There they go again. Greenwich Democrats willfully ignorant of straightforward public campaign finance law.

Greenwich Democrats continue to strain to explain Trevor Crow’s admission she broke a crucial restriction of the state’s generous campaign public financing law.

Crow boasted to the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee last week that in her 2022 campaign for the State Senate, she not only qualified for a $112,795 taxpayer funded grant, she raised an additional $50,000 for other committees to spend on her campaign.

“Two years ago my name was unknown. It was an uphill battle. I started late and didn’t know anyone or anything. 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. And District 36 was newly redistricted, subsequently becoming more Republican,” according to the Greenwich Free Press.

The life coach is likely being too hard on herself when she says she didn’t know anything. By her own admission last week, Crow disregarded the affidavit she signed when she accepted public funds. Paragraph four is not ambiguous. It states:

“I certify that I have not solicited or received any contributions for any committee to benefit my candidacy, or authorized any other person to solicit or receive such contributions for any committee, other than qualifying contributions for my candidate committee, and that I will not solicit or receive any contributions for any committee to benefit my candidacy, or authorize any other person to solicit or receive such contributions for any committee, other than qualifying contributions for my candidate committee.”

It’s the deal a candidate makes for all that free money. You cannot solicit funds for committees with the intention that those contributions will be used by those committees to benefit your candidacy. It’s right there in the affidavit. It’s the point of the costly Citizen Election Program. Candidates and, especially, legislators have spent the two decades since the program was enacted finding ways to render its purpose meaningless. Crow was not schooled in those dark arts. Instead, she raised $50,000 for committees other than Trevor Crow 2022 to benefit her.

She announced it, threw a spotlight on it and paraded it to the front of the crowded room at the January meeting of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee. She may have thought her unabashed confession would help her fundraising bonafides as she faces Greenwich scion to a cable fortune Nick Simmons.

Simmons filed his campaign committee papers this week, undaunted by his own abysmal appearance at the same town committee meeting at which Crow managed her own cheerful implosion. Simmons told his audience that Greenwich does not receive enough state assistance–and it’s all Republican incumbent Ryan Fazio’s fault, don’t you know.

The graduate of the exclusive all-male Brunswick School declined to acknowledge that, err, Governor Ned Lamont is a Greenwich Democrat (and once a longtime member of a lily white Greenwich country club) who has rather a lot to say about how well Greenwich does in the state budget. The town’s three seats in the House of Representative are all held by Democrats.

One more thing–Simmons is Lamont’s deputy chief of staff, a position that someone with a little savvy on how these things work ought to be able to turn into something that would benefit the suffering souls of Greenwich.

Simmons’s complaints about the injustices visited upon tony Greenwich by a state government controlled by his fellow Democrats did not go unnoticed in Governor Lamont’s office or by Greenwich legislators not named Fazio.

Published January 26, 2024.