Ganim, Fox 61
Industria Crecimus (by
industry we thrive) – Bridgeport’s motto
Like pornography, we all think we would know political fraud
when we see it. Ballot fraud is only a small sometimes insignificant subset of
political fraud.
Following the arrests of four Democrat political operatives
in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, we think we know what ballot fraud
looks like, but election fraud is a different animal. It may plausibly be
argued that election fraud occurs most often in one-party states and municipal
offices in which rival parties have all but disappeared.
Unhidden and open political fraud is possible in such
unitary political structures because no one is looking critically at Connecticut’s
dominant Democrat Party. Those attending to political affairs are members of
the dominant party, along with a sometimes indifferent media reliant for its
news on the dominant party. This is a picture perfect postcard of Democrat politics
in Bridgeport and other Connecticut large cities in which the Republican Party
as such has effectively been eviscerated.
The present Mayor of Bridgeport, Joe Ganim, people will and
have forgotten, is a privileged, white, Democrat felon who moved easily from a seven
year sentence for political fraud and personal enrichment – the once and future
mayor had accepted brides and kickbacks -- into the mayor’s office.
Political fraud therefore rests on two pillars: 1) unchallenged
power sometimes exercised for decades by a dominant political party, and 2) a
less than vigilant media that declines to criticize a power structure upon
which it depends for its news. In both politics and neighborhoods, good fences,
as Robert Frost tells us, make good neighbors. And just as good neighborhoods
disappear with the disappearance of good fences, operative moral imperatives,
so in politics, good government disappears with the disappearance of active and
watchful alternative parties.
The last Republican mayor of Bridgeport was Mary Moran, the
first and only woman to serve as mayor, who left office in 1991. Before and
after Moran, Bridgeport has been run by a rusting urban Democrat political
machine allied with the larger Democrat Party state machine, well-oiled in
Connecticut by political contributions.
Ganim’s political curricula vita is mentioned in a “shocking”
story – “Prison, fines and increased scrutiny: CT
officials weigh stopping election fraud” -- written by Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant.
At his best, Keating is an accomplished reporter. One can
always expect an interpretive background to make its appearance in any of his
major stories. Ganim’s checkered past peeks out at us between the lines of the
story, as does Governor Ned Lamont – who is shocked! ... shocked! …
Republicans have proposed stiffer penalties for election
fraud.
“I have a different take on this,” Lamont said. “You can
lock them up and throw away the key or raise the penalty to $100,000. I think
the answer to the election fraud is: why did it take 3 1/2 years for SEEC
[Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission] to refer this to the
chief state’s attorney’s office? I thought that was shocking. We’ve got a bill
in place that was passed that says 90 days. You figure out whether it’s worth
investigating in 90 days and get it to the chief state’s attorney. … I really
think it was that delay that was shocking. Whether you change the penalties,
let’s start with no more justice delayed.”
Launched in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Connecticut’s
General Assembly created a five member bi-partisan and independent State Elections Commission (Public Act 74-213) “to ensure the
integrity of the state's electoral process.”
Perhaps stiff jail sentences should be imposed on the
laggard members of the SEEC. But no, that would not work. Mayor Ganim spent seven
years in the clinker for his political peculations and was punished at the end
of his prison stretch with the mayoralty of Bridgeport. The Democrat General
Assembly majority, as well as the Democrat appointed members of the state’s
Supreme Court, has long resolved that stiff penalties are no deterrent to crime,
as witness the state Supreme Court’s abolition of Connecticut’s
death penalty for the commission of heinous murders.
Arrests and rapid release, we all know, has not put a dent
in recidivism in the “state of [bad] steady habits.”
Mayor Ganim’s response to the arrests of the Ganim connected
ballot stuffers in his city can best be described as “politically cute.”
“Whether it’s people accused from the Moore campaign [or] my
campaign,” the mayor said, “any irregularity is unacceptable. We all agree that
the integrity of the voting process is vital to our democracy.”
Ganim has yet to propose the elimination of stuffable street
corner ballot boxes in Bridgeport or the harvesting of ballots by Democrat
Party mayoralty boosters.
Maybe next time.
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