Text Warfare. Klarides Accused of Supporting Biden. Eversource Jolt.
Convention delegates are muting their phones in reaction to a stream of brutal texts. Themis Klarides was on the griddle Thursday night. The Republican U.S. Senate hopeful came in for a shelling on hundreds of mobile phone screens.
Delegates received a text of uncertain origins accusing Klarides of breaching every contemporary Republican shibboleth. The harsh message is built on a flimsy foundation: It assumes Klarides possesses firm beliefs in anything other than politics as a vanity production garnished by the platitudes of the moment.
The text, pictured above, raises Klarides’s ties to widely disliked utility, Eversource, through her recent marriage to one of the company’s top executive. The risk of an Eversource jolt for Republicans during the campaign looms large for delegates who understand the weapon their party may hand to Democrats. Connecticut’s businesses and families continue to pay the highest electricity rates in the continental United States. Klarides and her advisers will continue to hope no one requests and obtains her late summer 2020 texts and emails on state energy policy. The August primary campaign could short circuit if any of Klarides’s House Republican colleagues did not maintain the Klarides era practice of destroying public records by quickly deleting them.
One question for a Senate debate: Who did Klarides allow on those House Republican leadership calls? The convention campaign texts may begin to look mild.
Published May 5, 2022.