Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Whether or not U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty will serve the remainder of her term or resign immediately is very much an open question. But, in any case, the battle for Connecticut’s 5 th U.S. Congressional District has begun with a show of unexpected fireworks. For many years, the 5 th District was a toss-up proposition; both Republicans and Democrats have held and surrendered the seat. Geographically the 5 th District touches the border of New York from Connecticut’s northern-most point to Danbury in the southern quadrant and includes much of Litchfield county and parts of Fairfield, Hartford and New Haven counties. Party affiliation is competitive, in round figures, 30 percent Democrat, 25 percent Republican and 45 percent unaffiliated. Over the years, the Democrat Party in Connecticut has moved from the center to the left, but the 5 th District has been a moderate preserve. During the Obama presidential election, Republican moderates within Connecticut's U.S. ...

Here is the lede graph of a story,  Ethics opinion: Aresimowicz can be House Speaker, union staffer ,  found in CTMirror: “The Office of State Ethics has advised Rep. Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, that nothing in the state ethics code bars him from continuing his job as education coordinator with AFSCME, an influential public-employee union, once he becomes Speaker of the House of Representatives.” The Office of State Ethics (OSE) decision was in reply to a query put to it by the Office of the House Majority Leader : “… let us know whether there are any apparent ethical issues arising from his [Aresimowicz’s] employment, including a conflict of interest with his legislative duties? If there are any further actions that Rep. Aresimowicz should take to protect himself from ethical concerns, we would appreciate that advice.”

“May you be born in interesting times” – a Chinese curse U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty, elected to office a little less than four years ago, is up for re-election in 2016, and Republicans may have a good shot at the seat for a number of reasons. The 5 th is a swing District; the Democratic Party’s nominee for President likely will be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not as charismatic a public figure as President Barack Obama, who has lost considerable luster during his second term; world events have cast a dark shadow over foreign and domestic policy prescriptions that appear to have failed; and Ms. Esty is the least politically adept of the seven members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation.

The picture shows former State House Speaker Chris Donovan smiling broadly and sporting new hair on his face, a white trimmed beard and moustache. He is chatting with Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who is smiling and appears to be sharing a humorous confidence with Mr. Donovan. Could she be remarking on his spiffy new look? Or perhaps she is congratulating the recipient of NARAL’s (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) attentions at having escaped the prosecutorial noose that hanged his campaign finance director and other staff members who worked on Mr. Donovan’s failed U.S. House bid in Connecticut’s 5th District.

Buddy Cianci – the once, and perhaps once again, Prince of Providence – is, to mix metaphors, the Pete Rose of Rhode Island politics. We all know what Mr. Cianci did in office. When he was good, he was very good; when he was bad, he was very bad. A typical view of former jail bird and radio talk show host Cianci, may be found, following an announcement by Mr. Cianci that he is considering another run for Mayor, on the Linkedin site .

Not all corruption is equal. In a recent column, “ A Kennedy Stirs Connecticut's Politics ,” Kevin Rennie sideswiped departing Republican leader Larry Cafero, who is to the Republican Party what Rocky Marciano was to boxing, a hard slugger: “Cafero got snagged in a 2012 federal investigation into campaign contributions and legislation. He was caught on video as an informant deposited $5,000 in cash into a refrigerator in Cafero's office. The money was converted into campaign contributions from straw donors, and the scheme was revealed last year during the criminal trial of a campaign aide to former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan. “What a mess Cafero leaves in his wake. His gelatinous, silent deputies, Reps. Themis Klarides and Vincent Candelora, have disgraced themselves beyond repair for failing to take a stand for honor during this long fiasco. They will wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.” And the sins of...

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 .

The Chris Donovan, “Roll Your Own” scandal is being judicially tucked to bed now that some principals in the scandal have been sentenced.  Most recently, Joshua Nassi, former state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s campaign manager, was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton. Mr. Donovan was running for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5 th  District when his campaign was rudely interrupted by FBI wired singing canaries, prominent among them former corrections union official Ray Soucy, a character who might have done well for himself during the good old days of Tammany Hall and George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall boss who always was careful to make a sharp distinction between honest and dishonest graft.

It is now pretty obvious that former Speaker of the House Chris Donovan was the intended subject of a political sting operation conducted by the FBI in Connecticut in order to expose a pay-to-play scheme involving roll your own smoke shop owners who wished to kill a bill that would have imposed on them the same crippling taxes levied on cigarette manufacturers. Several associates of Mr. Donovan, most notably his finance chairman, were caught in the net, but the big fish got away. If the prosecution of possibly corrupt lead political actors is the test of a successful sting operation, this one failed.

Such are the parallels between the Malloy and Obama administrations that it might almost be said President Barack Obama is now replicating on a national scale The Malloy Way, with one important exception. When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office, Connecticut was facing a daunting deficit of about $3 billion in a biennial budget of about $20 billion. Hoisting the flag of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy raised taxes, imposing on Connecticut the largest tax increase in state history. Mr. Obama’s most recent gambit is to raise taxes immediately on the country’s malefactors of great wealth in a special session of the congress, saving until tomorrow – “which creeps in this petty pace to the last annals of recorded time” -- any strategy to reduce spending.   

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan should have received by Monday a call from John Olsen, President of the AFL-CIO, beseeching the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in the 5 th District to withdraw from the race. Not a few members of Mr. Donovan’s campaign staff have been arrested by the FBI; other of Mr. Donovan’s political associates are even now being wrestled to the ground by FBI agents and prosecutors intent on uncovering what they know and when they knew it about   fraudulent campaign contributions.

The question before the house now that Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan has been bested in a Democratic primary by former state Representative Elizabeth Esty is: Will Mr. Donovan join a majority of Democrats in Connecticut and support the people’s choice for the U.S. Congress in the 5 th District? Mr. Donovan was defeated in the recently concluded Democratic primary by a large margin: Esty's final vote total was 12,678 to Donovan's 9,212 and Roberti's 6,583. In the general election now upon us, Republicans have chosen state Senator Andrew Roraback to lead a Republican Party effort to reclaim the 5 th District; Nancy Johnson, considered a moderate Republican, held the seat for nearly a quarter of a century before she was ousted by current U.S. Representative Chris Murphy. Within the Republican Party, moderate politicians have all but disappeared everywhere within New England. Former U.S. Rep Chris Shays, defeated in his primary contest for the U.S. Senate b...

It began as a “First Five” program and then, as happens with the usual governmental fix, quickly expanded, while retaining in its name the modest number “Five.” The day after Democratic voters in Connecticut went to the primary polls and chose Elizabeth Esty over Chris Dovovan in the 5 th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Donovan having caught his foot in an FBI snare, Governor Dannel Malloy announced he had given to Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund,   a $25 million ten-year forgivable loan at 1 percent, a $5 million job training grant, a grant up to $5 million for the building's alternative energy systems and up to $80 million in urban and industrial reinvestment tax credits.

Citing “sources close to the investigation” of Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s 5 th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, HartfordCourant investigative reporter Jon Lender fingered Laura Jordon as the “campaign aide who gave inside information to then Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi. Prior to Ms. Jordon’s outing as the Donovan floor manager identified in an affidavit supporting the arrest of Mr. Nassi, the elusive legislative contact had been identified in prosecution records as “Legislative Aide 1”:   “Top Democratic legislative leaders would not agree to a Republican lawmaker’s proposal earlier this week to launch their own probe into possible wrongdoing in the General Assembly, including the House speaker’s office. And up to now, Legislative Aide 1 — as the person is referred to in the indictment — has not been identified publicly.   “But in recent days, sources familiar with the events described in the indictment have confirmed to The Courant ...

According to Public Policy Polling , Governor Dannel Malloy “continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country in our polling.” Mr. Malloy’s approval-disapproval spread likely astonished most political actors in the state, with the possible exception of the phlegmatic Roy Occhiogrosso, the governor chief flack catcher, whose response to a reputable, non-partisan poll showing the governor with an approval rating of a slender 33 percent and a disapproval rating of 51 percent was a barely suppressed yawn. “We generally don’t comment on polls,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso, “because what’s there to say? Polls come and go, numbers go up and down. The governor always tries to do what he thinks is in the best interests of the people of Connecticut, irrespective of the political consequences.” Politicians also come and go, and their comings and goings are sometimes intimately connected with sliding approval ratings. On previous occasions, Mr. Malloy has said that he i...

Speaker of the state House or Representatives Chris Donovan is the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut 5 th District. His former campaign finance director Robert Braddock has been arrested following a Grand Jury indictment on a series of charges involving campaign finance money laundering. During an arraignment proceeding on Thursday in federal court in New Haven, charges were brought against other people involved with Mr. Donovan’s U.S. Senate campaign, among them former Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi,   Paul Rogers, affiliated with two roll-your-own tobacco shops in Waterbury, and union officials associated with the Department of Corrections. Mr. Donovan appears to be weathering this brutal prosecutorial storm with a degree of calm indifference that has astonished some reporters and commentators familiar with other political corruption cases in Connecticut. Leaders in the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey, beginning with Governor Da...

Salon Weighs in on Connecticut’s U.S. Senatorial Race Alex Pareene, who writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt [Romney]," has weighed in on the Chris Shays-Linda McMahon Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate in an article titled “Chris Shays has no respect for Linda McMahon: The last Yankee Republican shares his honest opinion of his primary opponent.” Mr. Pareene, formerly of Gawker, is likely not from the nutmeg state, but this is no impediment to Mr. Pareene, who writes: "Shays is pro-choice, pro-gun control, an environmentalist, pro-gay rights, pro-campaign finance reform — basically your classic New England Yankee Republican. Or as we call them now, 'Democrats.”'This helps to explain why he’s having so much trouble defeating someone as ridiculous as Linda McMahon, whose sole asset as a politician is her great wealth, which she earned off the labor of poorly treated 'independent contractor' wres...

Dan Roberti, a Democrat running for the U.S House in Connecticut’s 5th District has called upon Democratic Party nominee Chris Donovan to quit the race. "It is time for Chris Donovan to withdraw from the primary race for the good of the Connecticut Democratic Party and to protect the seat,” Mr. Roberti said following an indictment returned by a Grand Jury of Mr. Donovan’s former campaign director Robert Braddock. “He has hidden behind lawyers and never stepped up to explain how members of his campaign staff could have arranged conduit contributions without his knowledge." Following Mr. Roberti’s invitation to withdraw, Donovan campaign manager Tom Swan declared that Mr. Donovan remains, even after damning disclosures, the strongest Democrat in the race . Mr. Donovan was nominated at the Democratic convention for the 5 th District seat now occupied by U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated when pre...

Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s bid for the U.S. House is beginning to look like the inside of Pandora’s Box. Those who have kept up with their Greek mythology will recognize Pandora as the first woman, created from water and earth by Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship.   At her creation, she was endowed with many godly gifts: Athena draped her in rich clothes; Aphrodite blessed her with beauty; Hermes bestowed on her the gift of speech. But there was a problem. Prometheus, whose name means forethought, had rebelled against the gods on behalf of men, gifting them with fire and knowledge, for which effrontery he was punished by Zeus, who presented Pandora to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus. Here, temptation entered the world. Given a beautiful box and warned never to open it, her godly gifts -- most especially curiosity -- induced her to open the box, at which point all the evils of the world flew out, spreading over the earth and contaminating the race of men. ...

Bravely, Rick Green, a Hartford Courant columnist, titled his exculpatory column on the Speaker of the House Chris Donovan scandal, “My Donovan Flip-Flop: Where’s The Proof?” Mr. Green announced that he was “ready to believe Chris Donovan and the former U.S. attorney now vouching for him,” even though a red flag had ben prominently displayed in the partial investigation conducted by   former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy . Mr. Twardy acknowledged in his report that here were holes in his own investigation . Because some of the principals involved in the Donovan scandal declined on the advice of their lawyers to speak to Mr. Twardy, he was unable to interview the finance director arrested by the FBI for having accepted illegal campaign donations, fired by Mr. Donovan, and two other associates in Mr. Donovan’s office allegedly involved in a criminal conspiracy t o disguise the source of the illicit campaign donations, also fired by Mr. Donovan. Mr. Green rushed his opinion pie...