Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is not among the ardent defenders of prospective Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The good news, Mr. Cillizza writes in “The Fix,” is that Mrs. Clinton will not be wearing an orange jumpsuit anytime soon: “The FBI has recommended that no charges be brought following its investigation of the former Secretary of State's private email server.” “Here’s the bad news,” Mr. Cillizza added, “Just about everything else.  It’s hard to read Comey’s statement  as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She  did  send and receive classified emails. The setup  did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team  did  delete emails as personal that contained professional inform...

“Former congressman Rob Simmons is once again a candidate and back in the race for the U.S. Senate after a two month hiatus,” according to Dennis House of (WFBC’s) “Face the State .” Apparently, when Simmons said he would accept the decision of the Republican nominating convention that chose Linda McMahon as its candidate to run for U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s seat, he misspoke . Following the convention, Simmons dismissed most of his staff. His candidacy appeared to be dead in the water, though Simmons left his name on the ballot, he said at the time, Simmons is expected to acknowledge on Sunday’s Face the State interview with House that he “paused” his campaign and, at the urging of former Republican Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker, has now resumed campaigning, an announcement that would seem to answer questions others have had concerning Simmons’ decision to leave his toe in the political water. Prior to the “Face The State” admissions, Jim Geraghty of National Review expre...

Your mom, in a moment of brute honesty, may have told you that money can’t buy everything. But this was because she was not Ned Lamont or Michael Bloomberg. Lamont is the millionaire from Greenwich who wants to be governor of Connecticut, and Bloomberg is the present redundantly rich mayor of New York. During the recently concluded New York mayoralty race, Bloomberg almost didn’t buy the election. It was a close shave but, in the end, money spoke loudly. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post now tells us that “Prominent Democratic operative Howard Wolfson is advising Ned Lamont's candidacy for governor of Connecticut, adding a high-profile element to what is rapidly shaping up to be one of the most interesting Democratic primaries in the country in 2010.” “Wolfson comes to Lamont directly from his role as the senior strategist of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's bid for a third term, a race that the media tycoon spent more than $100 million on to win by five poin...

A majority of Connecticut voters do not consider US Sen. Chris Dodd to be trustworthy, according to polls cited by Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. Cillizza writes, “And, Dodd's showing is mediocre across party lines. While Republicans are expectedly down on Dodd (14 percent say he is honest and trustworthy), his numbers among Democrats -- not even six in ten (58 percent) self-identified Democrats view Dodd as honest and trustworthy -- are troubling; among independents a whopping 61 percent say the incumbent is not honest and trustworthy.” Although Connecticut’s Democratic State Central Committee has passed a unanimous resolution pledging its support for Dodd, Cillizza notes, “Senate strategists almost certainly took note of the fact that state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), who is widely seen as the heir apparent if Dodd steps aside, was wildly popular in the Q poll; 79 percent approved of the job he is doing while just 13 percent disapproved.”

A report early in February from Chris Cillizza, the Washington Post’s political blogger, disclosed that Sen. John McCain, big media’s favorite moderate Republican, will be in Connecticut on March 17 to raise funds for Governor Jodi Rell’s campaign. Just in time too. Some Democrats were beginning to wonder whether Rell, whose continually high approval rating has astonished both friend and foe, had become “a party of one.” She had successfully defied the expected Republican position on stem cell research and other hot button Republican issues, proving that there is a little McCain in all of us yearning to bust out. Cooption of the kind practiced by the usual Connecticut Republican moderate is intended to anesthetize the opposition. Given Rell’s stratospheric approval rating, some Democrats are asking, does she need McCain to raise funds for her? Or is it possible that McCain, bitten with presidential aspirations, could use a boost from Rell? Perhaps McCain’s March appearance may be mu...