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Governor Ned Lamont and Democratic legislative leaders will not call lawmakers into special session to adopt California regulations that will begin to restrict the purchase and sale of internal combustion engines in Connecticut. The decision comes two months after the administration withdrew the regulations before a vote of the bipartisan Regulations Review Committee that was set to reject the sweeping new rules.

The decision is another blow to the reputation of Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes, who is notably unpopular with legislators, both leaders and members of the rank and file in each party.

Many legislators are said to be reluctant to vote to begin an election year by beginning to narrow consumer choices as their first act.

The news of the retreat by the Lamont administration comes in the same week the president of Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, predicted EVs will never account for more than a third of motor vehicle sales.

Eversource, the state’s largest utility, has warned Connecticut’s electricity grid cannot provide power to a significant increase in electric vehicles, many of which will have to be powered at private residences.

Published January 25, 2024.

Windsor Democrat and public employee labor union leader Shellye Davis filed a campaign committee for the Democratic nomination for the 2nd State Senate District on Wednesday. Davis will face four-term incumbent Democrat Doug McCrory.

McCrory was elected to the Senate in a February 2017 special election prompted by Democrat Eric Coleman’s decision not to take his seat shortly after winning re-election to accept a nomination to the Superior Court. The district includes parts of Bloomfield, Hartford and Windsor. He served six terms in the House before winning the 2nd SD election.

Davis, a public school paraeducator, was elected Executive Vice President of the Connecticut AFL-CIO in October 2021. Davis has been honored by the Connecticut Communist Party. The Yankee Institute has been following for several years the Communist Party’s penchant for bestowing awards.

Town committees will choose delegates in March. Delegates will meet in May to select an endorsed candidate. Primaries will take place on August 13th.

Dannielle Wong, recently re-elected mayor of Bloomfield after turning back another primary challenge, is said to be contemplating a challenge to McCrory. The Senate seat would be a more formidable staging post for Wong to launch a bid for the 1st Congressional District when incumbent John Larson decides to retire from the reliably Democratic district that has not elected a Republican since 1956.

The puny turnout in Hartford’s September Democratic for primary has raised the influence of Bloomfield and Windsor in the district. Each has a history of producing more robust turnouts in Democratic primaries.

Published January 25, 2024.

Bridgeport Democrats once more select a nominee for mayor of Connecticut’s largest city. The special primary was ordered by Superior Court Judge William Clark in response to a complaint by John Gomes, who was narrowly defeated (or maybe not) in the September regularly schedule primary.

The Ganim campaign has been subject to a series of mood swings during last year’s litigation and the second primary campaign that will end tonight. After a slow start, absentee ballots have been returned to the City Clerk’s office in numbers that have lifted the spirits of Team Ganim.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the number of returned ballots appeared to be headed for 1,900. While the Ganim campaign’s tactics in the dark art of getting supporters to request and return absentee ballots had to change after the autumn’s humiliating revelations of cheating, the incumbent mayor’s organization still knows who to contact to vote by absentee.

The two campaigns continued to battle over absentee ballots Monday. City attorneys representing Town Clerk Richard Buturla asked Judge Clark to sequester any returned ballots that were requested from 1,400 applications obtained by Gomes campaign supporter Denise Solano. Judge Clark sustained the Gomes’s objection to the request.

The continuing dispiriting revelations of absentee ballot manipulations may cause state voters not to approve a constitutional amendment that makes casting one easier that will be on the ballot in November.

Published January 23, 2024.

What an unusual and costly mess Trevor Crow made at Wednesday night’s Greenwich Democratic Town Committee meeting. Crowe is seeking the party’s nomination in the 36th Senate District and a rematch with Republican incumbent Ryan Fazio.

Crow, who lost her race against Fazio by 89 votes, faces opposition for the Democratic nomination from local dauphin Nick Simmons, heir to one of Greenwich’s many fortunes. The certified life coach decided to highlight her fundraising credentials by revealing how she raised money for her 2022 campaign.

Thus did Crow plant, water, and fertilize the seeds of her own destruction. She announced, according to the Greenwich Free Press, “We used the Citizens Election program, which I supplemented by raising an additional $50,000 for our DTCs and our PACS to spend on our race.”

The candidate made a prima facie case that she had violated the state’s campaign finance laws by accepting public funds while raising additional money that she knew would be spent on her campaign. We know this because she announced it to her fellow Democrats at Wednesday’s meeting. There is nothing subtle in Crow’s approach.

The State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) can initiate an investigation without a complaint. Information in its possession will suffice. A candidate’s admission of violating the law is enough. Crow’s acts in 2022 may render her ineligible for public financing this year and may also cause the SEEC to try to claw back its 2022 grant to Crow.

Published January 18, 2024.

Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter’s boys’ club convened in Puerto Rico for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. The gathering included Ritter, two top staff members and some favored male lobbyists.

It’s the inclusion of lobbyists that causes consternation in the Capitol village. It’s only men and at least one of the participants often drops Ritter’s name as a buddy. The weekend in Caribbean adds to the impression that at the top of the House Democratic Office the game is fixed, rigged to benefit a handful of the boys who travel with Ritter.

Excursions for a chosen few cozying up to and carousing with Ritter and his top staff members less than a month before the regular session of the legislature opens are anti-democratic and elitist. They also provide evidence that misogyny continues to flourish at the highest levels of state government. Veteran women lobbyists have long felt they are excluded from certain powerful circles at the Capitol. Women enduring male condescension remains a fact of life in the 21st century Connecticut legislature.

Despite weeks of public hearings, decisions on the content and course of legislation are often made in the Speaker’s office as the legislative session nears adjournment. The lobbyist who vacations with the Speaker and his aides is going to be able to get the attention of the right people.

None of this is news to lobbyists, legislators, staff members and administration officials. Last weekend’s trip was not a secret. Some participants highlighted it on social media. For some it’s an exclusive marketing tool. They want people who may be looking to purchase some influence in the next few months to know that there are ways of buying an advantage.

And Ritter puts his thumb on the scale in an open, obvious and notorious annual weekend away.

Published January 18, 2024.

Top photo: ID 69426758 © Yarruta

Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas has issued an urgent call for “attorneys, judges and others in the legal profession (active or retired)” to serve as volunteer monitors during Bridgeport’s January 23rd Democratic mayoral primary.

The request from Thomas’s Outreach and Engagement Manager Annie Black was sent by email late Wednesday afternoon.

Lawyers and judges would likely find this more interesting than they expect.

A link to the initial inquiry form is included in Annie Black’s message below.

Good afternoon,

Thank you for your past participation in the Secretary’s Legal Assistance Project. On behalf of Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, I am reaching out with an urgent request for in-person assistance during the upcoming Special Democratic Primary Election in Bridgeport on January 23, 2024.

Given the nature of this election, we are making every effort to ensure that all Bridgeport electors are able to vote securely on January 23. To that end, we are seeking attorneys, judges, and others in the legal profession (active or retired) to serve as election volunteers on Election Day. Election volunteers will be our eyes and ears on the ground in Bridgeport and will contact our office with questions and concerns as needed.  

Training will be provided by the Secretary of the State’s office in advance of the election for anyone who is new to this role and not familiar with the basics of election law. This training with be virtual and approximately two hours in length. 

If you are interested and available to assist in Bridgeport on January 23, please fill out this form and we will contact you with additional details:  https://forms.office.com/g/PtcM8bm5HS.

Please feel free to share this email with contacts in your professional network who may be interested and qualified to assist.

Thank you for your commitment to a fair and safe democratic process.

Sincerely,

Annie Black

Published January 11, 2023.

Shouting down a speaker is one of the blunt instruments of protest. Ill-informed protesters tried and failed to silence Governor Ned Lamont Wednesday morning by accusing him of supporting genocide. The handful of protesters appeared not to understand that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists.

The protesters, vexed about the supply of water in Gaza, seem not to understand that the residents who live there would have plenty of water if Hamas terrorists had not used pipes provided by the international community to launch missiles at Israel instead of putting them in the ground to create a proper water distribution infrastructure.

Note to bystanders at these interruptions. You would send a powerful message if you stood up and expressed your solidarity with Israel, a diverse democratic nation that is held to standards imposed on no other countries in the world.

“’They have a right to protest’ Lamont told the crowd. ‘But I’ll tell you something else. Nobody’s going to listen to them unless they lead off with the fact that they acknowledge and condemn the brutal sadistic genocidal attack of Oct. 7 and what it did to all those innocent’ civilians,” The New Haven Independent reported.

Published January 10, 2024.

Quinnipiac law professor Sarah French Russell’s nomination to a seat on the District of Connecticut bench was revived Monday when President Biden resubmitted her nomination to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Russell created some stiff headwinds for herself when she failed to submit and could not remember signing a 2020 letter to Governor Ned Lamont condemning the state’s criminal justice system and calling for the release of inmates at the start of the COVID-19 panic.

Russell added to her troubles with committee Republicans with written responses to post-hearing questions. The Yale law graduate sought to distance herself from letters she signed criticizing the nomination of then Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 and the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as Attorney General the year before. Russell responded that she neither wrote nor edited any of the three letters and they no longer reflected her views. A lifetime nomination to the federal bench will do that in a closely divided Senate.

Russell is one of eighteen nominees resubmitted Monday after failing to win Senate confirmation in 2023. Five nominees whose nominations were returned to the White House in December were not resubmitted.

Published January 10, 2024.

The private dining room at the Legislative Office Building will be the scene of legislative employees coloring and making overnight oats this afternoon and Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m.

Adult coloring and making overnight oats will add to a busy day at the LOB as the legislative branch prepares for the February 7th opening of the start of the short regular legislative session.

Legislative employees should use lunch of personal time if attending this adult coloring and overnight oats event.

Published January 8, 2024.

William DiBella, the Hartford and Old Saybrook Democrat, will not seek re-election as the chairperson of the MDC when regional water and sewage authority meets this week for its biennial election of officers, Daily Ructions has learned. DiBella’s current stint as chair of the MDC board began in 2002. He also held the job from 1977 to 1981.

The MDC is one of the last outposts of significant public agency patronage for MDC board members and other officials. DiBella, 80, has long been the master of increasing and wielding the agency’s influence. With its diffuse system of appointing commissioners, the MDC answers to no one–and that’s how they like it.

There have been challenges to DiBella’s authority by commissioners but they have not been able to muster the votes to oust DiBella.

DiBella’s departure from the top job would in most organizations be a moment to pass the leadership to a new generation. The MDC being what it is will likely ignore that opportunity and elect East Hartford Democrat Donald Currey to succeed DiBella.

No one will be surprised if DiBella’s departure as chairperson is followed by him seeking a another position at Wednesday’s election of officers, vice chair.

Wednesday’s meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be available to watch on Webex.

Published January 8, 2024.