New Haven is suffering through a chilling increase in violence. The city endured its 23rd homicide Wednesday, as the city continues to exceed last year’s 20 murders. Five shootings in four days has city residents worried about the epidemic of violent crime.

This is more than what Governor Ned Lamont calls an “uptick.” It requires the uninterrupted attention of the city’s mayor, Justin Elicker. As fear becomes a way of life, Elicker was busy fundraising in Hartford Thursday for a campaign in which he faces no meaningful opposition.

The event was sponsored by a collection of well-known Democrats, some of them rivals for advancement. Tickets ranged from $50 to $390 each. Elicker is receiving public funds for his campaign.

The Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) is using an anti-Italian slur to attack the state’s largest health insurance companies. The group employs imagery from the 1972 film The Godfather, calling the largest companies “Connecticut’s Five Families.”

CCAG’s graphic features puppet strings like those in the film’s logo. The Godfather portrays murderous Italians divided into Five Families that control illegal enterprises–and much else. The acclaimed movie perpetrated tropes about Italian-Americans that lingered for decades, as CCAG’s ugly broadside reminds us.

The CCAG imagery does not appear to be happenstance. Two of the five presidents of the companies the organization attacks are of Italian heritage. David Cordani, Cigna corporation’s president and CEO, was the target of protestors who participated in a “die-in” in front of his home. Cordani, who grew up in Waterbury, is the proud grandchild of Italian immigrants.

CCAG remains stung by a letter earlier this year from health insurance company executives to Governor Ned Lamont. It warned the Greenwich Democrat that the companies would examine their commitment to doing business in Connecticut if he supported the creation of an unregulated, state-sponsored public health insurance enterprise. Health insurance companies provide approximately 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in the state.

Attaching stigmas has driven much repugnant language from the public arena, but there is unlikely to be a pay for slurs hurled at Italians in Connecticut.

The Monday and Tuesday shift at the Legislative Office Building will work from home until after Labor Day. The building is closed due to the absence of air-conditioning.

Jim Tamburro, the Office of Legislative Management’s executive director, told employees Sunday, “Due to a problem at the facility in Hartford that provides us with heating and cooling services, the air-conditioning is not working in the LOB (as well as other state builds in the area.” The Capitol has air-conditioning.

Legislative employees work at the building in split schedules. Half are there Mondays and Tuesdays. Everyone works remotely Wednesdays. The other half of the workforce come in on Thursdays and Fridays.

Posted Monday, August 30, 2021.

Ned Lamont’s former campaign-manager-in-waiting, Travis Brimm, left Connecticut Democrats for a North Carolina U.S. Senate campaign. Brimm will be managing Cheri Beasley’s bid for her party’s nomination in what is expected to be one of the nation’s marquee 2022 races.

Beasley lost her 2020 bid for re-election as chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court by 401 votes out of nearly 5.4 million cast. Beasley became the first Black woman to hold the court’s top job when Governor Roy Cooper elevated her from associate justice in 2019.

Popular state Representative Hilda Santiago is exploring a run for statewide office. The Meriden Democrat has been expected to make a bid for her party’s nomination for secretary of the state. She filed her exploratory committee Wednesday.

Santiago ought to benefit from her association with Senator Chris Murphy. Working in his office has allowed Santiago to cultivate contacts far beyond her central Connecticut district.

In a party that can be intermittently captured by identity politics, Santiago would be the first Latina to win a spot on a state Democratic ticket.

Posted August 26, 2021.

State Senator Matt Lesser formed an exploratory committee Monday to seek statewide office. The Middletown Democrat has his eye on his party’s nomination for secretary of the state. A bid for comptroller might also become possible if three-term incumbent Kevin Lembo does not seek re-election.

Lesser served in the state House before winning his Senate seat in 2018. That spot opened when popular incumber Paul Doyle ran for attorney general. Lesser’s political life expanded when he quit Wesleyan University, where he’d been active in student politics, to win the first of five two-year terms in the House.

Members of the opera company known as the Senate Democrats are thought to be pleased indeed with Lesser’s bid for higher office.

Travis Brimm has left the building. The Democratic campaign operative will not helm Governor Ned Lamont’s 2022 re-election bid, Daily Ructions can report.

Brimm, who was recruited for the Lamont campaign, had been parked at the Democratic state party headquarters. Brimm’s salary caused the party’s ledger to groan. Lamont has spent $50 million of his fortune on three statewide campaigns but has not been helpful to the state party’s threadbare finances.

Brimm was hired with the approval of the influential Ann Huntress Lamont and Lamont’s former chief of staff, Ryan Drajewicz, whose private line to the Lamonts continues to baffle insiders.

Lamont’s re-election campaign in Democratic Connecticut may not have provided the career boost the young political pro was seeking. Those campaigns in 2022 are more likely to be found in battleground states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.

Posted August 23, 2021.

Mark Scheinberg, president of Goodwin University, and Danielle Wilken, president of the University of Bridgeport, a recent edition to the growing Goodwin University system, made a generous offer Thursday to President Biden and the nation. They want to honor “the Afghans who bravely came to our assistance during this long war.”

Scheinberg and Wilken “want to help these friends because they are in particular danger for in the American dream in spite of what has transpired in Afghanistan.” Here is their generous offer to Afghans who face the vengeance of the murderous, triumphantly Taliban:

“In that pursuit, we at the University of Bridgeport are committing the use of an entire dormitory and related apartments for use by Afghan refugees—properly vetted by our military and Department of State–as a springboard to begin a new life in America.”

The school will use its English Language Institute to provide vital English language immersion. Refugees will also “a number of work-based and professional career programs that will help to place these new Americans as quickly as possible so that they remain proudly self-sufficient new Americans.”

This is how America renews itself generation after generation. Rejoice in this generosity. Mark Scheinberg has often brought his dynamic spirit into the public arena for the common good. It is no surprise that he has stepped forward to provide aide—and an example for others.

Republican Ryan Fazio put one on the board for his beleaguered party Tuesday night by recapturing the Greenwich-based 36th Senate seat after two election wins for Democrat Alex Kasser. Fazio defeated Kasser-endorsed corporate lawyer Alexis Gevanter by about 500 votes, according to unofficial results. Fazio received 8888 votes to Gevanter’s 8416. Petitioning candidate John Blankley, a Democrat, received 391.

A strong result for Fazio in Greenwich and a poor turnout in Democratic Stamford were crucial to the Republican’s win.

Gevanter moved to Greenwich three years ago. Fazio is homegrown and graduated from Greenwich High School. Fazio entered the race shortly after Kasser announced she was abandoning her office to concentrate on the contentious divorce action she brought against husband Seth Bergstein shortly after she was elected to her first term in 2018.

Special elections in Connecticut are notably anti-democratic. No primaries are allowed. The party endorsed candidate is the nominee. Stalwart local Democrat John Blankley petitioned onto the special election ballot after being boxed out of his party’s nominating convention. Fazio, the 2020 Republican nominee for the seat, defeated Republican National Committeewoman Leora Levy for the nomination. State Representative Harry Arora dropped out of the contest on the eve of the convention vote.

Fazio joins 12 Republicans in the 36-member upper chamber. The legislature’s next regular session begins in February. The young Republican’s win consigns Kasser’s odd tenure to the annals of political curiosities. Tapping her personal fortune as suburban voters expressed their revulsion for Donald Trump was a combination that Gevanter could not duplicate.

Republican Dominic Rapini has been counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until he unveils his renovated website for weeks. Wednesday at noon is the day and time.

The Branford Republican was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, waging a primary against party-endorsed candidate Matthew Corey. Convention endorsements are usually followed by primary wins in Connecticut. Rapini’s experience was no different–except he lost every town to Corey in the quiet contest.

Rapini is said to be considering a bid for secretary of the state. He would become the second Republican to announce his intention to seek the office. Brock Webber, a political consultant, created a campaign committee for the office shortly after three-term incumbent Democrat Denise Merrill announced earlier this year she would not seek a fourth term.

Posted Tuesday, August 17, 2021.