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Michael Hyman heads the United campaign fund backing the Mayor Caroline Simmons slate in Tuesday’s ferocious Democratic city committee primary. Hyman, according to The Stamford Advocate, is dismayed that the opposing Responsive Government slate accepted a $5,000 contribution from Stamford Republican Joshua Esses, who serves on Stamford’s Board of Education.

Jann Wenner served on the Rock and Roll Museum board of directors until late last summer. He donated $2,000 to the Simmons slate, though he does not live in Stamford.

The Rolling Stone co-founder was removed from the board after telling the New York Times that no women were included in his book “The Masters” because “The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

Wenner included no Blacks because “you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level,” he said. Wenner apologized during the furor that followed the publication of the Times interview plugging the white-men-only collection.

Wenner has been the subject of credible sexual harassment claims.

If it’s green and can be deposited in a bank, the Simmons slate will take it. That’’s the level it articulates at.

Published March 3, 2024.

Robert Krawiecki announced at this week’s Bristol Republican Town Committee meeting that he is seeking his party’s nomination for the United States Senate, Daily Ructions has learned.

It was a curious start to a campaign. Krawiecki handed out roses to the women at the gathering. He struggled to recall the nine points on which he will mount an assault for the party’s nomination and the general election campaign against incumbent Senator Christopher Murphy, champion of the Houthi terrorists–who Murphy has long argued are not terrorists. Helpful town committee members tried to assist Krawiecki by suggesting one of the nine points might be immigration. No, he replied, that is not on the list. The presiding party official brought the presentation to an abrupt end.

These are dreary days in Connecticut politics.

Robert Krawiecki is a brother of Edward C. Krawiecki, Jr. Daily Ructions readers of a certain vintage will recall Edward Krawiecki as the disputatious two-term House Republican leader who represented Bristol in the House from 1978-1994. Krawiecki, faced an energetic challenge in 1992 from Ellen Zoppo, declined to seek re-election in 1994.

Edward Krawiecki’s reputation was fatally damaged in 1993 when he “was fined $1,500 – the largest penalty assessed a state legislator for violating the conflict of interest provision of the ethics code,” The Hartford Courant reported. “He had tried to pass a bill that would have prevented him from being sued for legal malpractice.”

Krawiecki brought disrepute on himself, House Republicans and the legislature with his sleazy gambit to use his colleagues to punish a client he’d failed. Republican state chairman Ben Proto, then a lawyer for the House Republicans, attempted to provide mitigating testimony in the historic ethics investigation and finding. The commission properly disregarded it.

Published February 28, 2024.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is expected to appear at a top dollar March 16th campaign fundraising event for Republican George Logan’s 5th CD rematch with incumbent Democrat Jahana Hayes, Daily Ructions has learned.

The Wolcott Democrat defeated Logan by fewer than 2,000 votes. Logan is a top prospect for House Republicans seeking to hold on to their tenuous majority in the House. Between announcing his candidacy in October and December 31st, Logan raised more than $420,000. Representative James Comer (R-Kentucky), a leader in the rickety House Republican attempt to impeach President Joseph Biden, was the star attraction this week at a Greenwich fundraiser for Logan hosted by Republican National Committee member Leora Levy.

The Logan campaign is scrambling to put together an event host committee of donors with generous friends. Logan campaign fundraiser Lauren Casper hopes to book the tony Hartford Golf Club in West Hartford as the venue.

Johnson was a leading House Republican in the failed crusade to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Louisiana Republican rejects the term “election denier” to describe him. Earlier this month, Johnson proclaimed a comprehensive immigration reform and foreign aid proposal “dead on arrival” in the House.

Johnson’s views on many issues may go down well in Louisiana but are considered extreme in Connecticut. Vanity Fair reported last year:

On the abortion front, CNN’s KFILE reports that in 2022—as in just last year—Johnson said reproductive freedom in the US was “truly an American holocaust,” adding: “The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these big abortion (providers), they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey. I mean, it’s true.” The same year, he said he was “grateful to be from Louisiana, one of the dozen states or so that has a trigger law that will automatically become an abortion-free state, pro-life,” referring to the law on the books since 2006 that banned abortion, with no exceptions, upon Roe v. Wade being overturned. 

Logan is aligning himself with these views. In little more than two weeks, Logan will be accepting the endorsement and assistance of a Republican who has blocked assistance to the tens of millions of Ukrainians fighting for their free nation’s existence against a Russian invasion.

Logan fundraiser Lauren Casper has deep ties in the Trump wing of the Republican Party. She told Esquire magazine in a 2016 profile of “Donald Trump Super Fans” :

“I get why you think he’s an egomaniac,” she says. “I mean I support him but I still get the joke.” She loves all the usual things about Trump — how unpolished he is, how off the cuff. She loves how he puts America first, and how terrorism and immigration are at the top of his agenda. And she likes how he’s changing the GOP. “We need to rebrand. Be nice to gays and forget Roe versus Wade [The Supreme Court ruling that made abortion a right], it’s never going to be repealed. Trump’s doing all those things.”

Logan has immersed himself in this world, though he may not be eager to acknowledge it to voters in the district that runs from his new hometown of Meriden to New York border.

Published February 28, 2024.

Senator Chris Murphy remains an enigma shrouded in contradictions.

Yesterday, Murphy’s unceasing fundraising for his re-election campaign included a text message to donors and potential donors that emphasized the Democrat’s mighty struggle. “Challenging the status quo — whether it’s the gun lobby, big oil or foreign policy establishment — comes with a price, and the only way a grassroots campaign like ours will be ready for whatever comes our way is with support from people like you,” wrote the two term U.S. Senator.

The highlights of his self-advertisements on the lonely life of an outsider include his friendship with the prime minister of Qatar, the autocratic nation that hosts Hamas leaders. The scars one must endure as the champion of the Houthis battling the establishment to keep them from being designated terrorists.

Who wouldn’t want to “pitch in” to help the friend of the Houthis? Their motto remains,”God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, A curse upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

Murphy’s assessment of Connecticut politics leaves no room for the spirit of rebellion. On Friday, he found time to support felonious Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim in the run-up to Tuesday’s special election for mayor. The election is necessary because Ganim supporters engaged in such widespread absentee shenanigans last summer that the outcome could not be determined.

Supporting Ganim is the opposite of “challenging the status quo.”

Anyone who campaigns for Ganim in the aftermath of last fall’s absentee ballot trial forfeits his credibility in delivering homilies on how we are to uphold our democratic norms in this perilous hour for freedom under the rule of law.

Published February 23, 2024.

Democrat Nick Simmons launched his campaign for the 36th Senate District seat with a homey almost subdued video. The seat, which includes all of Greenwich and parts of Stamford and New Canaan. It is currently held by Republican Ryan Fazio.

Simmons will need to get by fellow Greenwich Democrat Trevor Crow. The life coach lost her 2022 campaign against Fazio by 89 votes in her first bid for public office. Crow began her 2024 campaign by inadvertently announcing at a Greenwich Democratic Town Committee meeting that she’d violated the state’s campaign finance laws.

Greenwich is no longer a reliable Republican bastion. Along with many affluent suburbs across the nation, it has delivered growing majorities for Democrats in state and national elections since Donald Trump became the face of the Republican Party. Fazio lost a competitive race for the 36th District seat in 2020 when he challenged first term Democrat Alexandra Kasser. He won a special election in 2021 after Kasser resigned.

Fred Camillo, Greenwich’s Republican first selectman in his third term, won a thumping victory in November, a year after Democrats claimed the tony town’s three House seats. March brings Republican town committee primaries that reflect the growing fractions in a party in decline and riven with ideological differences and suspicions.

Simmons is the brother of Stamford’s Democratic mayor, Caroline Simmons. She ought to have some influence in delivering convention delegates to her brother, though she’s had some ongoing tussles with the local party committee.

Nick Simmons left his position in Governor Ned Lamont’s office earlier this month.

Published February 22, 2024.

The conspirators have rewarded one of their own. John Healey has returned to the deeply divided dozen member Senate Republican caucus.

Johnny Angel, as he was known when he former House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero’s aide who delivered $10,000 in cash to an FBI plant, will serve as chief of staff to state Senator Stephen Harding, who gulps from the poison chalice. Harding was the face of the tiny revolution that ousted Senator Kevin Kelly as leader of the shrinking Republic caucus.

Healey replaces Gary DeFilippo, who Kelly picked to replace Healy days before the 2024 regular session of the legislature began on February 7th. Daily Ructions understands another branch of government was considering providing a safe harbor to Healey had the coup failed or Harding suddenly become a better judge of conduct, including his own.

Harding will need to remember that in the dark business of treachery if they will do it for you, they will do it to you.

Published February 20, 2024.

State Senator Stephen Harding (R-30) began the day vowing tough questions would be asked at Tuesday’s Appropriation Committee hearing on higher education. He even provided a preview.

Harding was quoted at length in a Tuesday morning statement issued shortly before the hearing began:

“There are many questions that demand answers. With regard to the Office of Higher Education, for example, why were former Stone Academy students told to sign a waiver of their rights against the State of Connecticut in exchange for payment of just a small fraction of the damages they incurred?”  

The new leader, elected in a Friday afternoon coup, appears to have lost his six followers in only four days. No Senate Republican on the committee posed a question to beleaguered Office of Higher Education Executive Director Timothy Larson, a Democrat and former member of the Senate.

Larson’s appearance was scheduled to coincide with the launch of the state’s scheme to require abandoned Stone Academy students to waive all rights of recovery in exchange for small recoveries based on the flawed audit of their transcripts.

There are only a dozen Senate Republicans. Three of them serve on the 53 member budget committee. Two of the three backed Harding in his quiet campaign to oust Kelly. It should not have required much effort to arrange for one or both of Harding’s supporters to raise the issues their new leader posed in his defiant there’s-a-new-sheriff-in-town statement.

Bravado married to silence is not the way forward to success.

Published February 20, 2024.

Three state agencies are marking the first anniversary of the closing of Stone Academy by escalating their war on the more than 1,000 students who were locked out of their classes.. The for-profit nursing school students did not receive a traditional teach-out to allow them to complete the courses they had paid for. Their plight has only worsened in the year that followed.

A state judge intervened on behalf of the students Friday by enjoining the Office of Higher Education (OHE), the Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Office of Attorney General from proceeding with a scheme that would required students to waive their rights in exchange for reimbursement payments that did not include courses arbitrarily delated from their transcripts during an audit paid for and overseen by OHE and influenced by DPH.

The injunction follows weeks of fruitless attempts by lawyers representing students to persuade lawyers for the state to refrain from limiting students’ rights of recovery of the damages they suffered in the long mess. Lawyers for the students explained in their motion for an emergency injunction wrote:

At issue is the State’s demand that hundreds of former Stone Academy Students sign a
waiver of rights against the State in exchange for payment of just a small fraction of the damages
they incurred because of the bad conduct of both the Stone Academy Defendants and the
Connecticut’s Office of Higher Education and Department of Public Health. The State, and its
lawyers, should know better than to seek such a waiver of rights from persons, without them
having advice of counsel and particularly where, as here, the State has an obvious conflict of
interest.

Legislators sympathetic to the students will have an opportunity to inquire why OHE supports harming students when the agency’s leader, Timothy Larson, appears before the Appropriations Committee Tuesday to discuss its funding in Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal.

Published February 16, 2024.

Senate Republicans forced their leader, Kevin Kelly, to resign Friday and replaced him with Stephen Harding, a first term member of the upper chamber from the 30th District, Daily Ructions has learned. In a curious decision, Kelly made plea for his colleagues’ support and they declined to give it to him in a stunning rebuke.

The move came three weeks after Kelly fired controversial chief of staff John Healey a year after hiring him. Johnny Angel, as he is known from a video introduced at a federal criminal trial, may return to the job he lost. That would be good news for Speaker Matt Ritter, his top staff members and some local golf courses.

Several of the 12 members of the dwindling Senate Republican caucus face ferocious challenges in this year’s November election. Fractures among the diminishing Republicans, which includes Q-Anon supporter Eric Berthel, will make holding those seats more difficult.

One of the short-term winners today may be the caucus’s inveterate pot stirrer, Heather Somers. The Groton Republican is talented at fomenting dissent but not in building the trust of her colleagues. There can be no other explanation for Republican senators passing over Somers, in her fourth term, for a first term member who previously served in the House.

Senate Republicans are straining to put a brave face on the upheaval they sowed. Harding and his six supporters may soon discover that five members of a dozen member laughingstock caucus can make nearly as much trouble as the other seven.

Jack Shannon remains.

Published February 16, 2024.

Martin “Bo” Burke has departed this world at 83 years old. We are all in his debt.

The Vernon Democrat may have been the most consequential one-term legislator to serve in the state House of Representatives. In 1975, Bo was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He was a freshman from Vernon, winning the 56th House District in the 1974 Watergate election that saw Democrats win 118 of the lower chamber’s 151 seats.

Ella Grasso, also elected in 1974, brought a reforming spirit to the governor’s office. She had served three terms as secretary of the state (1959-1971) and was a natural ally of open government supporters, including the freshman from Vernon.

For nearly 50 years, Bo has been recognized as the author of the FOIA. The legislature was thinly staffed in 1975 compared to what it has become. A lawmaker had to immerse himself in the task of drawing legislation, especially a bill creating new rights and the mechanism to enforce them. Bo Burke, a master of details, met his moment. Grasso signed the bill during the first year in office. It was among her most enduring accomplishments.

Requiring most local and state government public meetings to be open to the public was not Connecticut’s tradition–or that of any other state. Access to government documents was limited–often at the sufferance of appointed and elected public officials.

Bo Burke changed that 49 years ago. Connecticut’s FOIA, the first and most sweeping of its kind, became a model for the nation and then, as freedom defeated servitude with the fall of the Soviet Union, an inspiration and guide to hundreds of millions of people around the world as they sought to secure their freedom under the rule of law. Connecticut’s law showed them the way forward.

Bo declined to seek a second term in 1976 because the legislature can be difficult to balance with a law practice and life with a young family.

Politicians can spend decades in elected office and never do more than dutifully cast roll call votes and raise money. Few in their first of two years in office craft, guide, and see signed into law legislation that becomes an indispensable to creating and sustaining free societies in a modern world.

Bo’s interest in the FOIA never diminished. He would often contact journalists to discuss attempts by governors and legislators to weaken the public’s right to know how government conducted its business. His knowledge encompassed not only the spirit of the law but also its fluid details. His passion for its purpose and dismay at the attacks it stirred among a string of hostile governors and legislators never flagged.

A decade after Bo left office, voters of the 56th House District elected Joe Courtney to represent them. He served for four terms and decided not to seek a fifth in 1994. Twelve years later, Bo was delighted when his friend and colleague in overseeing Vernon’s legal affairs was elected to Congress from the state’s 2nd District.

Later this month, Joe Courtney will introduce a tribute to Martin “Bo” Burke into the Congressional Record.

Published February 14, 2024.