The whiff of fear pervades State Representative Gary Turco’s text message to delegates supporting State Representative Jillian Gilchrest’s bid for the Democratic nomination for Congress on the First District. Turco’s text asks Gilchrest supporters to abandon his “good friend” if at Monday’s nominating convention she does not reach the 15% necessary to qualify for the August primary between incumbent John Larson and surging challenger Luke Bronin.

Turco’s “not this time, Gillian” message announces that this will be Larson’s last term—-and Bronin must be stopped from winning the seat so Gilchrest can try again in two years. Turco is an odd choice for a messenger.

Delegates will not know if Gilchrest has 15% until the end of the roll call, so the switches Turco requests could be fatal to her reaching the magic threshold in the state with the most restrictive ballot access laws in the nation.

Democratic loyalists have been commenting for the past week that Larson’s campaign appears to be struggling to nail down commitments from a majority of delegates. Turco’s text is the first public acknowledgement that Bronin could accomplish what has been thought unthinkable for months: the Hartford Democrat winning the party endorsement at the convention held in Larson’s hometown, East Hartford, denying the 14-term veteran a two-year retirement tour in these urgent times.

Turco and his overmasters want to downplay the West Hartford Democrat’s chances at the convention while ignoring their dread of her greatest campaign asset: Jacqueline Kozin, the best Democratic delegate hunter in the state. She’s faced tougher challenges than this one—and triumphed.

Here is Turco’s fear-filled text message:

*********, this is Gary Turco, State Representative from Newington. This is a real text from my cell phone and not a robotext, I thought it be easier than a phone call since I know we are all bombarded at the moment.

I am reaching out because I am told that you are a strong of Jillian Gilchrest. Jillian is a good friend of mine and someone I think should be our Congressperson in the future.

But, I am hearing that if Jillian Gilchrest does not get the 15% to primary on the first ballot, that Luke Bronin could win the convention and that would give him a huge advantage to win the primary, which would give him a huge advantage to win the primary, which would make it very difficult for Jillian to run in two years after Congressman John Larson retires, which he has strongly signaled will happen.

Can you join me in supporting Congressman at the convention if Jillian doesn’t get the 15% to primary and it is only between Luke and John?

Calls to treachery on convention roll calls are blunt instruments. Their intent is to wound fatally the prospects of a candidate for the sole purpose of heaving over the finish line a competitor who has fallen short on his own. In this intense contest, Turco’s desperate plea is an acknowledgement that after 28 years in Congress 77 year old John Larson has drifted away from the Democratic activists in the 27-town district and is running out of effective pleas to support him and instead must strain to manipulate the presumed interests of those who believe it is time for a change. It’s a dangerous wager that required a more talented messenger than the Larson campaign was able to find.

Published May 9, 2026.

State Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney told his Democratic colleagues Saturday he will not seek an 18th term in the General Assembly’s upper chamber. The New Haven Democrat was elected to the House of Representatives in 1980 and served there for six terms. He followed Tony Avalone in the Senate in 1992.

Looney served as Senate Majority Leader for 12 years. He is in his fifth term as President Pro Tem do the Senate. No one has held those positions longer than Looney who has an encyclopedic memory of Connecticut politics and government. He was elected to the House as Ella Grasso was weeks away from resigning due to ill health. Looney has served the state with six governors of vastly different legacies.

This spring, Looney was still regularly attending Democratic town committee meetings in his district. A lawyer, Looney has also taught courses in politics and law at Quinnipiac University’s undergraduate and law school.

His honors and titles are here. He has seen it all. Looney is the only current member of the legislature to have served in the minority in both the House and the Senate. The House in 1985-1987, the Senate in 1995-1997. Along with Republican Len Fasano, Looney navigated the Senate through the two years it was evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats in 2017 and 2018. Since then, Looney has seen Republican membership shrink to its current 11 members. Looney has managed the challenges that come with a party facing little meaningful opposition in a legislative body.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) is expected to be elected to follow Looney as President Pro Tem. State Representative Al Paolillo, Jr., is the likely Democratic nominee in Looney’s 11th Senate District.

Published May 2, 2026.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Erin Stewart talks like she can deliver a punch but continues to struggle trouble taking a punch–a punch it would not have been hard to be ready to block. This week it is her grab for an unearned pension as she was heading out the door late last year at the end of her sixth term as mayor of New Britain.

When Stewart left and Democrat Bobby Sanchez took office, there was, Daily Ructions understands, a line at his office door of city employees who wanted to report practices and procedures that they believed were not what they ought to have been under the Stewart administration. Nothing unusual about that after 12 years in office.

What is startling is the trail Stewart seems to be surprised she left behind. She must have known some of the details of the incidents in the tax collector’s office. The Republican mayor appointed the Democrat as tax collector when the position went from elected to appointed in a 2023 charter revision. Stewart seemed unprepared for the report of an investigation that was announced months ago.

This week, the CT Mirror reported that Stewart tried to nail down a generous pension as she left office in November, though she fell far short of qualifying for one. The mayor of a city the size of New Britain is required to pay close attention to the pension plan and its costs. The annual contribution to the plan is a significant piece of the budget. Negotiating pension benefits is not an annual ordeal but Stewart must have been immersed it the details ofter in 12 years.

Stewart must have known Sanchez was likely to be shown the Stewart email announcing she’d done some calculating and ought to be qualified for a pension. But she was considerably short of the 20 years she has to have known was a qualification for a pension. Her response to her bid for a big benefit she was not entitled to has the look of a grift. Her response: Why wouldn’t I try to get it? That initial reaction has the distinct look of a grab and go untethered to the rules. The sort of insider dodge Stewart wants to appear to disdain as part of her “Something Different” campaign theme.

Stewart congratulates herself in the Mirror story for not seeking the full 20 year pension. But she did not serve close to 20 years.

Republican jitters over the two weeks of revelations will not be calmed by the six-term Republican’s Thursday video response. There’s no conspiracy. This is documents, not dirty tricks. Documents that are in New Britain’s city hall and on the minds of employees who may not have delighted in Stewart’s administration.

Republican delegates will have to ask themselves and Stewart if there is more to come. You leave behind a lot of emails, letters, and invoices after 12 years. What are the chances the most damaging ones are now in the public square? What’s the plan to immunize candidates for other offices if the revelations continue to flow?

Published April 30, 2025.

State Senator Paul Cicarella (R-North Haven) had some thoughts on a human trafficking bill the Senate debated and passed on Wednesday. It requires hotels, motels and inns to post conspicuous notices on services for trafficking victims, train employees on recognizing signs of human trafficking, and keep records of transactions. It also prohibits those establishments from offering hourly rates of occupancy.

Cicarella supported the proposal but suggested that it does both too much and not enough. He does not want to hurt businesses but wants to impose harsher penalties on those who engage in the hideous practice of human trafficking. He’d like a bill that is tougher. One with penalties the could be administered right there in the Senate circle.

Cicarella was briefly a corrections officer and for much longer a disabled corrections officer.

The video is edited for clarity.

Published April 30, 2026.

State Representative Josh Elliott continues to choose his campaign for governor over his constituents. The Hamden Democrat has been missing roll call votes during the hectic final days of the regular session of the General Assembly. It comes to a conclusion on Wednesday, May 6th, but Elliott has been taking a powder from House sessions to hunt for Democratic state convention votes.

Eliott has been one of the few members of the House missing roll call votes night after night this week. On Monday, Eliott appears to have left the House to make a dash to Willimantic to make his pitch to local activists. The Journal of the House notes only that he missed roll call votes to attend to “personal business.”

State Senator Ryan Fazio, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, has been attending to his responsibilities by staying at the Capitol as the Senate conducts its work. The Greenwich Republican has learned to hone his pitch from a distance. On Monday, he called into the East Windsor Republican Town Committee and make his pitch remotely. Result: a surprise endorsement from a party committee in an area of the state thought to be a stronghold for rival Erin Stewart.

In a Wednesday text, Fazio wrote, “It’s been a unique challenge, but a good problem to have. I love being in the Senate and working for the policies I believe in. That has meant I have missed some campaign opportunities and called into some others, including in East Windsor recently where I was very proud to win their RTC endorsement.”

Democrats and Republicans meet in May to endorse candidates as a prerequisite to August primaries.

The House may soon vote on changes to the state’s already weak ethics laws to raise raise the amounts that may be spent on entertaining them. H.B. 5532 even raises the amount that may be spent on honoring a legislature with a plaque.

The centerpiece of the proposal allows “a constituent unit” of state government to provide tickets to a public official or state employment and a guest to a sporting event once a year. With UConn basketball tickets commanding a significant price, this is a generous gift legislators are voting for themselves at a time when public confidence in our democratic institutions in perilously low.

Published April 27, 2026.

John Maduko, Interim Chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU), has resigned as head of the 85,000 student system amid rumors of complaints about his conduct, Daily Ructions can report.

Maduko was appointed to lead CSCU last spring while the Board of Regents (BOR) searched for a permanent replacement for Terrence Cheng, whose contract as chancellor was terminated a year early. Maduko was leading the consolidated 12-campus CSCU community college when he was chosen to replace Cheng. Maduko, a favorite of BOR Chair Marty Guay, was thought to have the pole position to win the chancellor position at the conclusion of the much-delayed national search.

Maduko, according to his CSCU biography, is “a first-generation Nigerian American, [who] approaches his leadership vocation through a mission-driven, student and community-centered, and equity-minded lens.”

The Maduko resignation comes at a difficult time for CSCU. Media reports about Cheng’s spending prompted two state audits that revealed violations of state expense policies. The Regents’ decision to give Cheng a contract to advise them for a year at his $400,000-plus annual salary has caused considerable comment on the prudent use of student tuition and public funds. Cheng is due to deliver a report on best practices at public universities before his contract ends on June 30th. He is then entitled to take a teaching job at a CSCU university.

Published April 25, 2026.

It is drudgery interrupted now and then by polite applause, repetition with slivers of spontaneity in pursuit of office. At 77, Betsy McCaughey, the former New York lieutenant governor, puts her best face forward in her late launch bid for the Republican nomination of governor of Connecticut.

There she is doing business in the same old place, at a meeting of local Republicans in the hunt for delegates. With less than a month before the party nominating convention, the candidates hit the road night after night to nail down delegate commitments. For McCaughey, it’s a steep climb to 15% of the delegates on May 16th for a place on the August primary ballot. 165 delegates as fewer remain uncommitted.

Look at that determination to tell her fantastical tale to party activists whose meetings have been extended each month by hopefuls reciting their pledges and looking for openings. McCaughey brings her practiced dynamism to her promise to eliminate the state income tax, 32 years after a Republican nominee for governor first made the promise that was never kept.

McCaughey, fresh off the 2025 campaign to Save New York!—from Zohran “Globalize the Intifada” Mamdani, knows how to make an old tune sound fresh. She touches their hearts, but their heads are tougher to crack as they ponder who can deliver Republicans their first statewide win since Jodi Rell’s thumping 2006 triumph. Still, McCaughey sells it. Endorsed by Viktor Orbán-aligned CPAC before the Hungarian thug’s pummeling by voters, McCaughey is a finalist on the runway of the aggrieved for most devoted Trump acolyte. With her fellow Manhattanite mired in calamitous approval ratings, even historian McCaughey may strain to convince faithful Connecticut Republicans needs a heaping helping of what he’s been serving.

Still, one photo of the star and her supporting players tells the tale of what politics requires of candidates night after night after night.

Published April 22, 2026.

Nearly two decades ago, young women working at the Capitol were enduring inappropriate contact by an elected official. In conversations with each other, they discovered they were not alone in receiving unwanted physical attention. Retribution for stepping out of line has long been a fear of those with little power.

Those young women considered their limited options and turned to a woman who was a savvy Capitol veteran with sound instincts. She listened and acted by approaching a senior caucus employee who shared her dismay at the women’s complaints. The official was instructed to stop. He did.

That was an effective use of hard informal power at work in one instance. Sexual harassment takes many forms. When the target is one person, usually but not always a woman, it can be isolating by design. The victim may have no natural allies or may be afraid for her current job and career prospects.

The Capitol is based on imbalances of power. Elected officials are not subject to the same rules of conduct as others. The voters have the authority to fire them every two years but other than a primary or an election, they are not going to be removed from office. There is no formal code of personal behavior with penalties for personal transgressions. Not every caucus chief of staff takes the same view of reports of bad behavior. Fairness can be subordinated to partisan protection.

The legislature this short session is in the grip of speculation over alleged harassment of a caucus employee by a legislature. There is confusion over what a victim should do. Anyone who is the target of harassment should take their concerns to the Office of Legislative Management and file a complaint. It is the only way to be sure that a permanent record is created and shared with appropriate supervisors and leaders. Show a nonpartisan manager offending emails and text messages. Retribution becomes far more difficult.

The leaders of the legislature should consider a clear, formal independent structure for employees and to report misconduct. It ought include providing an advocate for employees. The power between actor and target is far out of balance.

The Capitol is a workplace that some mistake for a playground, a personal bazaar of predation with a smile on its face and lewd text messages on the fingertips of men who have shaken thousands of hands to get there.

While they are negotiating behind closed doors the details of this year’s budget, the men who are the legislature’s partisan caucus leaders ought to draft a statement reminding members and others with business at the Capitol that victims of harassment that they have rights and recourse when those rights are violated. And then they should give the draft to a woman from each caucus to work together to make it stronger.

No one should have to face a predator with a title alone. Light the way forward.

Published April 21, 2026.

Not an easy three days for the Stewart/Ackert ticket a month before state Republicans endorse candidates before the August primary. Erin Stewart’s Wednesday announcement of State Representative Tim Ackert (R-Coventry) as her running mate put Republicans in Ackert’s 8th House District brought a close call with calamity for party faithful beyond the district.

Ackert had until recently been running for re-election. Joining Stewart left a vacancy for his House seat with little time to fill it. No one expected Hitler would threaten to become the symbol of the springtime Ackert addition to the Stewart campaign.

Ackert had a candidate to take his place, Columbia Republican Michael Carroll was according to Facebook posts, chuffed to the gills to run for Ackert’s seat. A cautious House Republican staffer saved the party from a magnifying a colossal embarrassment. He discovered Carroll, who won a $2 million lottery prize in 2013, was arrested in 2017 for painting Nazi and Ku Klux Klan graffiti on eight properties in North Stonington and one in Preston, as well as traffic signs. He was also charged with painting “Trump” on at least one property.

Connecticut State Police investigated the three-day crime spree and charged Carroll with first-degree criminal mischief, impairing the morals of a minor and interfering with police.

The crimes cost property owners and North Stonington thousands of dollars in cleanup costs. The investigation, according to a newspaper report at the time, includes Carroll’s admission to police.

Republicans on Friday were scrambling to minimize the damage an association with Hitler and the Klan would cause among voters. Party candidates would have been required to prepare inadequate answers for persistent questions on the party’s association with a candidate with a taste for Nazi imagery, the Klan, and vandalism.

Carroll is a delegate from Columbia to next month’s Republican convention and serves on a local commission.

Published April 18, 2026.