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State Representative Maryam Khan announced Friday morning that she will launch an exploratory campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 1st State Senate District on Tuesday morning at the Parker Memorial Community Center in Hartford.

As a candidate, Khan would face incumbent Doug McCrory and fellow Windsor Democrat Ayana Taylor, who challenged McCrory in a 2024 primary. McCrory, who in his fifth term in the Senate, has announced he is seeking re-election in the face of a federal criminal investigation that has named him in subpoenas seeking information on nonprofit organizations receiving public funds.

The district includes parts of Hartford, Bloomfield, and Windsor. McCrory won the 2024 primary with 58% of the vote, defeating Taylor and Shellye Davis, a union official. Taylor won Windsor by 300 votes in the primary. McCrory took Hartford and Bloomfield.

Khan declared in a written statement, “I have launched this exploratory campaign not out of a sense of duty to self, but from a sense of duty to the people of Hartford, Windsor, and Bloomfield. Right now youth programs are being cut, public schools are in a crisis, and trust in our political system is at an all time low, and the working parents, public school students, educators, & workers of our district all deserve a sense of trust that their elected officials are in it for the public, not for themselves.”

Published January 16, 2026.

Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe told Senate Republicans in a letter released late Friday afternoon that the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) will release its independent audit of the Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) “within the month.”

The audit was ordered after BHCA disclosed early last year that it had been the victim of wire fraud when it made a payment to an organization receiving a piece of a state grant made to BHCA to distribute. DECD required BCHA to return the balance of the grant, causing the organization’s financial collapse. O’Keefe wrote in his letter that the audit was expanded to match the parameters set included in a federal law enforcement subpoena served on BHCA last summer.

DECD has so far spent $200,000 on the audit. The amount of misspent money that the audit reveals is expected to exceed that by multiples of the fee. The release of the audit within the month will allow Governor Ned Lamont and the legislature to address its conclusions quickly at the start of the regular session of the legislature in February.

Published January 10, 2026.

Andrew Ziemba has created a campaign committee to seek the Republican nomination in the 8th Senate District. Ziemba is a Canton resident and 2005 graduate of Canton High School

The solar energy consultant was elected to the Canton Board of Finance in 2021. Canton is one of the 11 towns that comprise the 8th, which includes Norfolk in the west and part of Farmington in the east.

The district in its various configurations was represented by eight Republicans in an unbroken 58 years, four of those served as majority or minority (or both) in that long run. Republican Lisa Seminara was defeated for a second term in a 2024 rematch with Democrat Paul Honig. Ziemba’s candidacy suggests Seminara will not run for the seat for a third time.

The towns that comprised the decades-long advantage for Republican candidates, Simsbury, Avon, and Canton have moved decisively Democratic in the last decade.

Published January 6, 2026

It will be a different campaign this time. Ayana Taylor, a popular Windsor Democrat, has formed a campaign committee to seek the Democratic nomination in the 2nd Senate District. Taylor challenged incumbent Democrat Dough McCrory for the party’s nomination in 2024, losing to him 3,673 to 1,965. Shelley Davis, a late entry into the contest, won 525 votes.

Taylor won the portion of Windsor in the district. McCrory took the parts of Hartford and Bloomfield that comprise the rest of the district by wide margins in each.

McCory, who served in the House before winning a special election to the Senate in 2017, appears to be under some unwelcome scrutiny by federal criminal investigators who served subpoenas for documents related to McCrory’s role in obtaining funding for non-profit organizations in the district he represents. Of particular interest, the subpoenas indicate, are the grants and fees of $1.7 million from the Blue Hills Civic Association to McCrory friend and associate Sonserae Cicero-Hamlin.

A 2023 fraudulent wire transfer from Blue Hills Civic Association to a grant recipient required an intervention by the FBI and the law enforcement agency’s interest became more intense in the months that followed.

Published December 31, 2025.

Brandon Moore, who briefly served as Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s chief of staff last summer, is seeking the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in the 106th House District, which includes most of Newtown. Incumbent Republican Mitch Bolinsky won another close race in 2024. He defeated Democrat Michelle Embree Ku by 592 votes.

Bolinsky has squeaked by Democratic challengers in three of his last four contests. The closest was in 2018 when he defeated Democrat Rebekah Harriman-Stites by 122 votes out of 11,272 cast.

Moore’s brief tenure in Bysiewicz’s office included disappearing congenial social meeting posts by both the Middletown Democrat and Moore.

Published December 23, 2025.

The Trump administration paused five offshore wind farms Monday, hobbling $25 billion in investments in clean, renewable energy. The decision, attributed to unexplained national security concerns, deals what looks like a fatal blow to the nascent offshore wind industry.

ISO New England, which oversees power generation and distribution in the six state region, issued a statement on Monday, which included:

Through the region’s wholesale markets, both Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind have committed to helping meet New England’s demand for electricity. Both projects are included in our near-term and future modeling and analyses to ensure adequate electricity for New England.   

These projects are particularly important to system reliability in the winter when offshore wind output is highest and other forms of fuel supply are constrained. While ISO-NE forecasts enough generation capacity is available for the current season, canceling or delaying these projects will increase costs and risks to reliability in our region.   

Beyond increasing risk to reliability, delays of new generating resources also will adversely affect New England’s economy and industrial growth, including potential future data centers. 

As we stated in August, New England must maintain and add to its energy infrastructure. Unpredictable risks and threats to resources — regardless of technology — that have made significant capital investments, secured necessary permits, and are close to completion will stifle future investments, increase costs to consumers, and undermine the power grid’s reliability and the region’s economy now and in the future. Given the prior extensive review of these projects, ISO New England hopes that to the extent there are any relevant national security concerns, they can be resolved quickly.  

The decision today deals a serious blow to efforts to provide a reliable source of power to Connecticut as a reconfigured state regulatory agency begins to cope with converging challenges.

Published December 22, 2025.

Greenwich resident Betsy McCaughey will be the featured speaker Wednesday evening at a forum on the most common undiagnosed cause of madness: local zoning. The former lieutenant governor of New York and 1998 Liberal Party candidate for governor is contemplating a bid for governor of Connecticut as a Republican.

McCaughey has long been known for her fluency in American healthcare policy. Attendees at the 29th Senate District forum will likely find that she can argue any brief. In 1998, it was protecting a woman’s access to abortion services.

If McCaughey does make a bid for governor that includes trying to snag 15% of the delegates on one ballot of the party’s May nominating convention, she will need a chunk of votes from the nine towns of the 29th Senate District–where party activists may be receptive to a choice of someone other than Ryan Fazio and Erin Stewart.

December 16, 2025

On Monday, November 24th, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) Board of Regents (BOR) met in executive session to consider extending the contract of Interim Chancellor O. John Maduko by an additional year and commencing a search for a new chancellor. They met remotely in that secret session for an hour and 15 minutes. They returned to public view and moved to extend the Interim Chancellor’s contract for another year, though it does not expire until next summer, and begin a search for a permanent chancellor. There was no public discussion among the Regents before the votes.

The notice for the meeting was published on the Secretary of the State’s website. It indicates that the notice was posted at 4:53 p.m. on Friday, November 21st for the Monday meeting on the 24th, the week of Thanksgiving. Three Republican senators sense they have come upon an offense against transparency. Senators Stephen Harding, Henri Martin, and Rob Sampson send a letter to the Regents about the timing of the meeting and the BOR’s view of conducting its business in public view.

Because it remains an open wound for many connected to CSCU and others who pay attention to it because it is a critical public institution, the trio of Republicans asked in their December 4th letter what “deliverables” former Chancellor Terrence Cheng has produced for his $442,000 salary.

Updates as they occur.

Published December 9, 2025.

Michael Downes, former head of communications for the House Republicans, will replace John Healey as the Senate Republican Office chief of staff, Daily Ructions has learned.

The former major in the First Company Governor’s Horse Guard was well regarded during the his seven-year stint with the minority party in the lower chamber. Downes is currently the town manager of North Branford. He was elected to that community’s town council four times.

Downes earned a Masters in Public Administration from Villanova, continuing a big year for that Philadelphia area school. He majored in political science at Southern Connecticut State University. He is expected to devote his full efforts to the 11 Senate Republicans who serve in the 36-member body.

Published December 8, 2025.