The FBI’s singing canary in the Donovan probe, “labor
activist” Ray Soucy, was not given prison time for the part he had played in
the attempted corruption of former Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan.
The lede on a story in a Hartford paper ran as follows:
“A labor activist at the center of
an attempt two years ago to kill a tax on tobacco by bribing a top state
lawmaker with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign money was
sentenced Monday to three years probation, the first six months to be served at
a halfway house.”
Connecticut’s majority Democratic Party is full of “labor activists.”
It’s only a slight stretch to say Governor Dannel Malloy, who has marched on
the picket line with union workers, is himself a “labor activist.” Mr. Malloy
pledged his troth to unions when he was in the political nursery, and he has
renewed his vows several times during his administration, most notably when his first budget was on the drawing boards.
However, few labor activists are as colorful as Mr. Soucy,
Connecticut’s equivalent of George Washington Plunkitt,
a Tammany Hall boss in New York City who ran his political operation from a
bootblack stand. Mr. Plunkitt – “I seen my opportunities, and I took’em” – was on his way out even before he was interviewed several times by reporter
William Riordan, who later stitched together his embarrassingly frank interviews
in a small book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.”
Mr. Plunkitt claimed he was a casualty of the then new civil service system,
the bane and ruination of political parties. Mr. Plunkitt’s Democratic Party,
it may be noticed, has since adapted to the new reality and now counts unions
and civil service workers as the I-joist of the Democratic Party.
The FBI wired Mr.
Soucy and provided him with a script with which he might ensnare the people
– some young, others inexperienced in the ways of political lifers -- who
surrounded Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan, then running for a U.S.
Congressional seat left vacant by Chris Murphy, now a U.S. Senator. The rancid odor issuing from the FBI sting
operation persuaded Mr. Donovan to withdraw his Congressional bid in favor of
Democrat Elizabeth Esty. The small-fry were easily ensnared. At some point
during the FBI sting operation, the cover was blown – when and by whom we may
never know – and most of the incumbent big fish, with some effort, swam
upstream.
Hauling in the net, the Feds successfully prosecuted Mr.
Donovan’s campaign manager, lower level campaign workers, and some benighted
smoke shop owners drawn into the sting by George Washington Plunkitt Soucy, who
teased fraudulent campaign donations from them by explaining that money made
the wheels go round at the state Capitol. Or, as Mr. Soucy colorfully put it,
“Politics is about the Benjamins. [Ben Franklin’s mug is on the highly inflated
hundred dollar bill] This game runs on one thing -- dollars."
"Chris Murphy will do anything in the
(expletive deleted) world for me because he remembers that I was the first one
to believe in and invest in him. That's how the system works."
After Mr. Soucy
tells a wired FBI informant, Patrick Castagna, that he has been sowing the political ground in
$10,000 increments, Mr. Castagna, the FBI straight man, doubts whether $10,000
is sufficient to buy a Connecticut politician. Inflation, after all, has taken
a bite out of the purchasing power of the dollar.
Says Soucy, “The
$10,000 was to let him know you are serious....We're dealing with politicians. We're
not dealing with the mob [pause]. It's a close second."
“Pictures [the Benjamins again] they're worth a thousand words. The guy
running in the 5th District [former House Speaker Chris Donovan] he got 10
pictures [a $10,000 campaign contribution].”
When all the dirt was flushed down the drain, “the guy running in
the 5th District” gave up his campaign, and the FBI, thanks to the
wired Soucy, managed to send a few Donovan subalterns to prison. But not Soucy
the singing canary. The well connected union leader, now on probation, will spend
six months in a half-way house because, according to one report,
“Soucy [sic] recordings and his help in raising and delivering about $28,000 in cash were instrumental in the indictments of two Donovan campaign officers and five roll-your-own owners or employees.”
“Soucy [sic] recordings and his help in raising and delivering about $28,000 in cash were instrumental in the indictments of two Donovan campaign officers and five roll-your-own owners or employees.”
The guys who got the Benjamins were inconvenienced but
emerged unscathed from the FBI sting.
Mr. Plunkitt tells us why:
“Understand, I ain’t defendin‘
politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than a
thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a
political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent. The point I want to make
is that if there is some stealin‘ in politics, it don’t mean that the
politicians of 1905 are, as a class, worse than them of 1835. It just means
that the old-timers had nothin’ to steal, while the politicians now are
surrounded by all kinds of temptations and some of them naturally—the fool
ones—buck up against the penal code.”
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