The Bridgeport Hustle

The Feds once again are sniffing in the Bridgeport political mire, fertile ground for prosecutors.

“State Sen. Dennis Bradley Jr. of Bridgeport and his campaign treasurer, former city school board chairman Jessica Martinez,” we are told in a Hartford paper, “were charged Tuesday with a conspiracy to cheat the state’s troubled public campaign financing system out of about $180,000.”

“Troubled” is newspeak for -- the public campaign financing system is so riddled with politically manufactured loopholes that it no longer works.

If the state of Connecticut had an independent Inspector General (IG), armed with subpoena power and charged with uprooting intentional and incidental corruption in state and municipal agencies, Bradley’s alleged attempt to steer a crooked course around the plain intent of the law that established the “troubled” campaign financing watchdog might have died aborning.

Democrat Progressives in the state’s General Assembly recently established an IG position and then – ironically, say some prosecutors in Connecticut -- narrowed its scope and powers so that the IG might inconvenience only state’s police forces, and not, say, loophole infested state welfare operations, or political corruption in Bridgeport, a city that has borne its share of past federal investigations.

The present Mayor of Bridgeport, the Honorable Joe Ganim, a lawyer, served six terms as the Park City Mayor from 1991 to 2003 before the Feds pulled him over, assembled a grand jury and sent him to prison. Ganim was convicted of 16 federal counts: one count each of racketeering, extortion, racketeering conspiracy, and bribery; two counts of bribery conspiracy; eight counts of mail fraud, and two counts of filing a false tax return.

 But Ganim had a political spring in his step. Having been released from prison after serving seven years of a ten year sentence and finding himself unable to practice law, Ganim ran for Mayor of Bridgeport once again and won.

If the state Democrat Party was astonished at Ganim’s temerity, its astonishment barely registered on the fragile consciences of Democrat politicians who hooted with lusty cheers when Governor John Rowland was sent to the hoosegow by the Feds – twice. In Bridgeport, Democrat political bygones generally are soon forgotten. The still politically efficient Tammany Hall like Democrat Party machines in Connecticut’s large cities know how to live and let live.

Now this -- another lawyer has stumbled into an all too familiar big-city mare's nest.

Bradley, following a grand jury indictment, has been charged with one count of conspiracy and five counts of fraud, dimming his political future. It should be pointed out here that a grand jury is not a trial jury. Grand juries are prosecutorial instruments. The critic who noted that a grand jury properly inflamed could be persuaded to indict a grapefruit for jaywalking may have been exaggerating a wee bit, but the general perception that grand juries are favorably disposed towards prosecutors, especially in matters involving politicians, is on target.

Part of the evidence presented to the grand jury that returned indictments against him involved emails written by a campaign volunteer and a staffer, neither of whom were hostile to Bradley.

The grand jury focused on a March 2018 event at Dolphin’s Cove restaurant in Bridgeport. “The event,” one newspaper reported, “had all the trappings of a campaign kickoff [including an announced campaign run for office], but Bradley insisted the affair was organized to show appreciation by his law firm, the BDK law group, for clients and friends.”

In one email, a volunteer asked Bradley, concerning his characterization of the event in question as a non-campaign event, “Wouldn’t that be illegal?”

Bradley wrote back, “No it’s a BDK law group party.”

Another staffer, unidentified in the grand jury indictment, writes Bradley, “Don’t worry Dennis if you go to jail you are a lot cuter than (another convicted Bridgeport politician) — u will be ok and I’ll make sure ur commissary always has enough so you can make toilet wine and mufungo.”

Mufungo, news reports helpfully note, “is slang for a dish made by prisoners using chips, ramen and rice.”

Both emails are what Henry David Thoreau called circumstantial evidence, having noted, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” 

It remains for a real jury in a real court of law to determine whether the emails cited above represent “trouts in the milk.”

Bradley may or may not have his day in court. Pleading to lesser charges is not unusual in the prosecution of politicians.

If Bradley is tried and found guilty by a jury of his peers and thereafter sent to prison, he may take some comfort in knowing that the state legislature, like Bridgeport dominated by left of center Democrats, has passed a bill, now awaiting Governor Ned Lamont’s signature, that would expunge the prison records of some inmates if, upon graduating from prison, they stay out of trouble for seven to ten years.

The Democrat Party machine in Bridgeport is not going anywhere soon. And when Bradley’s bygone is gone, the very young Democrat up-and-comer, chastened and rehabilitated, may once again run successfully for office in Connecticut's “Park City”.