In September, Governor Ned Lamont criticized his Republican opponent, Bob Stefanowski, for doing business in Saudi Arabia. “I can see why somebody running for office would want to hide that from the public. Signing a deal with the Saudis right after the assassination of Khashoggi raises questions about judgment.” Stefanowski’s entanglement in the Desert Kingdom was first reported by Daily Ructions on the eve of the first debate of the campaign.

Readers may have seen raw screenshots on social media indicating that Oak HC/FT, the venture capital firm co-founded by Ann Huntress Lamont, the governor’s wife and most influential advisor, has become a partner of Sanabil Investments. Sanabil manages Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund. It made a $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s new Affinity Fund, created months after the end of the Trump administration. The Saudis know something about the power of money to influence others who worry nothing at all about their reputations.

Sanabil includes Oak HC/FT on its list of “our partners” in its portfolio. Asked about Sanibel’s investment in Oak HC/FT on Tuesday, Lamont spokesman Adam Joseph replied in a written statement Thursday, “The Governor became aware of Sanabil’s investment in Oak HC/FT last week. Annie Lamont is one of the most respected venture capitalists in the country. Oak HC/FT makes independent investment decisions. The Governor is not involved in the business, including in what investments to accept or make.”

Lamont, who has opinions on most things, declined to say what sort of judgment the investment revealed. Nor did he respond to other questions, including:

How much is the investment? How does this reflect on Oak HC/FT’s judgment? Is Governor Lamont concerned that the Sanabil investment will compromise his own independence? Is Governor Lamont uncomfortable with the prospect of his family profiting by doing business with a fund controlled by a government with an appalling record on human rights? As a former newspaper editor, does Governor Lamont feel a moral imperative to avoid all entanglements with the government that carried out the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the regime whose columns for The Washington Post enraged Saudi autocrat Mohammed bid Salman?

Anyone who pays attention to Connecticut politics knows that Mrs. Lamont is a spectacularly successful investment wizard. As a woman, she has been a trailblazer in a notably tough business. That the trail she chooses to follow leads to a financial partnership with a murderous regime that continues to imprison women for supporting dissidents seems to be of no consequence in her world. It is not getting better for Saudi Arabia’s bravest women. Saudi Arabia’s executions continue to alarm and appall much of the world. All that gold can blind one to the basic aspirations of a wealthy nation’s oppressed. Or to the pain of 9/11 families.

None of it matters. Money makes money and the money money makes makes more money. That is what counts. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns, but the Saudis must be confident that the firm Mrs. Lamont founded will make money for them–and for her.

President Barack Obama made an observation for the ages when he said of the rich, “I mean, I do think you’ve made enough money.” He was wrong. It is never enough.

I’ve seen the emails. Mrs. Lamont is her husband’s most influential advisor. He’s free to choose whose advice he seeks and acts upon. The most persuasive voice belongs to Saudi partner Ann Huntress Lamont.

Building a family fortune often brings its founder into lucrative alliances with disreputable people. A century ago, J.P. Morgan Bank financier Thomas Lamont (Governor Lamont’s great grandfather) was a fan of the fascist regime that brought misery and death to Italy 100 years ago. Thomas Lamont, according to historian Ron Chernow, was dictator Benito Mussolini’s accomplice in destroying Italian democracy. Thomas Lamont also had a dalliance with the Japanese government, assisting it in creating a pretext for its brutal invasion and occupation of Manchuria.

And now Saudi Arabia takes its place in the Lamont family tradition because it is never enough.

Published July 27, 2023.

It was not close. New Canaan Republicans have a tradition of high-turnout caucuses to nominate municipal offices. Tuesday’s festival of democracy saw 1,200 party members gather to dump incumbent First Selectman Kevin Moynihan in a contest without mercy.

Challenger Dionna Carlson won the party endorsement with 724 votes to Moynihan’s 266. A third candidate, Kimberly Norton received 217 votes. Carlson, a former chair of the Board of Education, announced her candidacy in May. Moynihan was seeking a fourth term.

Carlson’s margin of victory–with nearly 60% of the vote–indicates that Moynihan would struggle to convert his 22% of the vote into a September primary victory. A 24% turnout of party members at a July caucus is likely an accurate indication of a primary result.

New Canaan Democrats nominated Board of Education member Amy Murphy Carroll for the town’s top job.

New Canaan was one of Connecticut’s most reliably Republican towns until 2016. Hillary Clinton won the New York suburb that year. The Biden-Harris ticket took it by thousands of votes over Donald Trump in 2020. Last year, Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, received 500 more votes than Republican Bob Stefanowski. Lamont was so pleased by his New Canaan win that he made a curious reference to it in his inauguration address to the General Assembly in January. Governors have traditionally declined to recite election returns on a day reserved for looking ahead. That is the power of a tony Fairfield County town over a Greenwich Democrat.

Published July 26, 2023.

Friends, dark times have descended on lower Fairfield County. Former state Representative Gail Lavielle (R-Versailles) announced Thursday in a rare Facebook post that her move to New Canaan from Wilton has been marred by the discovery that her new town’s stately homes include no libraries.

The Texas native and dual American and French citizen decried having to put bookshelves up in her new house. “I am not very pleased by this,” Lavielle moans. Adding to her burdens, “The painters are STILL here, but that will soon be over.”

It gets worse, Lavielle and her husband Jean-Pierre own two houses, their new one in New Canaan and they one they left in Wilton. This is July, so property taxes are due on both homes. Such troubles.

The former public relations professional has taken the measure of her neighbors and found them wanting. That lack of libraries has driven Lavielle to an inescapable conclusion. “I seriously don’t think people here read.”

Not to be disputatious but this may be an ill-considered pronouncement by Lavielle. You would think a town that spends $25,000 a year per public school pupil and boasts a 98% graduation rate would boast some readers within its boundaries. The town library’s summer writing program for children must be a trial for the instructors explaining a sentence to the les miserables moppets. No Proust for them.

National treasure Fran Lebowitz is said to have long owned a home in New Canaan. She not only writes but also reads books. The social commentator has spoken at amusing length about the expense she bears to move her beloved books.

New Canaanites, wonderful discoveries are daily features at your local library. Here’s how a library was celebrated on Broadway. (Broadway is busy area on the West Side of Manhattan that is home to dozens of theaters where eight times a week productions of all sorts delight audiences.) Jane Karkowski explains in less that two minutes.

Won’t someone in the tony town invite Lavielle into their book club? She would no doubt be an unforgettable addition.

Published July 20, 2023.

The Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system is shedding frontline employees while seeking to fill a new high level position of Vice Chancellor of External Affairs. Unions are objecting to what appears to be a serious misallocation of resources.

The job posting appeared online last week. The winner of search will report “directly to the CSCU Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor is responsible for providing strategic direction and oversight to the Government Relations and External Affairs team as well as the Communications team in the CSCU System Office.”

The deadline to submit an application is August 2nd. The job posting indicates the winning applicant will start working in September. This is a short time to accept applications, review them, interview promising candidates and make a decision. The compressed schedule suggests to the skeptical that a candidate has been chosen and the hiring process is being observed because it must be.

CSCU has a grim history of conducting faux searches for high level positions–or no search at all–to benefit well-connected insiders in need of a job, sometimes one that boosts pension prospects.

Six union leaders objected to filling the new position in a message Thursday to Chancellor Terrence Cheng. “Faculty and Staff have long decried the expansion of the CSCU System Office, particularly at the expense of resources for our constituent universities and colleges during a decade of chronic underfunding,” they wrote in an email distributed by Seth Freedman, a professor of computer information systems at Capital Community College .

“In our community colleges campus managers have already begun cutting [part-time] and [full-time] staff who work in our Advising offices, Libraries, Tutoring Centers, English as a Second Language departments, and Workforce Development offices,” Freedman continued. He concluded by asking Cheng not to fill the new position while cutting student-facing services on our college and university campuses….”

CCSU’s central office saw finance director and former state budge chief Benjamin Barnes depart last week. General Counsel Ernestine Weaver was announced as Senior Fellow Advisor the next day.

The adumbrated search for a Vice Chancellor will add to growing concern among state leaders that Cheng is about to make some serious missteps at a time when regents and others require confidence in the system’s leader as the iron laws of demographics bear down on Connecticut’s colleges and universities.

Published July 20, 2023.

More upheaval at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system. Veteran General Counsel Ernestine Weaver is out. She will be replaced for now by Vita Litvin, who has been associate general counsel.

On Thursday, Daily Ructions reported that Benjamin Barnes, the system’s chief financial officer since 2018, has also left CSCU.

Terrence Cheng, now called the 43,000 student system’s chancellor, made the Weaver announcement and conceded there have been many high level changes but no one should worry. No one but Cheng. He earned many detractors at the legislators with his ham fisted attempt to strong arm them into increasing the amount of money in Governor Lamont’s February budget proposal. Legislative leaders were surprised Cheng offered little appreciation for the $50 million they added to the CSCU budget as the schools continue to be flummoxed by falling enrollment.

The CSCU Board of Regents and Governor Ned Lamont may want to shed some sunlight on what is beginning to look like a crisis. They could begin by engaging in frank exchanges of views with Barnes and Weaver.

Published July 17, 2023.

Angelo Mozilo’s Countrywide Financial was a central actor in the 2007 mortgage meltdown and the wider 2008 crisis that it caused. There was another side to the mortgage maestro. In the competitive and often furtive world of subprime mortgages, Mozilo created an accommodating niche for the powerful and privileged: Friends of Angelo.

Mozilo’s foundation announced that he has died at age 84.

Former Senator Christopher Dodd was a prominent member of the Friends of Angelo club, as first reported in a blockbuster Conde Nast Portfolio June 2008 expose. Dodd maintained he knew nothing about sweetheart deals from the doomed mortgage maestro. Former Countrywide loan officer Robert Feinberg told a different story to Portfolio’s Dan Golden.

The Friends of Angelo story and much that followed from it caused Dodd to draw a bitter end his 2010 campaign for a sixth term. The mortgage meltdown and the bundling of subprime mortgages was a complicated, technical story. That a central actor in the global calamity had curried the goodwill of the powerful with special attention and better terms than others similarly situated could get when they borrowed money was easy to understand.

What’s the good of all that influent and power if you can’t get a mortgage with the fees reduced or the interest shaved? Angelo understood.

Published July 17, 2023.

Rising star Gretchen Whitmer will be the draw for state Democrats’ annual fundraising dinner. The annual Bailey dinner will take place on September 22nd at a venue to be announced.

Whitmer won a second term as governor last November by a decisive margin against a Republican, Tudor Dixon who raised little money. The former horror movie actress was a favorite of Donald Trump. Whitmer’s margin of victory over Dixon, fueled by the Democrat’s support for women’s right to access to abortion services, helped Michigan Democrats win control of both houses of the state legislature.

A September trip to Connecticut will give Whitmer time to assist her sister, Liz Gereghty, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in New York’s 17th congressional district. That Hudson Valley seat was snagged from Democrats by Republican Mike Lawler last November as New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign collapsed in large swathes of the state. Lawler defeated incumbent Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the DCCC. Gereghty is expected to face former Representative Mondaire Jones, who Maloney big-footed out of the 2022 race in the reapportioned district.

Whitmer is co-chair of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.

Published July 14, 2023.

Benjamin Barnes, one of former Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s loyalist during eight dark years, is leaving his post as finance director for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU), Daily Ructions can report. An announcement is imminent.

Barnes, who served with Malloy in Stamford, was the surly Democrat’s budget director for nearly all of his two terms. As the end drew near in 2010, Malloy parachuted Barnes into CSCU.

Malloy often used higher education as a comfortable retreat for his top aides–even if they knew little about life in the academy. Malloy lived his philosophy when he snagged the top job at the University of Maine system–controversy has followed him.

Barnes earned notoriety when he–not Malloy–announced generous raises for 200 Malloy appointees in December 2014, seven weeks after Malloy won a narrow race for a second term. Barnes himself was award a 12% increase to $209,000 a year. The raises took effect the day after Christmas, of course. They came a month after Barnes declared Connecticut was in a “permanent fiscal crisis,” refuting the claims Malloy had made to win re-election. Barnes had considerable trouble balancing the state’s budget until a bipartisan coalition intervened in 2017 and began to restore the state’s finances.

Barnes received a salary of $213,600 when he moved to CSCU, though the position came with far fewer responsibilities than he was entrusted with as the head of the Office of Police and Management (OPM) for eight years.

Barnes is not expected to be the only top official at CSCU to depart from the state agency.

Published July 13, 2023.

The co-chairs of the legislature’s energy committee object to your electric bill. Not the amounts, mind you, just the explanation of its component parts. State Senator Norm Needleman (D- Essex) and state Representative Jonathan Steinberg (D-Westport) wrote a letter to Marissa Paslick Gillet, the head of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) criticizing the description of the fourth of four categories of costs that the agency requires on electric bills.

Needleman and Steinberg do not cavil with the supply, delivery and transmission summaries. It’s the two-sentence “Public Policy” description that rankles the Democrats. It states, “Cost to support energy related programs authorized by the Legislature. Not regulated by PURA.” That brief explanation cuts too close to the truth.

Instead, Needleman and Steinberg want those two sentences removed and replaced by “Investments to support reliability, emissions reductions, and affordability. Not originated by PURA. Charge dependent on usage.” Politicians continue to strain to wedge their favorite euphemism into explanations for government spending. You are not paying a monthly “public policy” fee, you are making an investment to pave the road to a sunlit uplands imagined by the legislature. One must not mention these include costs imposed on consumers by legislators. To the consumer paying electric rates that are among the highest in the nation, that public policy charge is just one more cost.

The public policy charges on bills are allocated to conservation programs, conservation adjustments, the Green Bank, system benefits and, claiming the largest chunk, other energy programs. Needleman and Steinberg contend in their June 28th letter that their Orwellian dance “will preserve the intent of the Authority’s Decision (to explain bills) while more accurately describing the costs as investments that yield system benefits that cannot be fully captured by the confines of a consumer’s monthly electric bill.”

They conclude by urging PURA to adopt the changes they have submitted.

Published July 13, 2023.

A candidate lending great big chunks of change to his campaign is a sign of confidence or a signal that fundraising has disappointed.

Democrat Eric Coleman, a former state senator and retired Superior Court judge, made a an $80,000 loan to his campaign on June 28th as a thin campaign finance period was two days from closing. Coleman raised just $23,615 from supporters. Including the $80,000 loan, Coleman had $146,873 in cash-on-hand when the period ended on June 30th.

Former Eddie Perez top aide Matthew Hennessy began his late bid for city treasurer with a $50,000 loan. Hennessy defended Perez and was critical of the state’s prosecution of the disgraced mayor for corruption. Perez plead guilty to accepting a bribe and attempted extortion in 2017. Hennessy was one of Perez’s dyslexia explainers in the Democrat’s 2010 criminal trial.

Hennessy and his wife were plaintiffs in a much-commented on lawsuit against Hartford Golf Club and one its members. According to one document in the dispute, “The complaint stems from an alleged argument and physical altercation which occurred at a members’ holiday party in December 2016. Following the events at the party, the club took disciplinary action, suspending Fairbanks for a four-month period, during the winter months.” Hennessy was in a twist over the winter suspension (when there’s not much golf played in West Hartford).

In addition to his own $50,000, Hennessy received $250 from former Connecticut resident Joseph I. Lieberman, who served four terms in the U.S. Senate. Lieberman was elected to his fourth term in 2006 as an independent. (The same people who hailed the late Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., for winning election as governor in 1990 as a petitioning candidate took a different view of Lieberman’s bid 16 years later.) Lieberman was famously supportive of Senator John McCain’s 2008 bid for president against then-Senator Barack Obama.

Lieberman is listed in Hennessy’s report as a lawyer employed by KBT–that would be Kasowitz Benson Torres. That firm and its lead partner long represented loathsome demagogue Donald Trump, including $1.6 million from the campaign from November 4, 2020 to the end of the year. The firm also represented the risible Trump University in a fraud investigation that ended with a $25 million settlement to students traduced by Chancellor Trump and his minions.

Democrat Adam Wood, a lobbyist, contributed $250 to Hennessy and has also made fundraising calls. Hennessy must be a tough sell. The campaign reports just $6,800 in individual contributions.

Incumbent Democrat Carmen Sierra has raised $43,156 in individual contributions. Sierra became treasurer when controversial treasurer Adam Cloud resigned in 2022 after a decade in office.

Published July 11, 2023.