Democrat Rick Lopes is one of three contenders for his party’s nomination to fill the vacancy created by Timothy O’Brien’s election as mayor of New Britain this month. Lopes faces New Britain Mayor Pro Tem Michael Trueworthy and New Britain Board of Education Chairwoman Sharon Beloin-Saavedra in Tuesday’s nominating contest.  The 24th District includes parts of New Britain and Newington.

Lopes may be remembered for the 2,000 letters of apology he sent to his Ward 1 constituents in 2004 when he served on the Board of Alderman and was discovered to have registered his motor vehicles in West Hartford for 4 years, saving thousands in property taxes.  Lopes made more news three years later when he and another Senate Democratic clerk were caught on video rifling through the desk of a Republican committee assistant clerk. Lopes was suspended for three days.  According to a news report at the time of the incident, “A spokesman for the Senate Democrats said this kind of activity is unprofessional and unacceptable and appropriate action has been taken.”  Lopes was suspended from his job for three days.

Look for Republicans to highlight the “unprofessional and unacceptable” as the theme of the January election contest if Lopes snags the party nod this week.

A transformer remains on the ground of a residential neighborhood near Hartford more than two weeks after the October 29th storm knocked out power to more than 800,000 CL&P customers.  If the company had a comprehensive environmental protection and public safety plan in anticipation of a far reaching blackout, it has not yet completed its execution.

It was hard to get voters’ attention in towns coping with the extended outage of power around Connecticut.  Harwinton challenger Michael Criss found a way.  His campaign signs posed a simple question about incumbent First Selectman Frank Chiaramonte, “Frank’s Got His Electricity, How Come You Don’t?” Enough shivering voters didn’t like the answer and tossed the incumbent out by a 30 vote margin.

The Register Citizen has the tale.  The loser sounds bitterly disappointed.

Too bad Connecticut Light and Power President Jeffrey Butler is not as reliable at restoring power as he is at making political contributions. Every two weeks, the Northeast Utilities Employees Political Action Committee receives a payroll deduction contribution from Butler, who joins other executives from the NU “family” of companies in bolstering the fund.  Last year it raised nearly $140,000 to support candidates and other political action committees.

NU PAC records reveal that the fund’s favorite Connecticut politician is 2012 United States Senate hopeful Representative Christopher Murphy. The Fifth District congressmen’s campaign and political committee have solicited and accepted tens of thousands of dollars from NU’s PAC and its $6.2 million a year leader, Charles Shivery. Murphy last week criticized CL&P’s response to the October 29th snowstorm that left 800,000 customers in the state without power for as long as 10 days.  The three term Democrat received a maximum contribution of $5,000 from NU for the first phase of his Senate campaign on March 31, 2011, the crucial last day of the year’s first campaign finance quarter.

Murphy’s the only Connecticut politician to have received a series of $5,000 in the past two years alone.  Last year, on March 31, NU PAC contributed $5,000 to Murphy’s congressional re-election campaign.

Four months later, NU’s political fund gave Murphy another $5,000, this time to his personal committee, MurphPac.  It was a rare maximum contribution to a federal official’s personal PAC from the NU committee.  The NU contribution represented more than 25% of the money Murphy raised last for his closely held committee in 2010, suggesting NU and its leader are chummy enough to the Cheshire Democrat to serve as one of only a few generous donors of first resort for Murphy. He uses the PAC to purchase sporting event tickets and make contributions to other Democrats.

Murphy has an avid supporter in Shivery, who Forbes ranks 444th in executive compensation in 2010.  In the past 4 years, Shivery has contributed $12,300 to Murphy’s campaigns. That’s more than twice as much as the NU contributed to any other candidate for federal office during the last 4 years, according to OpenSecrets.org. (Runner-up is First District Congressman John Larson at a distant $5,000.)

Shivery’s subordinate, Butler, does not make many direct political contributions. He donated $500 to Murphy’s re-election campaign last year and $250 to his Senate campaign 4 months ago, two days before the unpopular utility executive handed over $500 to Democratic Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan’s campaign for Murphy’s seat in Congress. The NU committee made a $5,000 contribution this year to the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee federal fund shortly after Governor Dannel P. Malloy took office and initiated an aggressive fundraising campaign for the party.

It’s Murphy’s chummy and lucrative relationship with NU and Shivery, however, will raise doubts among bewildered and furious state residents about the legislator’s credibility in the coming review of the state’s largest utility’s practices and plans for a merger with a Massachusetts power company.

Good news if you are shivering in Massachusetts. Governor Deval Patrick, who has expressed frustration with the pace of restorations in his state, says he expects most of the 671,000 customers who lost power on Saturday and Sunday should have service by the end of today. Massachusetts began the day with about 215,000 customers without electricity.

UPDATE: Governor Patrick may be too optimistic. Here’s the outage map from Western Massachusetts Electric–a Northeast Utilities company–and it doesn’t look like it will have 99% of its customers restored today.

National Grid and WME now say Thursday should see nearly all customers restored.

Connecticut Light & Power president Jeffrey Butler, the face of failure as power outages into a fourth cold night, got his back up over reports of swifter power restoration in neighboring Massachusetts.  As has become his custom, Butler rattled off some numbers and tried to move.  He thinks that since Massachusetts is twice the size of Connecticut comparisons are inappropriate and unfair to his company.

Not so fast.  A story from Monday’s Springfield Republican suggests that customers in Western Massachusetts have enjoyed swifter relief than their Connecticut neighbors.  On Sunday, 671,000 customers served by 3 utility companies in the region were without power.  That was expected to be reduced to 250,000 by Monday night. That’s 421,000 customers restored by Monday in a region contiguous to Connecticut.  On Monday, National Grid provided a list online of expected restorations by town. Not pretty reading, but helpful to customers trying to make provisions.

While thousands flee in the long aftermath of an October snow storm that’s left affluent Connecticut dazed, cold and restive, tree experts from near and far are gathering in Hartford for the Tree Care Industry Association expo at the Connecticut Convention Center.  The event is loading in today and begins Thursday.

According to the organization’s website, “It’s the world’s largest tree care industry trade show and conference.”  Welcome.  Please double up on the hotel rooms.

Connecticut Mirror editor Michael Regan makes it official on the highly subsidized non-profit’s website.  He can no longer oversee the sleepy outlet from  his New Hampshire lair.  He’ll exit next month. Regan will be replaced by fellow Courant alum, Jenifer Frank, who’ll depart the Day to add some oomph to the two year old Mirror.

Frank knows how to nurture writers she finds in unexpected places.  Count on her sharp eye to bring lively changes in content and look.

Officials at the Jackson Laboratory mouse factory were willing to work the numbers to satisfy Florida officials who passed on a deal with the Maine breeders. A March 16, 2011, story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune contains this troublesome nugget from negotiations between company and government officials:

In an e-mail obtained by the Herald-Tribune from Enterprise Florida, Jackson’s Hyde also suggested that the higher employment number would require two additional build-outs of the institute’s operations to handle the employment growth.

He also suggested Jackson might change its earlier assumption that it would generate two business spin-offs every three years to seven every eight years. That had the effect of boosting the number of estimated jobs the lab would spur.

It doesn’t sound like a scientific method–more like dodgy corporate forecasting to attract a wide-eyed investor.

As first reported at Daily Ructions nearly two weeks ago, NBC Sports is moving to Stamford, Connecticut.  Governor Dannel P. Malloy will make the announcement Tuesday at the Blachley Road site of the network’s new facility, formerly the site of a Clairol hair dye factory.

NBC’s entertainment programming has been mired in fourth place in primetime ratings. Even the Tonight Show–with Jay Leno returning as host–has sometimes fallen behind ABC in lucrative late night competition.  Nevertheless, NBC’s parent company, Comcast, has enjoyed robust profits and ought not need a taxpayer subsidy to move to Connecticut.