Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Kevin Rennie, a blogger and Hartford Courant columnists, has been ruled out of order by Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy after Mr. Rennie published the names of Friends Of Jodi Rell who received low number license plates. Among the beneficiaries of Mrs. Rell’s largess was “Charles F. Chiusano, a member of the state’s Citizen Advisory Ethic’s Board, registered ‘872’ on December 21st,” according to Mr. Rennie . Mr. Rennie requested the information from Roy Occhiogrosso, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s communications chief, who passed along the request to Malloy Chief of Staff Tim Bannon, who then queried the Department of Motor Vehicles, which routed the names back to Mr. Bannon, who then passed along the information to Mr. Occhiogrosso, who passed along the information to Mr. Rennie, apparently without scrutinizing the list or asking the gate keeper lawyer for the Malloy administration, Andrew McDonald, whether the release of such information was legal. Mr. Rennie, Mr. Bannon and Mr. McDona...

With the departure of the Jodi Rell administration – all good things must end – Lisa Moody, a punching bag for people who did not want, for whatever reason, to punch Mrs. Rell, will also leave the stage, to be replaced by Tim Bannon, Gov. Elect-Dan Malloy’s Chief of Staff. Mr. Bannon, among other accomplishments, is the very first gubernatorial chief of staff in Connecticut to have appeared as a character in a comic strip. T.F. Bannon, of the firm Torts, Tarts & Torque, an early character in Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury,” was patterned after Mr. Bannon, a school chum of Trudeau’s when the two were terrorizing Yale together, Mr Bannon as chairman and Mr. Trudeau as Editor in Chief of the Yale Record, America's oldest humor magazine. The use of a major domo to deflect criticism from the chief is considerably older than the friendship between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trudeau, who likely will not reinsert Mr. Bannon into his strip any time soon. Though she was perfectly capable of t...

Scot Esdaile, President of the Connecticut State Conference NAACP, has chided Governor-elect Dan Malloy for not including African Americans among his transition team. The mostly Irish American line up includes: Nancy Wyman, Tim Bannon, Lauri Aronson (Tim Bannon's Wife), Colleen Flanagan, Howard Rifkin, Mark Ojakian, David McQuade, Kevin Sullivan, Bill Curry and Ben Barnes. "The lack of diversity in Dan Malloy's transition team,” Mr. Esdaile said, “is a slap in the face to all of the urban areas in the State of Connecticut. Clearly Dan Malloy would not have been elected if the minority communities did not come out in record numbers on election day. Only time will tell, but we demand substantial representation at the table.” Soon after the NAACP media release was sent out Tim Bannon, Co-Chair of Governor-Elect Dan Malloy’s transition efforts, sent out the following missive: "It's unfortunate that the NAACP chose not to discuss their concerns with us first befo...