Politics and a Power Outage: NU Favorite Murphy May Be Jolted By Big Contributions.

Too bad Connecticut Light and Power President Jeffrey Butler is not as reliable at restoring power as he is at making political contributions. Every two weeks, the Northeast Utilities Employees Political Action Committee receives a payroll deduction contribution from Butler, who joins other executives from the NU “family” of companies in bolstering the fund.  Last year it raised nearly $140,000 to support candidates and other political action committees.

NU PAC records reveal that the fund’s favorite Connecticut politician is 2012 United States Senate hopeful Representative Christopher Murphy. The Fifth District congressmen’s campaign and political committee have solicited and accepted tens of thousands of dollars from NU’s PAC and its $6.2 million a year leader, Charles Shivery. Murphy last week criticized CL&P’s response to the October 29th snowstorm that left 800,000 customers in the state without power for as long as 10 days.  The three term Democrat received a maximum contribution of $5,000 from NU for the first phase of his Senate campaign on March 31, 2011, the crucial last day of the year’s first campaign finance quarter.

Murphy’s the only Connecticut politician to have received a series of $5,000 in the past two years alone.  Last year, on March 31, NU PAC contributed $5,000 to Murphy’s congressional re-election campaign.

Four months later, NU’s political fund gave Murphy another $5,000, this time to his personal committee, MurphPac.  It was a rare maximum contribution to a federal official’s personal PAC from the NU committee.  The NU contribution represented more than 25% of the money Murphy raised last for his closely held committee in 2010, suggesting NU and its leader are chummy enough to the Cheshire Democrat to serve as one of only a few generous donors of first resort for Murphy. He uses the PAC to purchase sporting event tickets and make contributions to other Democrats.

Murphy has an avid supporter in Shivery, who Forbes ranks 444th in executive compensation in 2010.  In the past 4 years, Shivery has contributed $12,300 to Murphy’s campaigns. That’s more than twice as much as the NU contributed to any other candidate for federal office during the last 4 years, according to OpenSecrets.org. (Runner-up is First District Congressman John Larson at a distant $5,000.)

Shivery’s subordinate, Butler, does not make many direct political contributions. He donated $500 to Murphy’s re-election campaign last year and $250 to his Senate campaign 4 months ago, two days before the unpopular utility executive handed over $500 to Democratic Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan’s campaign for Murphy’s seat in Congress. The NU committee made a $5,000 contribution this year to the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee federal fund shortly after Governor Dannel P. Malloy took office and initiated an aggressive fundraising campaign for the party.

It’s Murphy’s chummy and lucrative relationship with NU and Shivery, however, will raise doubts among bewildered and furious state residents about the legislator’s credibility in the coming review of the state’s largest utility’s practices and plans for a merger with a Massachusetts power company.