generous donors in 2016, but memories fade over eight tumultuous years.

McMahon was the Republican nominee for the United State Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. She received 43% of the vote against her Democratic opponent in each campaign.

Linda McMahon was named this year with her husband, Vince McMahon, as a defendant in the salacious “Ring Boys” scandal.

Published November 19, 2024.

America is a generous land of second acts, not all of them well-judged. TaShun Bowden-Lewis was the state’s Chief Public Defender when she was fired earlier this year by the Public Defender Services Commission, after months of turmoil. Her termination was preceded by an overwhelming vote of no confidence by public defenders.

Bowden-Lewis, according to her website, is offering personal and executive coaching; criminal defense and strategic planning consultations; leadership development, and training services. Planning staff outings at hefty cost is not included.

The Bowden-Lewis Group claims the only person featured on its website, Bowden-Lewis, “is an experienced transformative leader with the business acumen and community-focused mindset to deliver results through discipline, integrity, and perseverance.”

Attorney General William Tong recently moved to dismiss Bowden-Lewis’s lawsuit against the Commission for dismissing her after two tumultuous years leading the 400-employee state agency, the first public defender service in the nation.

Published November 9, 2024.

The outlook is absolutely vile. There was nothing Sir Noel could not put into song.

Published November 8,2024.

November 8, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

     The right to vote is among the most sacred rights we have as Americans. It is fundamental to our democracy. As your elected Registrars, we feel an immense responsibility to protect that right and to guarantee a high level of integrity in the processes to account for each and every vote. 

On Tuesday, November 5^th, there were a number of extenuating circumstances that have given us reason to diligently review our voting tabulations. 

We are grateful for the assistance provided to us from the office of the Secretary of the State and the office of Mayor Carbone to ensure the integrity of our counts.  We also want to acknowledge the Herculean effort to get the counts correct exerted by our clerk, Melissa Russell, City Clerk Carol Anderson and Asst. City Clerk, Heather Abraham. The problems with tabulators at the Armory, a printing error on a batch of ballots, coupled with an extraordinary demand for same-day registration and the further complications of early voting, lead us to the conclusion that a discrepancy recanvass is in the best interests of the voters and the candidates. 

Accordingly, on Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 2 pm in the city hall auditorium (room 218), we will hold a public discrepancy recanvass of all ballots processed at our central counting location, which includes Absentee ballots, Early Voting Ballots, and Same Day Registration ballots.  The public is welcome to view this transparent process that guarantees a proper accounting of all the ballots cast by our voters. 

Fred Jury

Jacque A. Williams

Registrars of Voters

City of Torrington

The rare procedure is unlikely to assist House Democrat Michelle Cook. Republican Joe Canino claimed to have a lead of 600 votes in unofficial results on Wednesday. Cook is said to be dismayed at the result, but any errors by the registrars in overseeing the long voting process would have to have been extraordinarily inept to result in a 600 vote error in Canino’s favor–if Canino was accurate that he was ahead by that many votes.

Published November 8, 2024.

State Senator Stephen Harding ought to be campaigning with his four caucus colleagues in difficult races. Instead, the Brookfield Republican needed assistance on the final weekend of the campaign from his caucus booster, state Senator Heather Somers (R-Groton). Somers was one of the two Republicans behind the 2017 legislation that has become known as the Millstone bill and continues to cost ratepayers hundreds of millions dollars.

Harding, who is seeking a second term in the 18-town 30th Senate District, became the Senate Republican leader in the spring when Somers and others organized a coup in the 12-member caucus, ousting Kevin Kelly and installing Harding as the figurehead for chief of staff John “Johnny Angel” Healey.

The political weather has changed in Harding’s northwest district. Many pandemic newcomers are Democrats who may not want a committed Donald Trump supporter as their senator. Harding was a Trump delegate to this year’s Republican nominating convention. He has praised Trump running mate JD Vance.

Harding faces an energetic challenger in Democrat Justin Potter.

A sign of Harding’s distress has been his need to bleed the caucus campaign fund of tens of thousands of dollars. Usually the leader is a net contributor to the caucus campaign committee.

Members who survive what could be the Senate Republican annus horribilis will not be able to ignore the hard truth that Harding was more burden than benefit in the campaign. Other members could have used the resources grabbed by their leader. or they could have been saved for future campaigns.

Published November 3, 2024.

Tragic. Connecticut legislative candidates do not often get invited to appear in interviews on broadcast television. When state Senator Tony Hwang did this week, he donned his best embroidered Lacoste, attached a microphone, and stood in a spot that allowed him to be identified by letters on the side of a food truck over his left shoulder. The segment appeared Sunday morning on WTNH’s popular Capitol Report.

Hwang may have skipped the photography class public financing of his campaign paid for a couple of cycles ago. Or the tensions among 28th Senate District Republicans over Hwang’s bid for a sixth term may have caused a campaign worker to have helped set up the memorable shot.

Hwang is known to exhaust the patience of Senate Republican staff members with his requirements that they accompany and photograph him. They may have had enough.

Hwang faces Democrat Rob Blanchard in the district that includes Bethel, Easton, Fairfield and Newtown.

Published November 3, 2024.