Rudolph Giuliani crony Lev Parnas was the big get of the week and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow got him. Parnas told Maddow that he delivered the message to Ukraine that American support would be withheld unless the new government announced an investigation into into Hunter Biden’s lucrative business dealings in the nation under attack by Russia.

The Parnas interview undermines the Trump defense that Ukraine’s newly elected president did not know that American military assistance was being held hostage to Trump’s demand for a political favor to advance his prospects against rival Joe Biden

Parnas was a prolific donor to Republican committees late in the 2016 campaign, including $661 to Connecticut Republicans.

Brooklyn Democrat Joe Voccio writes Daily Ructions to let us know he is a Democrat and has had nothing to do with local politics since losing a tie-breaking contest last November for the town’s board of selectman.

Some helpful advice from the Life Hacks 2020 calendar. A better answer: “No.”

A fantastic obituary that you will want to read. It’s by and about Ken Fuson. Here’s a tribute to Fuson by a living friend.

Anti-toll activist Hilary Gunn was defeated for re-election to the Greenwich Republican Town Committee Wednesday night.

A large group of registered Republicans attended the open caucus and used their numbers to keep Gunn from returning to the RTC. She wrote on Facebook that “I am not okay.” Gunn, a Greenwich Country Day School graduate, caught the attention of Ann Huntress Lamont, the governor’s spouse, by frequently attending transportation and other events. Mrs. Lamont wondered in an email, “Who’s this crazy anti-toll girl stalking Ned?”

Surprise caucuses can have consequences. A group of Middletown Democrats quietly organized themselves and others in 2018 and won a majority of seats on that town committee from party regulars who were largely supporters of then-mayor Dan Drew. Drew declined to seek re-election in 2019.

Comedy polymath Buck Henry has departed this world after 89 years. Here’s a comprehensive 2014 interview with the writer and performer on Mark Malkoff’s The Carson Podcast–or you can listen to it above.

Chasten Buttigieg will be the star attraction in Bridgeport Friday at a fundraiser for his spouse, former South Bend, Indiana mayor Peter Buttigieg. The price of admission for the event that starts at 5:30 p.m. in one of the state’s poorest cities begins at $500 a ducat and escalates to $2,800, the maximum allowed per person under federal campaign finance laws.

Former Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman’s portrait will be revealed on January 17th in the Senate Chamber, where Wyman presided for eight years.

The former comptroller and state representative serves as the chair of the state Democratic party organization.

Tolls—how many and on whom—have vexed Governor Ned Lamont since he abandoned his campaign pledge to impose them on trucks only Last February. You can see more details here in this article. An email from Ann Huntress Lamont, the governor’s spouse, suggests the Lamonts misread polls or paid for an outlier in the wealthy Democrats’ self-funded 2018 campaign.

Poll numbers shared in a message that Emily Huntress Lamont, one of the wealthy Greenwich Democrats’ daughters, provided at the request of her mother includes odd results. The poll numbers from the campaign, according to the message, show total support for electronic tolls at 68% in the general election, 41% of those surveyed are identified as strong supporters of tolls. That leads to the odd result of 27% as somewhat supportive of tolls. The result suggests a passion for tolls that has not revealed itself any place else. The tolls numbers didn’t make sense to Mrs. Lamont, who loves data.

Mrs. Lamont shared the poll numbers last summer with Lamont chief of staff Ryan Drajewicz and spokesman and former NBC Connecticut reporter Max Reiss. Drajewicz has been eager to elbow his way onto the center stage of the tolls debate as Ned Lamont’s proposals have continued to change.

Senate and House Democrats May want to see some of the data at their Tuesday caucuses.

Governor Ned Lamont will join state Senator Will Haskell (D-Westport) Sunday, January 12th, in Westport at the Bedford Middle School to talk about transportation. Lamont will be explaining his “CT2030 plan and Connecticut’s transportation future,” according to Haskell.

Bedford Middle School was the site of a Lamont town hall meeting that was in the works for Tuesday. Sunday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. and end an hour later.

U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes is not having it. The Fifth CD Democratic freshman is not taking any nonsense from Whiskey Patriot and Connecticut GOP party chairman J.R. Romano.

Romano is quoted in a Hearst papers article on the congressional candidacy of Republican Ryan Meehan, a recent entry into the race to challenge Jahana. Romano, who has spent time on the right-wing fringe and seemed to enjoy it, told Hearst “I think there are a lot of Republicans who recognize that Jahana Hayes is part of the most extreme wing of the Democratic party in Congress…I think that there are many people in the district who feel that the direction that this extreme wing wants to go in is not the right direction.”

Hayes responded in a Facebook post, writing, “I will simply say, look at my voting records which is anything but extreme. I know my constituents see through nonsense like this and care more about the work I’ve done. While the GOP is spending all their time focusing on me, I will be spending my time working on behalf [of] my constituents.”

“If they want this seat-they have to take it!!!” Hayes concludes.

Republican candidates hoping to meet Hayes in the general election include Meehan, who recently moved from Greenwich to Litchfield; David X. Sullivan, a retired assistant U.S. attorney from New Fairfield, Ruben Rodriguez, who works for the City of New Britain; and Robert Hyde, a Simsbury Republican with a history of making crude remarks.