Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It always helps if the person slated for destruction assists in the operation. In this regard, Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan has been an obliging subject. Mr. Donovan missed his all-important curtain call – a non-negotiable demand from Connecticut’s left of center media that he present himself instantly to answer some nagging questions --     instead sending the director of the Connecticut Citizens Action Group (CCAG), Tom Swan, to catch the flack coming his way after the finance director for Mr. Donovan’s now faltering campaign for the U.S. House in the 5 th District was arrested in what appears to be a successful FBI sting operation. Mr. Donovan has hired two lawyers to help him weather the coming storm, the resourceful Stan Twardy, a political operative in the administration of then Governor Lowell Weicker, and a stand-by criminal lawyer. Mr. Donovan fired his corrupted finance director and replaced his campaign manager, Josh Nassi, w...

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan should have received by Monday a call from John Olsen, President of the AFL-CIO, beseeching the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in the 5 th District to withdraw from the race. Not a few members of Mr. Donovan’s campaign staff have been arrested by the FBI; other of Mr. Donovan’s political associates are even now being wrestled to the ground by FBI agents and prosecutors intent on uncovering what they know and when they knew it about   fraudulent campaign contributions.

Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s bid for the U.S. House is beginning to look like the inside of Pandora’s Box. Those who have kept up with their Greek mythology will recognize Pandora as the first woman, created from water and earth by Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship.   At her creation, she was endowed with many godly gifts: Athena draped her in rich clothes; Aphrodite blessed her with beauty; Hermes bestowed on her the gift of speech. But there was a problem. Prometheus, whose name means forethought, had rebelled against the gods on behalf of men, gifting them with fire and knowledge, for which effrontery he was punished by Zeus, who presented Pandora to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus. Here, temptation entered the world. Given a beautiful box and warned never to open it, her godly gifts -- most especially curiosity -- induced her to open the box, at which point all the evils of the world flew out, spreading over the earth and contaminating the race of men. ...

Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan, actively running for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District, apparently has “compromised” on his most recent bill that would have hiked the state’s minimum wage 75 cents on July 1 and another 75 cents a year later, establishing in Connecticut, the land of steady spending habits, yet another first: the state with the highest minimum wage in the nation. Donovan’s compromise is a bit like that of Solomon’s, who proposed that a baby whose parentage had been questioned should be cut in half with a sword, each half to be parceled out to the disputing mothers. Solomon’s inelegant solution, offered as a ploy to ferret out the real mother, would have resulted in a dead baby. Mr. Donovan – perhaps in order to demonstrate his willingness to compromise should he ever reach the U.S. House of Representatives – has now offered a more “moderate” proposal: The Labor and Public Employees Committee recently voted 8-3, with the consen...

“Embattled” is a word you do not want waltzing around with your name on the eve of a U.S. Congressional election. “Embattled 5th District Congress candidate Chris Donovan,” the Register Citizen reported , “in a taping of WFSB TV’s ‘Face the State’ Thursday, said he has no plans to quit the race even if his campaign’s troubles start to adversely affect other Democrats and party leaders urge him to leave. Mr. Donovan is under scrutiny by the FBI for campaign financing irregularities. His campaign finance director, Robert Braddock, is under arrest for having conspired to hide the identity of certain donors allegedly involved in influence peddling; and other Donovan connected officials, two of whom are directly connected with his U.S. Senate campaign, have been named in an affidavit supporting the arrest of Mr. Braddock. Thanks to some impressive digging and nagging by a host of reporters , the influence peddlers –tagged anonymously in the affidavit as CC1, CC2 and CC3 -- have now bee...

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan and President Pro Tem of the state Senate Don Williams have been closeted together discussing two bills: a jobs bill pushed by Governor Dannel Malloy that appears to have bipartisan support in the General Assembly and Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill. Mr. Donovan, running for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5 th District, dearly wants to push his bill raising the minimum wage 50 cents over two years through the General Assembly, and to this end he announced last week that he intended to attach his bill to a budget implementer. After meeting with Mr. Williams for a little more than an hour, Mr. Donovan appeared to be uncertain which donkey’s rear he would attach his tail to, according to a story in CTNewsJunkie . Mr. Williams, who can count up to 36 without stumbling, is convinced he lacks the votes in the Senate to pass Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage hike, a point he pressed upon Mr. Donovan sometime before the soon to be ret...

Dan Roberti, a Democrat running for the U.S House in Connecticut’s 5th District has called upon Democratic Party nominee Chris Donovan to quit the race. "It is time for Chris Donovan to withdraw from the primary race for the good of the Connecticut Democratic Party and to protect the seat,” Mr. Roberti said following an indictment returned by a Grand Jury of Mr. Donovan’s former campaign director Robert Braddock. “He has hidden behind lawyers and never stepped up to explain how members of his campaign staff could have arranged conduit contributions without his knowledge." Following Mr. Roberti’s invitation to withdraw, Donovan campaign manager Tom Swan declared that Mr. Donovan remains, even after damning disclosures, the strongest Democrat in the race . Mr. Donovan was nominated at the Democratic convention for the 5 th District seat now occupied by U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated when pre...

The picture shows former State House Speaker Chris Donovan smiling broadly and sporting new hair on his face, a white trimmed beard and moustache. He is chatting with Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who is smiling and appears to be sharing a humorous confidence with Mr. Donovan. Could she be remarking on his spiffy new look? Or perhaps she is congratulating the recipient of NARAL’s (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) attentions at having escaped the prosecutorial noose that hanged his campaign finance director and other staff members who worked on Mr. Donovan’s failed U.S. House bid in Connecticut’s 5th District.

It is now pretty obvious that former Speaker of the House Chris Donovan was the intended subject of a political sting operation conducted by the FBI in Connecticut in order to expose a pay-to-play scheme involving roll your own smoke shop owners who wished to kill a bill that would have imposed on them the same crippling taxes levied on cigarette manufacturers. Several associates of Mr. Donovan, most notably his finance chairman, were caught in the net, but the big fish got away. If the prosecution of possibly corrupt lead political actors is the test of a successful sting operation, this one failed.

The Donovan sting, now referred to by Tom Dudchik of Capitol Report as “Speakergate,” continues to froth. CC-1 (Co-Conspirator 1), the FBI canary who helped to turn the tables on Robert Braddock, the former finance director of Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s U.S. House bid, has now been identified as Ray Soucy, a correctional industries supervisor at the Cheshire prison complex, according to a Hartford Courant story . Just before Mr. Donovan was about to be pummeled over the weekend by Connecticut’s media, the Speaker, who has rejected calls that he quit the state House and terminate his campaign for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5th District, fired Mr. Braddock and hired Tom Swan, the director of the left of center Connecticut Citizen Action Group, to replace his former campaign manager, who was also fired. Even as Mr. Swan stepped before the Media to say he had looked Mr. Donovan squarely in the eye and asked him point blank whether he was in any way connected w...

The Devil, it is sometimes said, lies in the details. The Devil did not show his hand in the Twardy investigation of Speaker of the House Chris Donovan’s tawdry campaign for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5 th District. Mr. Donovan’s former finance director was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation in which straw contributors, the FBI showed in an arrest affidavit, violated campaign finance regulations. FBI investigators almost certainly are squeezing some of the principals involved in Speakergate to obtain from them information their lawyers have denied to Mr. Twardy.   Virtually all Mr. Donovan’s Republican campaign opponents have said Mr. Donovan either did or did not know that his finance director, Robert Braddock, was, to put it kindly, delinquent in avoiding the near occasion of arrest. If Mr. Donovan knew about the financing irregularities that led to Mr. Braddock’s arrest, he was participating in corrupt activity; and if he did not know, he is not competent, m...

Mark Greenberg, a Republican running for the House in the 5th District, has called upon Chis Donovan, the Democratic Speaker of the state House running for the same seat, to step down from the redistricting commission that will recommend new borders for Connecticut’s five U.S. House of Representative districts. The committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and Mr. Donovan is the only member of the commission who will be seeking higher office. Other members of the commission are: Senator Martin Looney, (D, 11th District) Representative Sandy Nafis, (D, Newington) Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, (D, 29th District) Minority Leader Representative Lawrence Cafero, (R, 142nd District) Senator Len Fasano, (R, 34th District) Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, (R, 28th District) Representative Arthur O'Neill, (R, 69th District) “Chris Donovan,” Mr. Greenberg noted in a press release, “is a declared candidate for the U.S. House of Representat...

The Chris Donovan presser -- the first time the 5 th District nominee of the Democratic Party for the US Congress had appeared to answer media questions concerning the arrest of his former finance chairman – was preceded by a prelude in which Donovan spokesman Gabe Rosenberg, laid down the ground rules for the presser. Mr. Rosenberg read from the following statement: “I have to take a minute to set some ground rules. This is a very serious matter, and we have treated it that way. Chris has retained attorney Shelly Sadin of Bridgeport to represent him, his campaign, and his legislative office, and she’s here in front.” Ms. Sadin is a white-collar criminal defense lawyer associated with the Bridgeport firm of Zeldes Needle & Cooper. “Chris’ lawyer,” Mr. Rosenberg continued, “has made it clear that while she recognizes the importance of Chris speaking directly to the public, he needs to take great care not to do anything that might interfere with an ongoing federal inquiry....

Bravely, Rick Green, a Hartford Courant columnist, titled his exculpatory column on the Speaker of the House Chris Donovan scandal, “My Donovan Flip-Flop: Where’s The Proof?” Mr. Green announced that he was “ready to believe Chris Donovan and the former U.S. attorney now vouching for him,” even though a red flag had ben prominently displayed in the partial investigation conducted by   former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy . Mr. Twardy acknowledged in his report that here were holes in his own investigation . Because some of the principals involved in the Donovan scandal declined on the advice of their lawyers to speak to Mr. Twardy, he was unable to interview the finance director arrested by the FBI for having accepted illegal campaign donations, fired by Mr. Donovan, and two other associates in Mr. Donovan’s office allegedly involved in a criminal conspiracy t o disguise the source of the illicit campaign donations, also fired by Mr. Donovan. Mr. Green rushed his opinion pie...

Republican Senate Minority Leader John McKinney called upon Democratic Speaker of the House Chris Donovan to relinquish his position as Speaker following the arrest of his former finance chairman, Robert Braddock, for having concealed the identity of a donor, likely an FBI plant, who wanted to kill tax legislation on “roll your own” cigarette businesses in Connecticut. Pointing to an affidavit used to secure the arrest of Mr. Braddock, Mr. Kinney said, “The facts and allegations in the affidavit are a grave violation of the public trust and cast a pall on all of the legislative activities Speaker Donovan has participated in since announcing his run for the U.S. Congress in the 5 th District,” a fairly damning assessment. For his part, Mr. Donovan temporarily turned over the usufructs of his office to colleague Brendan Sharkey, who is expected to be appointed Speaker after Mr. Donovan’s term ends, and he has refused a call from one of his Democratic primary opponents, Dan R...

Speaker of the state House or Representatives Chris Donovan is the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut 5 th District. His former campaign finance director Robert Braddock has been arrested following a Grand Jury indictment on a series of charges involving campaign finance money laundering. During an arraignment proceeding on Thursday in federal court in New Haven, charges were brought against other people involved with Mr. Donovan’s U.S. Senate campaign, among them former Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi,   Paul Rogers, affiliated with two roll-your-own tobacco shops in Waterbury, and union officials associated with the Department of Corrections. Mr. Donovan appears to be weathering this brutal prosecutorial storm with a degree of calm indifference that has astonished some reporters and commentators familiar with other political corruption cases in Connecticut. Leaders in the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey, beginning with Governor Da...