To the Exits: Thames Leaves DECD. Harris Fades a Few Degrees to Eversource.

Popular Hartford Democrat Glendowlyn Thames leaves the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) this week. Farewell party takes place Wednesday. The deputy commission heads to the private sector.

Thames was on the shortlist for Governor Ned Lamont’s prospective 2018 running mates. The desire to avoid a primary and save some money caused Lamont to settle for rival Susan Bysiewicz. Democratic primary voters had inflicted a surprise decisive defeat on Lamont in 2010. He did not want to risk a second loss in upset 2018, so passed on Thames, who was the leader of Hartford’s city council.

Jonathan Harris has quietly served Lamont at the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) and as the Governor’s legislative liaison. Harris left OPM shortly before Secretary Melissa McCaw moved her close friend Kostantinos Diamantis from the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) to the executive suite at OPM as her number two. Harris’s move from OPM to Lamont’s office was an attempt to make a course correction in Lamont’s first year of confusion and broken promises, but left the upper reaches of OPM without a pair of eyes loyal to Lamont and extraneous entanglements.

Harris leaves Lamont’s office, where he was often sidelined in the ceaseless competition for influence, for the state’s most unpopular corporation, utility behemoth Eversource. Harris served in the state Senate and was executive director of the state’s Democratic organization, where he became enmeshed in a 2014 campaign finance scandal that ended with a controversial settlement. He made a brief run for governor in 2018 after quitting as commission of consumer protection.

Posted November 2, 2021.