Wolcott Republicans on How to Send a Message. The Malloy-Ficeto Axis in Spotlight.
Wolcott Republicans this weekend are trying to make Tuesday’s municipal about something more than local issues. They are giving voters a chance to send a message to Democratic Governor Dannel P. Malloy and his local buddy, on-again, off-again Democrat Bobby Ficeto.
Full marks to Wolcott Republican town council member Gail Mastrofrancesco for creating the mailer that’s hitting
Ficeto is a rich target. He’s a devoted Malloy acolyte (the governor made his wife–who is not a Democrat a judge). There was this affectionate recounting of the Ficeto-Malloy romance that started in 2006 in the Connecticut Post in 2011:
It’s years later now, but Malloy is not about to forget that Robert Ficeto and Shawn Wooden and so many others had been among those who pushed and begged and wheedled to get him those convention votes. They were Malloy guys. He was going to take their meetings, and he was going to hear them out, never mind that Roy and others thought they were nothing but trouble.
“Ro-bert Feh ceee toh.”
The governor does a wicked impersonation of the man’s voicemail message. It’s all the other messages that are the problem.
This is how Roy Occhiogrosso comes to find out that Robert Ficeto has been negotiating with the Boston Red Sox, trying to squeeze out of them a few more tickets for the official party for “Connecticut Day” at Fenway. After all, Ficeto’s going to rent a bus. Lotsa people going to be coming along, going to be a highly selective invite: Catch a ballgame with the governor, on Connecticut Day!
Someone catches wind of this — the poor, perplexed Boston Red Sox staffer keeps placing calls to the official scheduler. It seems a Mr. Ficeto, who says he represents the governor, is demanding a bus — and Roy goes bananas. Why can’t Malloy see how bad this could look? Some guy from Waterbury, claiming to call on his behalf, trying to shake down the Red Sox for extra baseball tickets? He can see the Kevin Rennie blog post, the Jon Lender column about it in The Courant.
Dan Malloy hears Roy out on this stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he doesn’t catch fire as Roy does. He’s used to this; it’s just a goofy guy who lives to please you, and besides, he’s been good to us.
Ficeto’s been good to Malloy and Malloy’s been very good to the Ficetos. Wolcott Republicans are giving one town the chance to send a message.