Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

As a general rule, incumbent politicians do not like audits. An audit is a scrupulous examination, political and economic, of a politician’s record in office. If the audited politician’s career in office is at an end, an audit, usually performed by the opposition party, may seem redundant. What is the point of beating a dead political horse? These strictures would seem to apply to former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart’s career-ending audit about which much reportorial and commentary ink has been spilled. At this point, it seems safe to say that Stewart’s political reputation has suffered irremediable damage. Stewart’s withdrawal from her race for Governor of Connecticut on the Republican ticket was occasioned by the publication of an audit’s findings. The audit was commissioned by the incoming Democrat Mayor of New Britain, Robert (Bobby) Sanchez, and conducted by a putative “non-partisan” law firm, Crumbie Law Group. In recent days, we find another audit has tickled the interest o...

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” – misattributed to Mark Twain   The statements made by Jadon MacCormack on a Facebook posting were not unattributed.   MacCormack wrote, “This ideology” – the transgender and LGBT movement, according to the Hartford Courant – “promotes confusion over clarity, prioritizes feelings over biological reality, and seeks to redefine the natural order of marriage, family, and human identity in ways that directly contradict God-given rights and common sense.”   MacCormack was not called upon to clarify his propositions because those condemning him needed no clarification. He was, unsurprisingly, roundly denounced and asked by all and sundry to resign from his position as the Republican Party nominee for House District 50, currently held by “Patrick S. Boyd of Pomfret, a well-known conservative Democrat who has served in the legislature since 2017 and currently co...

A CliffNotes version of the case against Graham Platner, Maine’s Democrat Senate frontrunner, may be found in the Connecticut Centinal under the byline Reese On the Radio.   Revelation followed revelation, most of them debilitating: “The most recent revelation: Platner exchanged sexually explicit text messages with multiple women early in his 2023 marriage. His wife discovered them, reported the matter to campaign leadership last year, and the issue was handled privately—reportedly with counseling. When the New York Times and Wall Street Journal published the story days before the primary, Platner dismissed it as ‘gossip’ and ‘journalistic malpractice.’ His wife called the coverage ‘shameful’ and urged focus on ‘the issues.’ Some Democrats muttered about ‘questions to answer,’ but the campaign and base largely treated it as a distraction.”   Connecticut’s U.S. Senator Chris Murphy recently was given the opportunity by Margret Brennan of CBS News to defend the indefen...

  PURA loses   The title of the Hartford Courant story was worth a thousand words:   PURA agrees to settle suit . And the subtitle -- “Authority [PURA] admits improper decision making by ex-chair [Mellissa Gillett]” – could not have gone down the gullet of Governor Lamont, an early Gillett enthusiast, easily. Crow is nearly always indigestible.   Lamont robustly defended his choice of Gillett as chairwoman of PURA almost to its inglorious conclusion.   Gillett was appointed to her position with great fanfare. Finally, PURA was to have at its chair a woman who did not flinch in a fight with Connecticut’s energy distributors. Following an interview with   David Roberts in 2024, Connecticut Commentary noted that in the interview Gillett had forcefully summarized her regulatory philosophy:   “What is the point in constructing a regulatory regime that never or rarely says ‘no’ to Big Business monopolies that can by their very weight and po...

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has written a book, a neo-progressive manifesto that dismisses conservative realities – the free market, for instance -- as “cults” or heretical departures from the political cult of neo-progressivism. His book is titled Crisis of the Common Good and is certain to be received with worshipful hosannas by the legacy media’s leftist chorus.   The title of the book is itself a knockoff of Robert Reich’s earlier work entitled The Common Good . Most of what is praiseworthy about Murphy is derivative. Murphy’s book is subtitled, The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America .   In a confessional sense, Murphy does not address in his book in what sense the neo-progressive movement has “broken” America. But then, the book is not a confessional. It is a tangle of wormwood eaten, boastful, and dry as dust campaign solicitations.   The expression “the common good” has a long and honorable literary lineage. “I have seen Americans maki...

The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) for donations to scholarship granting organizations is simple and readily understandable. According to the IRS, “Beginning January 1, 2027, individual taxpayers may be able to claim a Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) for certain cash contributions up to $1700 to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). A state or the District of Columbia (state) must choose to participate in the FSTC and provide a list of SGOs in that state to the IRS before an individual taxpayer can donate to an SGO within that state and claim the FSTC.”   As of April 26, 2026, the following states have signed onto the program: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Connecticut, not known in the past for allowing federal dollar...

  The Lamonts, Governor Ned Lamont and his lovely wife Annie Lamont, an accomplished money-making investor, have been with us a long while. Ned Lamont first entered politics under the sheltering wings of former Governor and U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker, a Republican millionaire bumped by Connecticut Republicans way back in 1988 when they realized that Senator Weicker, who as governor graced the state with an income tax, was a Teddy Kennedy Democrat in disguise. Weicker served in the U.S. Senate for three terms from 1971 to 1989.   Weicker’s Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating during his last year in the Senate was ten points higher than that of U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, not a “moderate Republican.” Moderate Connecticut Republicans espied Weicker’s Democrat Party leanings when rarely subtle Weicker boasted of himself that he was “the turd in the Republican Party punchbowl.”   Neo-progressive revolutionists with knives in their brains, socialists teetering on the edg...

Governor Ned Lamont spoke over the heads of moderate Democrat delegates to a different neo-progressive constituency in his acceptance speech as the Democrat Nominating Convention concluded. He was addressing the 25% of delegates who voted for Josh Elliott, a neo-progressive heartthrob some quasi-socialist Democrats in Connecticut regard as the Zohran Mamdani of Connecticut.   Elliot, who garnered a sufficient number of delegate votes to primary Lamont, has vowed to engage the governor, considered by some a moderate Democrat, in a primary.   The delegate count, Elliott has said, did not adequately portray his delegate support. He believes he would have won the endorsement had the delegate vote been anonymous.   “People were afraid to cast their votes against the governor,” he said. “I’ve been hearing threat after threat from people if they voted against the governor today. I’ve been telling people to channel that frustration into energy over the next three months. We have ...

Blumenthal The blog below was Published Six Years Ago. Looking back on these events with the benefit of  hindsight, we now know that Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the committee was dubious. She – and anyone listening to Blumenthal’s hearty assurance that she was telling the truth when she said that Judge Brett Kavanaugh had molested her when he and she were students at different high schools thirty (30) years earlier – had assured the committee  that a witness to the molestation would testify on her behalf. That witness later testified that she had not witnessed the event as Ford had claimed. Three direct witnesses Blasey Ford identified as having been present when the molestation had occurred testified under oath that they could not support her charge.     U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s term expires in January 2029   ___________________________   Kavanaugh v. Blumenthal Before Judge Amy Barrett is called to answer possible objecti...