A pitched battle in the culture wars broke out at the Legislative Office Building Thursday afternoon. The Appropriations Committee was considering House Bill 5454, An Act Concerning Mental Health Services for Young Children and Their Caregivers.

The purpose of the bill is “to maximize federal resources for mental health services for young children, their caregivers and pregnant persons.” Representative Robyn Porter (D-New Haven) offered an amendment to add “expectant mothers” to the bill. Porter explained she was offering the amendment to add equity and inclusion to women, like herself, who have a womb.

Representative Jillian Gilchrest (D-West Hartford) was first up for excluding expectant mothers, explaining to Porter, a Black woman, that pregnant persons is the inclusive term. This, Gilchrest concluded, is the way she and others hope we are moving in this country.

Other legislators offered their notions of who gives birth and what a mother is.

Committee co-chair Representative Toni Walker (D-New Haven) offered a typically sensible note when she said the bill is about mental health but why not add “expectant mothers”?

Gilchrest returned to the debate by seeming to suggest that adding “expectant mothers” would damage the mental health of LGBTQ+ people.

Much debate followed, mostly in support of adding “expectant mothers.” There was no suggestion that “pregnant persons” should not be included, only that “expectant mothers” should be excluded.

Senator Martha Marx (D-New London) suggested adding “pregnant fathers” to the bill. Expect Marx’s moment to garner extended attention.

Senator Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) said it was important that the language of the bill not be changed. Adding “expectant mothers” would be counterproductive to what the bill seeks to accomplish. You shall not, it seemed, speak of mothers in H.B. 5454.

Gilchrest returned to the debate to claim adding mothers to the bill was beyond the jurisdiction of the committee. Gilchrist’s committee voted to refer the bill to appropriations.

After a huddle, presiding co-chair state Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) ruled the amendment and then the bill would be voted on.

The committee voted 32-16 in favor of adding “expectant mothers” to the bill, a proposal that many may be surprised raised such determined opposition in one committee that includes more than 25% of the membership of the General Assembly.

Published April 4, 2024.

A quiet presidential primary day in Connecticut. Polls are open until 8 p.m. and voters will cast ballots at their regular polling place.

The state’s first presidential primary was held by the Democrats in 1976. Jimmy Carter edged out Morris Udall by 2,500 votes. With an endorsement by Ella Grasso, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson came in third with nearly 18% of the vote, 11 days after withdrawing from the race. Such was the power of Ella Grasso 48 years ago.

Published April 2, 2024.

Senator Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) happiness, loneliness and back-to-church stew of intrusive and showy sweeping statements came into focus throughout Easter, the day that puts the Christ into Christianity. Murphy proclaimed in a November 2023 Vanity Fair puff piece that he is not sure what he believes but he returned to attending church in the spring of last year.

One unshakable tenet of the senator who wants us off our phones and in church is a special Redemption exemption for fundraising text messages on the day of the Resurrection. Hey, Daily Ructions readers were surprised to receive pleas for campaign contributions through Christendom’s most important day.

Jesus Christ has risen today, can you chip in some money to my campaign? It had to be on Easter because this year fell on the last day of the first fundraising quarter of the year. And Murphy only had $8.2 million in the bank at the end of the last fundraising quarter. And no serious challenge is in sight.

“Over the past two years, Murphy’s joined not one, but two churches, one in Hartford and one in Washington, where his wife and kids live,” Politico reported, also in November. “He said he wants to meet people he wouldn’t normally connect with through work or his personal life.” Connecticut’s junior senator thinks his life in Washington, sometimes in Connecticut and even in the company of his authoritarian friends in Dubai, does not bring him into contact with people of faith. That betrays serious isolation, or Murphy could be incurious about others.

It’s only a hunch but some of those college basketball fans who enjoyed primo seats near Two-Churches at last weekend’s NCAA playoffs in Boston may regularly go to a church, temple or mosque. People of faith, Murphy may discover, are much like others. They probably don’t make a show of it in national publications, especially after six months of attending church after a long hiatus. The mystery of faith can be discovered in church—-often quietly.

Glory, glory, glory, somebody put the touch on me. It must have been the hand of our senator seeking re-election texting for dollars.

Murphy, 50, was filled with wonder at the power of faith in November as the two-term Democrat and Politico reporter Erin Schumacher happened to walk past the Wethersfield native’s Hartford church. “Churches are places that I think do a good job of speaking that language [of people connecting to each other],” he said. “That’s another way to feel less lonely.” You know, that way they talk in church.

Murphy was interested on Easter in speaking a strange language of the politically obsessed with fundraising texts and, for some, campaign ads. After all, the last day of the fundraising quarter needs to be the candidate’s triumphant holy day.

Won’t you pitch in?

Published April 1, 2024.

Published March 31, 2024–Easter.

Democratic state legislators are urging President Biden and the Connecticut congressional delegation to secure the release of Hamas terrorists held in Israel. In a letter circulated last week to be sent April 1st, the legislators, 9 House member and 3 members of the Senate, ask Biden and the state’s two senators and five representatives “to prioritize the safety and well-being of all hostages and detainees in both Gaza and Israel, recognizing their right to freedom and unconditional release.” Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is estimated to have captured hundreds of Hamas fighters.

The legislators do not call for the release of hostages held by Hamas as a condition of a ceasefire.

In a chilling display of moral equivalency, the signers equate hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th with the terrorists and their abettors captured by Israeli troops. There are no detainees in Gaza. There are only hostages, six of them are thought to be Americans. There are no hostages in Israel. There are detainees, the Hamas fighters and their accomplices held in Israel, no longer free to slaughter Jews. Releasing them would be a prelude to more violence.

More than 240 hostages were kidnapped and taken to Gaza in the October 7th attack on Israel that saw Hamas revel in its slaughter of 1,200 people. Hamas and other terrorist organizations are estimated to be holding 130 terrorists, though as many as 50 may be dead, according to Israeli estimates, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Curiously, Hamas is not named in the four-paragraph letter. It does, however, minimize the October 7th massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel as merely connecting “to a history of conflict….” Because, that phrase suggests, October 7th was one more day in a continuum of strife. In January, Hamas described the attack as a “necessary step” against Israel. The Israeli government has vowed to destroy Hamas, a necessary step to peace and security in the region.

On March 25th, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire. The resolution does not make the release of the hostages held by Hamas a condition of a ceasefire, nor does it condemn Hamas. The United State, in an ill-judged decision, abstained on the resolution.

The dozen signatories loftily declare themselves as joining “with voices of conscience in Connecticut and around the world in recognizing the imperative need for an immediate, mutual, and permanent ceasefire in the assault on Gaza.” Their solution is the restoration of Hamas, allowing it to continue to fight to annihilate Israel and Jews, while consigning Palestinians to the continued brutal rule of terrorists. Imagine the sort of conscience that mistakes bolstering a murderous regime for virtue.

The legislators, exercising their copyright on conscience, limit their ceasefire call to “the assault in Gaza.” Their letter does not condemn the more than 12,000 rockets Hamas has fired on Israel since October 7th or the tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from their homes near the democratic nation’s northern border because of rockets fired by Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terror organization.

The way forward is not hard to identify. “The central cause of Gaza’s misery is Hamas. It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians,” wrote Bret Stephens in The New York Times on October 15th. “The best way to end the misery is to remove the cause, not stay the hand of the remover.”

David Brooks confirmed that reality five months later in a widely read March 24th extended column, also in The New York Times. There will be more misery on both sides as long as Hamas, with hundreds of miles of tunnels from which to emerge to fight and then retreat to, continues to place Palestinian civilians between itself and the IDF.

“Israel and the Palestinians have both just suffered shattering defeats. Maybe in the next few years they will do some difficult rethinking, and a new vision of the future will come into view,” Brooks concludes. “But that can happen only after Hamas is fully defeated as a military and governing force.”

The unconditional release of Hamas fighters from captivity in Israel would, as the Connecticut Democratic legislators might euphemistically describe it, extend and continue to connect the barbarous to “a history of conflict.”

Published March 30, 2024.

Trevor Crowe has withdrawn from the race for the Democratic nomination in the 36th Senate District. Crowe was the party’s 2022 nominee for the seat. She fell 89 votes short of defeating Republican incumbent Ryan Fazio.

On Wednesday, Crowe appeared to win close to zero delegates at Democratic town committee selection meetings. The results confirmed the Nick Simmons juggernaut was making a tattered mess of Crowe’s campaign. Still, Thursday brought Crowe’s announcement that she had qualified for taxpayer funding of her campaign. It was not enough to revive the life coach’s fortunes.

On Good Friday, Crowe announced her withdrawal, conceding “there is no path” to victory. She wrote on Instagram, “Two years ago, we came so close to flipping the 36th. I promised my supporters then that we would carry our momentum into 2024 and finish what we started. I was utterly committed to fulfilling my promise, and so it is with a heavy heart and a great deal of disappointment that I am withdrawing from the running for the Democratic endorsement for the 36th District.”

Crowe’s rendezvous with reality leaves Simmons with only one obstacle on his way to the Senate: Ryan Fazio, the Greenwich public school graduate who is mounting his fourth campaign for the job.

Published March 29, 2024.

If present trends continue, Connecticut Democrats could be showcasing the Speaker of the House as the lead attraction to their June 29th Bailey fundraising dinner. For now, U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries leads a caucus of 218 Democrats. The Republicans have 222 members. That will become 221 on April 19th when Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher, who inexplicably resigned this month, leaves office.

Democrats will rise to 219 members in April when they are expected to win a special election in a traditionally Democratic seat in the Buffalo area. In May, Republicans win add a member when former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s seat is filled in a special election.

Other Republicans, who seem especially frustrated by their ceaselessly roiled caucus, could resign. A couple of more and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will be initiating some urgent conversations with Almighty.

If it happens before June 29th, ticket sales to the Democratic dinner will be especially robust. The noble and beleaguered people of Ukraine, fighting on the frontline of freedom, will be sent the arms they need to defeat the murderous Russians who invaded their country two years ago.

Published March 28, 2024.

Supporters of Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis are being urged to gather at the Legislative Office building on April 16th to “support one of our own.” In a video, one Bowden-Lewis supporter (or perhaps Bowden-Lewis herself, the speaker does not identify herself) claims she has been “retaliated against” and “publicly humiliated.” The Public Defenders Services Commission will at that meeting continue the process of determining if it will discipline Bowden-Lewis in the face of myriad accusations.

“Stand with us in solidarity as we protect one of our own,” the speaker requests. That refers to Bowden-Lewis’s race, the first Black lawyer to be appointed to lead the state’s public defenders. It is presumably not a call to stand in solidarity with an agency head accused of hacking into colleagues’ email accounts.

This is not the first race-based accusation to anchor the controversies that have swirled around Bowden-Lewis. A year ago, Bowden-Lewis through her lawyer accused the Public Defender Services Commission that hired her of creating a pretext for discrimination by disagreeing with some of her hiring and promotion recommendations. All but one commission member resigned.

Bowden-Lewis may eventually conclude that was a strategic error. The new commissioners who replaced the ones Bowden-Lewis chased away appear resolute in their determination to confront the intolerable atmosphere of suspicion, recriminations and fear of retribution that pervade the agency. Public defenders voted 121-9 in favor of a no-confidence motion in Bowden-Lewis.

Published March 28, 2024.

A slate of 37 delegates committed to Democrat Nick Simmons defeated a slate supporting rival Trevor Crowe by the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee Wednesday night. The New Canaan DTC added its 10 to the growing Simmons count.

Stamford sends 16 delegates to the May convention. Crowe will need 10 of those to reach the 15% mark required to qualify for a primary at a nominating convention. Simmons is the brother of Caroline Simmons, Stamford’s Democratic mayor. If Crowe fails to win the support of 15% of the delegates she will need to collect signatures from 5% of the registered Democrats in the district to appear on the August primary ballot. That is almost always harder than candidates expect.

An additional obstacle looms. There will be no state or congressional Democratic primaries this year. Connecticut continues to have the most anti-democratic ballot access laws in the nation. A Democratic primary for the state senate will likely be the only contest on the ballot. It will be a low turnout contest with an advantage to the endorsed candidate–the self-funding Simmons. This is the season of sudden and harsh realities for candidates running against the candidates favored by a party establishment.

Crowe’s 2022 loss to Republican incumbent Ryan Fazio by 89 votes appears to have earned her no longterm goodwill among local party leaders.

The November election race for the seat is expected to be among the most competitive senate contests. Republicans, with only 12 of the chamber’s 36 seats, face considerable headwinds in previously Republican suburbs like Greenwich and New Canaan.

Published March 28, 2024.

Trevor Crowe, the Greenwich Democrat seeking her party’s nomination for the 36th State Senate District for the second time, is using social media to cleave to the historic legacy of the late Ella Grasso, the first woman elected governor of a state in her own right. There was no one like Ella.

One needs to be careful about soldering abortion rights to Mrs. Grasso. She was an unwavering opponent of a woman’s right to choose abortion services. The Windsor Locks Democrat would find no place in today’s Democratic Party.

In 1977, Grasso, the daughter of Italian immigrants, immediately prohibited the state from financing elective abortions (broadly defined at the time) when the Supreme Court ruled Connecticut was not required to pay for them.

Her achievements earned Ella Grasso a unique place in the nation’s public life in life and after her death in 1981. She said, “I keep my campaign promises, but I never promised to wear stockings.” That was Ella mocking the expectations imposed on women who succeeded in politics. People also paid attention when she declared, “I’m opposed to abortion because I happen to believe that life deserves the protection of society.”

Published March 27, 2024.