Wally Barnes is unwell. The 94 year old business, civic and political veteran from Bristol is ill. If you pray, say a prayer for him. If you don’t pray, send something out into the ether.

Wally, a classic moderate Republican, ran for Congress against Tom Dodd in 1954–and lost, though party leaders had told him it would be a Republican year. He went on to serve in the state Senate, becoming the minority leader for the 1969-1970 session. In 1970, Wally was the challenger in the first Republican primary for governor. He lost to New Britain Republican Thomas Meskill, who had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966.

Though he would not run for office again, Wally Barnes has filled the fifty years that followed with service to the state and the nation.

Wally has spent much of the pandemic in Washington with his wife, Barbara Franklin. They became Daily Ructions readers last year. They will know by this post and in many other ways that they are on our minds and we are grateful for their long devotion to service and for always being interesting.

UPDATE: Wally Barnes died Thursday. He was 94 years old. Read more here. Chris Healy offers a warm tribute. It is one of Wally Barnes’s remarkable accomplishments that 50 years after his last campaign he continued to forge friendships with new generations political and civic leaders and activists. His interest in others and the world around him never waned.

Stamford’s popular mayor, David Martin, will decline to be steamrolled out of office, Daily Ructions can report. The two-term Democrat does not fear a primary challenge from state Representative Caroline Simmons. Martin has bucked the odds before.

Seeking his first term as mayor in 2013, Martin scored a stunning primary upset when he defeated William Tong, a local state representative who had made a bid for retiring U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman’s seat the year before. Martin was assisted by unpopular then-Governor Daniel P. Malloy’s endorsement of Tong. Malloy served as mayor of Stamford, eking out a narrow win for his final term in 2007.

Martin defeated Republican former lieutenant governor Michael Fedele in the 2013 municipal contest and was easily re-elected four years later.

Simmons, a Tong ally, has been telling local Democrats that she’s running no matter what Martin decides to do. Simmons’ who, according to Wikipedia, possesses an “energetic and refreshing presence,” might have been wise to refrain from trying to shove Martin out of the race before he’d decided to enter it.

The Martin-Simmons race will reveal whether or not Governor Ned Lamont cuts the cord with friend and fellow Greenwich cable mogul Steve Simmons, Caroline Simmons’ father and political booster.

Books, books, books. Senator Chris Murphy tells us about his book “The Violence in Us.” Connecticut’s own Jeff Benedict we were more than a way for Robert Kraft to get the attention of Massachusetts politicians in his tussle over a stadium deal. Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia, the independent booksellers, recommends political books for the holidays. Duby McDowell and I each add one to the list.

Join us Sunday at 8:30 a.m. on WFSB.

October brought disappointing news to Connecticut’s unemployed. The state recovered only 14,100 new jobs, down from the 18,000 added in September, according to state labor department figures.

There were 100,000 fewer jobs in Connecticut in October than in February, the last figures before the global health pandemic struck the state in March.

The declining increase in monthly job increase will prove a challenge to policymakers as the state copes with an expected winter surge in inflections of the coronavirus before a vaccine becomes widely available.

A nutty screed appeared in Killingworth mailboxes today. It provides a reminder that we are fighting two viruses, one is respiratory, the other launches a ferocious assault on reason.

The campaign for the next chairman of Connecticut’s Republican state party organization has begun. Milford Republican Christopher Lancia launched in an email to the party’s state central committee members. Lancia managed Margaret Streicker’s campaign in the Third Congressional District. Incumbent Democrat Rosa DeLauro defeated Streicker by 68,000 votes, according to unofficial returns.

Lancia is seeking to replace party chairman J.R. Romano, who announced before the election that he would not run for re-election. The election takes place in June.

Lancia wrote:

Hi, I wanted to reach out to everyone On the committee and introduce myself before I make a public announcement. 

I am 49 years old I am the father of 3 children I was born and raised in Bridgeport now reside in Milford I am on the RTC in Milford and was Margaret Stickers, [sic] campaign manager. I have been trying to call each one of you introducing myself and answering questions for each one of you. I will be sending out another e-mail soon explaining what I want to focus on and how I would like to take the party to victory in a PowerPoint presentation.

I will be laying out a path for everyone to be involved in as one team with one vision. Please feel free to call me with any questions. This has to be an all hands on deck.

Streicker self-financed her bid against DeLauro, who was running for a 16th term from the New Haven-area district. DeLauro won by nearly 20% but Streicker mounted the first challenge that caught the popular DeLauro’s attention and caused her to pay attention to a Republican opponent for the first time in more than two decades.

Expect others to join the race to lead state Republicans.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) injected a dose of reality to the complex art of jockeying for a cabinet position in the formation of the Biden administration. The Greenwich Democrat told Politico, “There’s so much talent outside the Senate…This is going to be a really, really challenging two years because President Biden is going to need strong leadership in the Congress. … And I think he’ll prefer to have people he trusts be here.”

Connecticut’s junior senator, Democrat Chris Murphy, disagrees. He says in the same story, “I understand that one or two vacancies can make a difference, but if President-elect Biden thinks there’s someone in the Senate who is going to serve him well and is the clear best choice then he should choose that person…I would hope that Vice President Biden would look to members of Congress to fill out some key slots.”

Murphy was mentioned in Politico stories before last week’s election as a prospect to lead the State Department.

Democrats defeated two Republican Senate incumbents, considerably fewer than expected, last week. They picked up the seat held by Alabama incumbent Democrat Doug Jones. Two Georgia seats held by Republicans will be decided in a January 5th runoff. Democrats will need to win both those to reach 50 seats.

Senate special elections can be unpredictable. Jones scored an upset win in the contest to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Jeff Sessions to become Donald Trumps tormented attorney general. In 2010, Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a stunning victory in a winter contest to fill the vacancy created by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

State Senator Kevin Kelly has been elected leader of the dozen members of the Senate Republican caucus. Kelly beat back a challenge by Canton Republican Kevin Witkos in what had become an intense, personal fight in among the Republican survivors of another disappointing year.

Kelly will need to make swift and extensive changes in the upper reaches of the Senate Republicans’ management team if they party is to have any chance at increasing its numbers in 2022–and making itself felt in the Senate before that.

State Representative Robyn Porter (D-New Haven) has been telling supporters that she is ending her bid to become the House Majority Leader. House Democrats will meet Thursday afternoon to elect new leaders.

Porter was competing with East Hartford Democrat Jason Rojas in the contest to succeed Representative Matthew Ritter, who will be elected Speaker of the House at the same meeting that will see Rojas win with the unanimous support of the 98 member caucus.