Daniel Morrocco, a veteran Democratic campaign professional, will lead Governor Ned Lamont’s 2022 re-election campaign, Daily Ructions has learned. Lamont has not announced his candidacy but the prolific self-funder can stash Morrocco at the state party operation until he’s ready to make a public announcement.

The Rhode Islander was a senior adviser at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He managed Arizona Democrat Melanie Kirkpatrick’s 2016 Senate campaign against John McCain. He was also on Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential bid.

Morrocco has arrived as Lamont received encouraging news in a PPP survey. The Greenwich Democrat leads Republicans Bob Stefanowski (his 2018 opponent) by 16 points and Themis Klarides by 20 points. Lamont received support from 52% of respondents against each Republican.

Posted October 26, 2021.

Eleanor Roosevelt remains a singular American figure. She battled on for human rights after Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. President Truman appointed her as a representative to the U.N., confirming her place as a citizen of the world.

The mystery guest spot on the popular Sunday night CBS program was usually filled by popular entertainers. This was, as host John Daly observed, a banner day for the show. Acknowledgement of a remarkable What’s My Line mystery guest moment was confirmed when Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis rose to shake hands as the guest greeted the panelists.

Mrs. Roosevelt would have been dismayed that tyrannical governments dominate the United Nations Human Rights Council today. It would have renewed her determination to spread the blessings of freedom to those denied them.

Public Policy Polling (PPP) contacted Connecticut voters this week. The polling firm, associated with Democratic campaigns and interest groups, posed questions about the 2022 contest for governor.

Participants of the online survey measured Governor Ned Lamont’s support against his 2018 Republican opponent, Bob Stefanowski, and former state Representative Themis Klarides. The poll included questions on education and school choice, according to one participant.

Lamont is expected to seek a second term and has recently settled on a new campaign manager. The first left for a North Carolina Senate race. Stefanowski has continued to comment on issues and circulate among Republicans activists. Klarides formed a campaign committee months ago and has also been appearing at party gatherings while unsuccessfully seeking to forge a deal with Stefanowski to serve as his running mate.

The three candidates are expected to self-finance their campaigns. Klarides has spent $200,000 of her own money on consultants and legal fees. She’s getting legal advice from Ross Garber, who served as counsel to felonious former governor John Rowland until the end came the first time in July 2004. Garber was contemptuous of the legislature’s power to investigate Rowland—Klarides was a member of the House at the time. Garber has gone on to make a career of defending politicians who betray their public trust.

Lamont will likely for the fourth time carve off a slice of his vast fortune to finance his campaign. He’s spent $50 million on his three previous campaigns, causing Democrats who traditionally advocate for campaign finance restrictions as essential to democracy to abandon their public posturing.

Stefanowski spent millions on his 2018 campaign, though not nearly as much as Lamont. The Madison Republican purchased ad time early that year while his opponents were scrambling to collect enough small donations to qualify for public financing late in the spring. If he runs, watch for Stefanowski to make a big early commitment of the green stuff that folds in his campaign.

Posted October 22, 2021.

Mayor Nancy Rossi will spend the next 13 days straining to explain how state Representative Michael DiMassa was able to obtain access to $636,000 in public funds. The West Haven Democrat was arraigned in federal court Wednesday on charges accusing him of stealing the federal COVID funds.

West Haven voters may find Rossi, DiMassa’s fellow Democrat, guilty of failure to supervise DiMassa, a town employee. A December 28, 2020, City Council resolution authorized Rossi and her designees, Frank Ciepilinski and Michael DiMassa, to receive and allocate the COVID funds.

Rossi, a certified public accountant, has expressed her dismay at what she discovered when she recently reviewed documents expending the funds—months after the alleged thievery began. One early indication that something was wrong: DiMassa’s consulting bills were paid the day after he submitted them. If Rossi had paid even cursory attention to where the funds were going, that one-day turnaround was a bright line crossed.

Adam Wood, the South Windsor Republican who quit the contest for town council in next month’s municipal election, has made a defiant return to the race as a write-in candidate. Wood gave up his place on the ballot after the Journal Inquirer obtained copies of Wood’s Instagram posts.

The posts are horrific in their malice for others. They are misogynist, racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic. Daily Ructions did not post them when Wood removed his name from the ballot earlier this month. Wood’s announcement Wednesday that he is a write-in candidate for the council cause the public’s interest in seeing the posts to outweigh propriety.

Wood complained in his Facebook announcement that he did not receive support from local Republican leaders. He noted that many disagreed with his decision to withdraw from the race. “For those who wish to support me you can do so by exercising your right to vote, challenging candidates and continuing to push for a more transparent government.”

Here is painful transparency:

Posted October 20, 2021.

Stratford Democrat Tina Manus requested local registrars of voters remove her from the town’s voter roll on October 12th. Today, Manus a former town council member, entered a guilty plea to one charge of wire fraud.

The charge and Manus’s plea arise from the case federal prosecutors brought earlier this year against state Senator Dennis Bradley (D-Bridgeport) over a fraudulent attempt to obtain public campaign funds for Bradley’s 2018 campaign. Manus has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in Bradley’s upcoming trial. Manus worked on Bradley’s campaign.

Manus was defeated for re-election to the Stratford Town Council in 2017. At her last council meeting she posted a foul comment about former state Representative Themis Klarides (R-Derby).

Manus is the second Connecticut Democrat to face a federal judge on criminal charges today. This morning, state Representative Michael DiMassa was charged with stealing $636,000 in federal COVID funds from West Haven, while he was employed by the City Council.

Posted October 20, 2021.

Rob Simmelkjaer, who leads the Connecticut Lottery Corporation’s board of directors, has created an exploratory committee for statewide office. A Democrat, Simmelkjar’s filing states that he is not exploring a run for a seat in the legislature.

The Westport Democrat’s filing states that he is not seeking the office of Treasurer. Secretary of the State Denise Merrill is the only statewide office holder to announce she will not seek re-election next year. Several Democrats have expressed an interest in running or have taken affirmative steps to create a campaign committee.

Simmelkjaer has held positions in media companies including ABC, ESPN, and NBC. He has been in front of the camera and also in executive jobs. He is the co-founder and president of Persona, an interview platform. Simmelkjaer also provides commentary on the Tennis Channel.

Simmelkjaer was defeated in a 2017 bid for the Westport board of selectman by Republican Jennifer Tooker.

Posted October 18, 2021.

State Senator Matt Lesser (D-Middletown) took in $26,000 between August 13th and September 30th, the end of the fundraising quarter. Lesser, who left Wesleyan University to devote his efforts to Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, is seeking an undetermined office.

State Democrats will have several serious prospects for secretary of the state. Incumbent Democrat Denise Merrill is not seeking a fourth term. While other prospects are willing to commit to the race, Lesser is hedging until State Comptroller Kevin Lembo indicates if he will seek a fourth term.

Lesser’s haul includes contributions from more than a dozen lobbyists. Odd since Lesser can work himself into a lather over special interests.

Republican Dominic Rapini is unambiguous. He’s running for secretary of the state. He raised $21,000 in his first seven weeks as a candidate. His contributors include Bob Stefanowski, the 2018 Republican nominee for governor. Stefanowski is expected to launch a second bid for governor later this year.

Republican consultant Brock Weber is also running for secretary of the state.

The last Republican to be elected secretary of the state was Pauline Kezer. She defeated incumbent Democrat Julia Tashjian in a 1990 rematch.

The Journal Inquirer was first with the story. Republican town council candidate Adam Wood resigned from the contest Monday after a series of shocking social media posts came to light.

The Instagram account with the posts has been deleted. Daily Ructions has seen some of the posts and they are staggering in their malice for women, Moslems, and mankind. Some were posted as recently as 2020. They will not be included in this post.

Wood’s resignation occurred after the deadline for filling vacancies on this November’s municipal ballot. The scandal raises the question of why local Republican leaders did not conduct more internet due diligence in their extended candidate recruitment and vetting process.

President Joseph Biden will visit the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut when he travels to the state Friday. Thomas Dodd represented Connecticut in the United States Senate from 1959-1971. He was defeated for a third term in 1970 as a petitioning candidate, losing to Republican Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.

Thomas Dodd would largely be a faded bad memory for Connecticut but for his son Christopher J. Dodd’s decades-long efforts to polish his father’s reputation. Thomas Dodd, a Democrat, was censured by the Senate in 1967 for diverting for his personal use $116,083 in proceeds from seven testimonial dinners.

Dodd was the first Senator since Joseph McCarthy in 1954 to be censured by his colleagues. Dodd’s troubles began when staff members copied records and gave them to columnist Drew Pearson. When news of Dodd’s larceny became public in Pearson’s widely circulated column, members of the Senate first directed their wrath at the staff members.

Pearson renewed his focus on Dodd and devoted more part or all of 100 of his daily column to the scandal. Some Connecticut newspapers that carried Pearson’s column declined to publish his Dodd saga.

Dodd’s defense was to accuse critics of seeking to damage him because of his unyielding support for American involvement in the war raging in Vietnam. There were nearly 500,000 troops in the besieged Southeast Asia country by 1967 and public opinion had begun to turn against President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation.

Christopher Dodd served in the Senate from 1981 to 2011. He declined to seek a sixth term as his own personal finances in purchasing and financing three homes in the United States and Ireland came into public view.

Dodd said he wanted to teach after announcing he withdrew from the 2010 contest. Instead, he moved quickly into lobbying for the movie business, where he maintained his long friendship with producer Harvey Weinstein, the serial sexual assaulter and generous Dodd contributor. Dodd now lobbies for a Washington firm, trading on his long friendship with Biden.

Friday’s event will require presidential speechwriters to apply several layers of whitewash to Biden’s prepared remarks on behalf of the Dodd he served with and the one who left the Senate two years before the president won his first term from Delaware.

President Bill Clinton was the featured speaker at the 1995 dedication of the Dodd Center. He returned to the center in 2015 to receive the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights. Clinton received the award 17 years after flying to an airport in Rwanda to insist he knew nothing of the 1994 genocide Tutsi Rawandans by majority Hutus.