Westport First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker is preparing to seek the Republican nomination for governor, Daily Ructions has learned. Tooker has been a steady winner in vote-rich Fairfield County as fellow Republicans have been knocked over like ninepins since 2017.

Tooker has held on in Westport as the once reliably Republican town has become a Democratic stronghold, demonstrating cross-party appeal that is essential for any Republican to have a chance in a statewide contest. No Republican has won a statewide Connecticut election since incumbent Jodi Rell’s historic 2006 victory for a full term as governor.

Tooker will face Erin Stewart, the Republican mayor of New Britain serving her sixth and final term. Stewart on Tuesday announced to a gathering of well wishers that she intends to explore a race for governor. The early going will be the contest to raise $350,000 in small donations. This is always harder than it looks and requires a high tolerance for drudgery. Stewart learned in 2018 how difficult it was to raise $250,000 in qualifying contributions that a candidate for governor needed that year. She made a convention eve switch to the race for lieutenant governor, losing the convention endorsement and primary to Southington Republican Joe Markley.

Former volunteer soccer coach Tooker enjoys a loyal cadre of supporters in Westport, a town thick with campaign givers. Her husband, Mo, is connected in state business circles, though it can be difficult to squeeze even a few bucks out of the state’s politically timid corporate community. The state’s University of Notre Dame graduates may also pony up for fellow alum Tooker.

Four of the state’s five most recent governors have been from Fairfield County.

Both Stewart and Tooker will need to steer clear of soliciting local contractors for campaign dough. Republican Matthew Corey, a frequent candidate for high office, is also considering joining the race for governor.

The first campaign finance reports are due in April. The math tells the tale, as does a candidate’s array of ideas to share at local party committee meetings, where the questions can be unexpectedly penetrating.

Published January 28, 2025.

Erin Stewart has filed an exploratory committee for statewide office, expected to be a bid for governor in 2026.

Stewart, serving her 6th term as the Republican mayor of New Britain, will mark the beginning of the race as the keynote speaker at Thursday’s Grassroots East dinner.

The 39 year old New Britain native is the early frontrunner in the open race for the Republican nomination for governor. Stewart made unsuccessful runs for governor and lieutenant governor in 2018.

Party stalwart Val Marino of Waterbury is the Stewart committee’s treasurer.

Published January 23, 2025.

Governor Ned Lamont is expected to appoint Appellate Court Chief Judge William H. Bright, Jr., to the State Supreme Court, ending months of speculation.

Bright was a contender for the high court’s top spot. The competition to become Chief Justice became intense after Richard Robinson announced his intention to retire last summer. Lamont chose a member of the Supreme Court, Raheem L. Mullins, to serve as Chief Justice. Lamont announced his choice of Justice Mullins in early September and then left a seat on the Court vacant for nearly five months.

Judge Bright will be a popular choice among other judges and many lawyers.

Superior Court Judge Robin Wilson is the leading contender to fill Bright’s vacancy on the Appellate Court.

Published January 20, 2025.

Manchester’s Jerald Lentini is fighting for sunlight. Lentini is one of two lead plaintiffs seeking the murky “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) to comply with the rules that apply to all federal advisory agencies. Transparency will likely be an obstacle in the incoming Trump administration as it begins its mission of retribution. The lawsuit is expected to be filed shortly after noon on Monday.

The Washington Post reported Monday morning:

The DOGE lawsuit lists as its primary co-plaintiffs Jerald Lentini, a local elected official in Connecticut and an attorney for National Security Counselors who sent an application to join Musk’s group, and Joshua Erlich, who owns an employment law firm that regularly represents federal employees. Erlich also filed an application to join DOGE, which stated he was applying because the body “does not currently have an individual who will speak on behalf of government workers and their interests,” the lawsuit states. Both applications were ignored.

The transparency rules that apply to federal advisory committees are determined by what they do, not what they say they do.

Lentini is one of nine members, including the mayor, serving on Manchester’s Board of Directors.

Published January 20, 2025.

State Trooper Timothy Haroian “has been placed on administrative duty with an internal affairs investigation pending.” Troopers were notified Friday afternoon that Haroian’s police powers are suspended.

Haroian was until yesterday the school resources officer at Vinal Technical High School, a state vocational school in Middletown. The suspension and Haroian’s assignment at the high school is raising concerns about the cause of his suspension. The Vinal school community will need to know more than it has been told since the dramatic reassignment on Thursday.

Earlier today, Connecticut State Police Media Relations Unit told Daily Ructions in response to an inquiry about Haroian’s status that “our office has not been made aware of any action beyond a temporary re-assignment to Troop F at this time. We can confirm that this re-assignment occurred yesterday, 1/16/25.”

A spokesman for the State Police wrote to Daily Ructions that “this is a very serious matter.”

Trooper Haroian’s wife sued him for dissolution of their marriage earlier this month.

Published January 17, 2025.

Well, this is embarrassing. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas incorrectly stated the oath of office when she administered it to members of the Senate on January 8th.

Members are making their way to Thomas’s office by the Hall of Flags Thursday afternoon to have the proper oath administered by Thomas. The error has raised doubts that the joint rules were properly adopted and committees legitimately organized in the past eight days.

The oath does not change from term to term. The popular Thomas has people. This was an easily avoidable mistake. That oath must be needlepointed on a pillow somewhere in the SOTS office or in one of the many offices senators enjoy in the Capitol and Legislative Office Building.

Published January 16, 2025.

David Collins explains in The Day how the closed system of filling legislative vacancies will work in replacing Christine Conley, the Groton Democrat from the 40th House District. Conley asked voters to re-elect her in November but decided soon after she’d rather not represent Groton and part of New London, after all. She will instead become a Workers’ Compensation Commissioner.

Tonight, the 11 Democrats who nominated Conley last spring will convene to choose a nominee for the February special election. Groton has eight delegates, New London three. As of Wednesday evening there was no consensus on a candidate. Former Groton mayor Juan Melendez and Groton council member Dan Gaiewski, who is a Conley loyalist are vying for the nomination in the Democratic-leaning district.

Melendez seems like the obvious choice but experience and other virtues are not always persuasive when 11 politicos gather to pick a candidate.

There is an intentional democracy deficit in choosing candidates for a special election. Connecticut is among the states with the worst ballot access laws in the nation. For legislative special elections, there are no primaries. Legislative leaders, who do not like primaries, would argue that the compressed schedule for a special election at the start of a legislative session is necessary for the residents of a district to be represented in this regular session of the legislature. There is an alternative. Parties could hold daylong votes at one polling place in each town in the district for party members to cast a ballot for any qualified candidate. In the 40th that would certainly attract more than 11 local Democrats.

Republicans are expected to nominate Robert Boris. The Groton Republican lost in a House race in the 41st House District in 2022. He was defeated by Democrat Aundre Bumgardner by a wide margin, 6,538 to 3,841.

Published January 16, 2025.

State Senator Heather Somers (R-Groton) wants state taxpayers bilked out of more money for Shore Line East. The fifth term senator and former mayor supports squandering more public funds on what is often the rail service with the highest per passenger subsidy in the nation.

She introduced a bill “[t]o increase the Shore Line East rail service between the city of New Haven and the town of Mystic in order to ease traffic congestion on Interstate Route 95 and promote tourism along the Connecticut shoreline during the summer.” Shore Line East is so expensive it would be cheaper to hire cabs for its passengers. The state per passenger subsidy this year is estimates at $150.

No prudent steward of public funds can argue with a straight face that Shore Line East is a wise or efficient use of taxpayer money.

Somers has proposed sixty bills, including one for state taxpayers to fund the Chamber of Commerce in Mystic.

The Somers political action committee (Somers PAC) spent much of its money by making contributions to Republican Town Committees last year. The original purpose was to support Republican women running for office but the Somers PAC made most of its contributions to town committees supporting incumbent Republican men in the Senate. The towns represented by Republican Lisa Seminara, the only other woman in the Senate Republican caucus, appears to have received nothing from Somers PAC, which appears to have solicited many lobbyists for money last winter. In the summer of 2024, builder Michael Di Gioia provided Somers PAC with $1,000 of the $1,200 it raised between July 1st and September 30th. Di Gioia also gave the maximum contribution to Somers PAC in 2023. Di Gioia lives in North Haven but has had a construction project in Groton.

Published January 15, 2025.

State police troopers and others at Troop H in Hartford marked the retirement of a dispatcher on the last day of 2024 by setting a chair on fire in the parking lot.

The dispatcher, according to spokesman Rick Green, purchased the chair herself. On her final day, colleagues took the chair into the parking lot, appear to have applied an accelerant and lit the fire. The reckless event was memorialized by a photo as state law enforcement officials looked on.

The state does have a law prohibiting open burning without a permit, but that is for other people. Furniture often contains hazardous chemicals. Reckless burning is a class D felony. Small fires, as we have been reminded in the last week, can grow into horrifically destructive ones.

This seems to a civilian a reckless and pointless act, but people with the power to arrest take a different view.

Published January 14, 2025.

East Lyme Democrat Nick Menapace was only a day into his first term when he committed a violation of state rules by promoting a Working Families Party (WFP) fundraiser on his General Assebly webpage.

Technology allows legislators to link their legislative Facebook page to their official state webpage with a widget. The content on the Facebook page appears on the state page. Menapace’s promotion of the January 16th WFP fundraiser on Facebook appeared on his new state page until Daily Ructions pointed out the violation Monday morning.

Menapace, a teacher, told Daily Ructions that it was an error committed as he sorts out the system and the rules.

Note to legislators: it’s your name on these sites. It can be a risk to hand over control of content to staff members.

Published January 13, 2025.