ELECTION2010

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CT DEMOCRATS CONTROL LEGISLATURE AND THE GOVERNORSHIP - RORSCHACH TEST: DARK INKBLOTS (r) LOOK STRESSED

DEFEATED BY GOV. MALLOY
Lamont lost in Democrat primary, Foley, Republican, in general election.

Foley, Lamont find fault with Malloy's budget tactics
Ken Dixon, Staff Writer, CT POST
Updated 08:19 a.m., Tuesday, April 5, 2011

NEW HAVEN -- The two runners-up for governor criticized Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Monday for raising spending and asking for higher taxes from recession-wracked state residents. During an hourlong head-to-head at the Yale Law School, Tom Foley, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, charged that Malloy should be following the example of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made big cuts in that state's operating budget while holding the line on new taxes.

"I thought they said they were cutting spending," said Foley, who lost to Malloy in November by 6,404 votes. "Are you confused, too? This is snake-oil stuff." He said Malloy's budget is "a cynical deception" that's full of "gimmicks and head fakes," while actually raising spending levels.

Lamont, who lost the Democratic primary by 103,154 votes to 77,772, wasn't as critical as Foley, calling Malloy's two-year proposal "relatively honest," including billions of dollars in anticipated concessions from state unions and $2.5 billion in new taxes, a full $1 billion more than Malloy has portrayed.

He said Malloy's budget would hit the middle class very hard and that the governor and his agency commissioners should accept pay cuts to at least symbolically align themselves with "shared sacrifice."

Lamont said Malloy should be more aggressive in reducing health-care costs and harnessing the expertise of the nonprofit provider community, while reforming the tax structure, including the termination of corporate taxes.

"We need a real sea change if we're going to turn around the ship of state," Lamont said, adding that Malloy's budget may be "a good start."

He said that Malloy is asking state employees to offer major givebacks, including $1 billion a year in unspecified savings. "What we need is more taxpayers in this state," he said.

Foley said that if he had won the election, he'd be "in a better position" to leverage concessions from state unions, who supported Malloy.

Lamont challenged Foley's assessment, describing Malloy as "a bull in a china shop" while he's seeking his bottom line. He blasted John G. Rowland, the former Republican governor, who gave unions a 20-year fringe benefits deal in 1997.

Foley said nationwide movements against union rights should be taken up in Connecticut to stop taxpayers from "being held hostage." The state was in jeopardy well before the nationwide recession, said Foley, a private investor who recently started the nonprofit Connecticut Policy Institute.

"We have a very different economy from what we had," he said, noting that while the service economy has emerged throughout most of the state, high value-added jobs, including financial services, have been fostered primarily in southwestern Connecticut.

Lamont, a telecommunications executive, who like Foley lives in Greenwich, said that Connecticut has been lacking the kind of creativity exemplified by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently announced plans to start a new university focused on 21st century jobs in the sciences. Lamont said if he were governor he would have required local school boards to agree to major reforms if they were to get larger amounts of state aid. About 90 people attended the early evening event, sponsored by various law school organizations.

"The action right now is in the state capitals," Lamont said, asking the law students to stay in the state, after a show of hands indicated that most of the 20 or so are planning to move when they gain their degrees.

"Please do stay in Connecticut," Foley concluded. "We will fix these problems."

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF SPECIAL REVENUE - CT GAMBLING "OVERLORD"

Soon to be Former First Selectman Ken Flatto

Ken Flatto to join Malloy administration
CT POST
Published 10:25 a.m., Tuesday, March 22, 2011

FAIRFIELD -- First Selectman Ken Flatto is joining the Malloy administration as the Executive Director of the Division of Special Revenue.

The division is responsible for managing various special revenues and for regulating legalized gaming in the State of Connecticut, including the Lottery and Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

"Ken will bring his 30 years of experience as a financial and accounting manager to this integral position," said Governor Malloy. "Although we are trying to maximize revenue that comes into the state, we always need to be mindful that it does not come at the expense of our state's citizens."

"I am truly looking forward to helping Governor Malloy and his administration account for additional revenue and improve services for Connecticut citizens," said Flatto. "I thank the Governor for his confidence and I intend to achieve solid results in this position."

With taxes the issue, GOP gets a do-over in special elections
Mark Pazniokas and Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
February 21, 2011

With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposed $1.5 billion tax increase still dominating the headlines, Republicans get a do-over Tuesday in special elections to fill six House and three Senate seats left vacant by Democrats who won in November, only to resign before the legislature convened Jan. 5.

On WFSB's "Face the State" on Sunday, Malloy was unsure if the nine state legislative races will be interpreted as an early referendum on one of the state's biggest tax increases, but the Democratic governor seemed resigned to seeing his party's substantial legislative majorities shrink.

"I think we'll probably lose some seats," he said. "We'll win some seats."

The balance of power cannot shift in a significant way Tuesday, since Democrats are guaranteed to end the day still holding at least 20 of 36 seats in the Senate. In the House, the GOP is seriously contesting only in four races, meaning that Democrats will end up with at least 96 of 151 seats in the House.

But a Republican sweep of the four House and three Senate races they are targeting could rattle Democrats about the wisdom of the largest tax increase since another new governor, Lowell P. Weicker Jr., responded to another inherited fiscal crisis in 1991 with Connecticut's first broad-based tax on income.

Taxes have been a common theme in most of the races, but the abolition of the death penalty -- an issue whose fate could be settled Tuesday -- was introduced as an issue in one race over the weekend with an endorsement by Johanna Petit Chapman, the sister of Dr. William Petit, the survivor of the Cheshire home invasion.

New Britain Mayor Tim Stewart, the Republican candidate trying to succeed Democrat Donald DeFronzo in the 6th Senate District, said automated calls went out over the weekend with an endorsement message from Chapman, whom he called a friend.

"I am a strong advocate for the death penalty, always have been," Stewart said.

His Democratic opponent, former Rep. Terry Gerratana, D-New Britain, said she was unsure how she would vote on a bill Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed in 2009 that would have abolished the death penalty for future cases. She is the only Senate candidate not on record as opposing repeal.

The repeal bill passed two years ago in the Senate, 19 to 17. After the November election, the Senate appeared to be evenly divided, 18 to 18. Of the three senators who resigned, Andrew McDonald of Stamford favored repeal and the other two, DeFronzo and Thomas P. Gaffey of Meriden, voted against repeal.

Democrat Thomas Bruenn and Republican Leonard Suzio, the two candidates seeking Gaffey's seat in the 13th District, oppose repeal.

"I happen to believe that with the DNA evidence that we present that it is almost impossible for an innocent person to be on death row," Bruenn said.

In Stamford, Republican Bob Kolenberg is opposed, and Democrat Carlo Leone voted against repeal in 2009 as a member of the state House of Representatives.

The death penalty has not been a major issue in any of the House races, according to strategists in both parties.

Bruenn said when he goes door to door voters want to talk about taxes, jobs and the cost of health care.

Voters have told him that Malloy's tax increases are too heavily weighted toward the middle class, and Bruenn said he agrees with them. He would like to see higher taxes on couples making more than $500,000 a year and lower the tax rates for the poor and middle class.

Suzio could not be reached for comment, but he has campaigned against taxes. He signed a pledge last month saying he would vote against any effort to raise taxes, and said during a debate the same day Malloy presented his budget, "I don't like the tax increases. Not a penny. No new taxes. No more taxes. No way."

In New Britain, Gerratana distanced herself from Malloy's tax plan, saying it wasn't "appropriate" for the district.

"I think people are a little bit outraged what they saw the other day," Stewart said. "I would say taxation is a huge issue for every person in the district."

Stewart's refusal to say when he would resign as mayor if he wins has been an issue. Stewart said he would perform both jobs during a transition period.

"His approach is it is OK to do both," Gerratana said. "I would be a full-time senator."

Gerrantana is one of two former House members on the ballot Tuesday. In West Hartford, Republican Allen Hoffman is competing with Democratic Councilman Joe Verrengia for the seat vacated by David McCluskey. Hoffman was a one-term representative in the 1990s.

Four Republicans running Tuesday were on the ballot in November. In East Haven, Republican Linda Monaco is making a second try for the 99th House District seat. Janet Peckinpaugh, the former TV anchorwoman who was the GOP nominee for congress in the 2nd District, is running Tuesday in the 36th House District.

Kolenberg was the GOP nominee in the 27th Senate District in November, losing to McDonald, who quit to become Malloy's top legal adviser. Suzio was the GOP nominee in the 13th, losing to Gaffey, who resigned after pleading guilty to double billing for legislative travel.

Republicans have given the 27th District special attention, drawing campaign stops over the weekend by former Lt. Gov. Michael C. Fedele, who once challenged McDonald for the seat, as well as the GOP's gubernatorial and U.S. Senate nominees, Tom Foley and Linda McMahon.

Malloy had no scheduled campaign appearances over the weekend, though he has helped raise money for a couple of candidates, said his staff. Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford, did make a pitch on "Face the State" on behalf of Leone.

"He'd be a great state senator," Malloy said.

The GOP did not nominate a candidate in the 25th House District, ceding the seat to Democrat Robert Sanchez.

In Bridgeport's 126th House District, the state GOP is putting no resources in the race to succeed Democrat Chris Caruso, but a Republican, James Keyser, is on a crowded ballot. Joining Keyser and Democrat Charlie Stallworth are five petitioning candidates, including former Rep. Robert Keeley, a Democrat trying to make his second comeback.

Senate 6 - Berlin, Farmington and New Britain
(Vacancy: resignation of Sen. Donald J. DeFronzo, D-New Britain)
Terry Bielinski Gerratana (D)
Timothy T. Stewart (R)
Terry Bielinski Gerratana (WF)

Senate 13 - Cheshire, Meriden, Middlefield, and Middletown
(Vacancy: resignation of Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden)
Thomas E. Bruenn (D)
Len Suzio (R)
Thomas E. Bruenn (WF)
Len Suzio (Independent Party)

Senate 27 - Darien and Stamford
(Vacancy: resignation of Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, D-Stamford)
Carlo Leone (D)
Bob Kolenberg (R)

House 20 - West Hartford
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. David McCluskey, D-West Hartford)
Joe Verrengia (D)
Allen Hoffman (R)
Allen Hoffman (Connecticut for Lieberman)

House 25 - New Britain
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain)
Robert Sanchez (D)
Robert Sanchez (WF)
Richard Marzi (Write-In)

House 36 - Chester, Deep River, Essex, and Haddam
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. James F. Spallone, D-Essex)
Philip J. Miller (D)
Janet Peckinpaugh (R)

House 99 - East Haven
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven)
James M. Albis (D)
Linda Monaco (R)
James M. Albis (WF)

House 101 - Guilford and Madison
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. Deborah Heinrich, D-Madison)
Joan M. Walker (D)
Noreen S. Kokoruda (R)

House 126 - Bridgeport
(Vacancy: resignation of Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport)
Charlie L. Stallworth (D)
James Keyser (R)
Mark P. Trojanowski (Petitioning Candidate)
Carlos Silva (Petitioning Candidate)
Robert T. Keeley, Jr. (Petitioning Candidate)
Thomas R. Lombard (Petitioning Candidate)
Verna Kearney (Petitioning Candidate)

List: Connecticut Special Elections (as a result of Election 2010 in almost all cases)
Special elections will be held Feb. 22 to fill nine state legislative seats.
Hartford Courant
January 24, 2011

House

20th District: part of West Hartford. Reason for vacancy: David McCluskey left to join the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

25th District: part of New Britain. Reason for vacancy: John Geragosian left to become the legislature's Democratic auditor.

36th District: Chester, Deep River, Essex, Haddam. Reason for vacancy: James Spallone left to become deputy secretary of the state.

99th District: part of East Haven. Reason for vacancy: Mike Lawlor left to join Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's budget office as the undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning.

101st District: Madison, part of Guilford. Reason for vacancy: Deb Heinrich left to take a Malloy cabinet-left position advocating on behalf of nonprofit providers.

126th District: part of Bridgeport. Reason for vacancy: Christopher Caruso left to join the state Department of Economic and Community Development as an urban policy adviser.

Senate (see Senate Circle above)

6th District: New Britain, Berlin, part of Farmington. Reason for vacancy: Donald DeFronzo left to become head of the state Department of Administrative Services..

13th District: Meriden, Middlefied, part of Cheshire, part of Middletown. Reason for vacancy: Thomas Gaffey resigned after pleading guilty to larceny charges.

27th District: part of Darien, part of Stamford. Reason for vacancy: Andrew McDonald left to become Malloy's chief budget counsel.

LEADERSHIP: Stretching the bounderies...do Westonites work with legislators from neighboring towns on environmental issues? Gail Lavielle is listening!
Will we have a one-Party government in the buildings shown above November 3? Where will Weston's voice be heard in the building to the left? Try working, for example, with Wilton! CT Legislature: 2010 totals from Hartford Courant here. And an unofficial recount going on the week of November 29 - December 3 in Bridgeport...

NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IN HOUSE (l)
Congressman Himes re-elected (r); Dan Malloy most likely will be declared the next Governor, if votes in Bridgeport cast between 8pm and 10pm by judge's order, are allowed. And make that Senator Blumenthal now! Weston has all-G.O.P. legislative team, continuing a tradition established so long ago I can't remember when it started...plus now we can call on the new 143rd District rep from Wilton, who knows
transportation and education and has been to Weston and likes our town!

Incoming DSS commissioner: 'We have a complete system to overhaul'
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
April 20, 2011

The barriers state residents face in reaching the state Department of Social Services are unacceptable, and the options they have for accessing services are "woefully inadequate," incoming commissioner Roderick L. Bremby told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing.

Department workers want to improve the situation, he said, but they're limited by an obsolete phone system and a computer network so outdated it uses a programming language Bremby said was antiquated when he learned it in the late 1970s.

Addressing the legislature's Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee Tuesday, Bremby, in his 16th day on the job, spoke of the need to overhaul the systems the department uses and improve the service residents receive.

Bremby, who previously served as secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, also spoke of the need to transform the fragmented health care services Medicaid clients receive into a coordinated system of care, and to plan for succession because a large portion of the department's workforce is eligible for retirement.

With a budget of more than $5 billion, DSS is responsible for a wide range of safety net programs that serve more than 750,000 people, including close to 600,000 in Medicaid. In recent months, the department has come under criticism for its handling of the food stamp program, which has among the worst rates in the nation for providing benefits on time and accurately. Bremby's predecessor, Michael P. Starkowski, attributed the problems to outdated technology and not having enough staff to handle skyrocketing caseloads.

Bremby offered a similar assessment Tuesday, saying that the department's front line workers need better tools to keep up with record demand for assistance.

"We pledge to meet requests for help respectfully, while assuring our clients the maintenance of their dignity," he said.

Bremby spent much of his confirmation hearing addressing problems that clients face, several brought up by lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, told Bremby he heard from a constituent who spent weeks trying to reach a DSS worker, then turned to a legal aid attorney, who also had trouble getting calls returned for a week.

"Unfortunately, that is a complaint that I've heard repeatedly since I've arrived," Bremby said. "It's not acceptable."

Then he explained why it happens: When the phone system is busy, calls go into a voice mail box, which fills up.

"When that mail box fills up, people start calling our HR function, they start calling the secretary's office, they call the governor's office, I'm sure they call your offices, and they call any and everywhere they can," he said. "They're looking for contact with a human to provide the services that they're desperately looking for."

Bremby said there should be "no wrong door" for accessing department services.

"I'm sad to say that at this point in time, the service levels that are being provided are woefully inadequate," he said.

A modernization effort meant to update the phone and computer systems could help. The full modernization is expected to take several years, but Bremby said the department doesn't have that long to address direct service requests, and said the department could make some changes sooner. One option could be to devise a way for people to use smartphones to check the status of their applications, he said.

The department is also expected to get an interactive voice recognition program that could ease some of the phone congestion by providing automated responses to people calling to check on the status of their applications or other information that a computer could verify. Bremby said the system could be available by late spring or early summer.

The department's communications with clients also needs work, he said. Currently, clients receive notices for meetings and hearings after the scheduled date. Bremby said the mail room that sends out the notices is backlogged.

"We have a complete system to overhaul," he said.

Bremby has experience with updating technology systems. In Kansas, he oversaw the implementation of an immunization registry, a web-based system to report birth and death records, and the introduction of paperless systems for purchasing, personnel and document routing. As assistant to the city manager in Fort Worth, Texas, he directed the implementation of an enhanced 911 system.

Rep. Marie L. Kirkley-Bey, D-Hartford, said she wondered why DSS' outdated systems weren't addressed before.

"I think that there was a lack of investment, clearly, in trying to keep our systems current," Bremby said. "I know that people want to do better, they just didn't. Why the resources didn't come, I don't know."

He added that the federal government can provide a significant portion of the funding for a new eligibility management system and that "we have a commitment of staff who really want this system to be better."

Rep. John E. Piscopo, R-Thomaston, relayed a different sort of constituent complaint, saying he hears from people who believe the safety net system might make people too comfortable and serve as a disincentive to work.

"Sometimes we look at a neighbor and we have questions why that neighbor might be getting assistance, because they don't look like they might need assistance," Bremby said. "But we may not know the whole story."

Regardless, he said, "We each have a responsibility to try to make sure that the safety net fabric is broad enough so that those who need the service the most actually get those services, and they're not consumed by people or others who don't really have that great a need."

Asked about his priorities for the department, Bremby said making sure that department workers have the right tools is "job one right now."

A second priority, he said, is transitioning from a fragmented medical care system to one that focuses on patients, in which health care providers work as a team and address preventive care and the patient's overall health needs, not just the particular issue that brought the patient into the office.

A third, Bremby said, will be succession in the department.

"We have a large number of staff who are eligible for retirement, but yet the bench is not deep," he said.

Beyond those three, he said, there are many other items he plans to focus on.

"I daresay that I won't be bored at all," he said.

Malloy picks Kansas man to lead DSS
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
March 8, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will appoint a former Kansas health and environmental official to lead the state Department of Social Services, according to a source in the governor's office.

Roderick Bremby served as secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for seven years, the longest-serving secretary in the department's history. He was appointed in 2003 by then-governor and current U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

If confirmed by the legislature, Bremby will take the helm of a department with a budget of more than $5 billion and responsibility for serving more than 750,000 people who rely on its safety net programs. The department will play a key role in implementing federal health care reform, which is expected to add more than 100,000 people to the Medicaid program DSS runs in 2014.

Bremby's relationship with Sebelius, the top U.S. health official, could prove useful as the state implements the health reform law and competes for federal dollars. Many of the programs DSS administers receive federal funding, and changes to some, including Medicaid, often require federal approval.

In Kansas, Bremby was responsible for a department with an operating budget of more than $230 million and more than 1,000 full time staff. He oversaw the implementation of several changes aimed at improving efficiency, including an immunization registry with more than 9 million records, a web-based system to report birth and death records, and the introduction of paperless systems for purchasing, personnel and document routing.

He left the job in November after being dismissed by then-Gov. Mark Parkinson. News accounts have pointed to speculation that Bremby's dismissal was linked to a pending permit application for a controversial coal-fired power plant. Bremby had previously denied the company's application for a permit because of concerns about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions, becoming the first official in the U.S. to do so. His successor later approved the application.

Before working in state government, Bremby worked as an assistant research professor at the University of Kansas, where he led a work group on health promotion and community development. He spent 10 years as assistant city manager and chief operating officer of Lawrence, Kansas, and four years as assistant to the city manager in Fort Worth, Texas, where he directed the implementation of an enhanced 911 system and an accounting and management reporting system.

Bremby was an appealing candidate for the Malloy administration in part because of his tenure in the Kansas state agency and his experience streamlining services and implementing web-based systems, the source said. He has the ability to make tough decisions at DSS and the skills and experience to oversee the administration of benefits to some of the state's most vulnerable residents, the source added.

Overhauling the technology DSS uses will likely be a major priority for the next commissioner. The current eligibility management system, a mainframe computer system, was developed in 1989 and was one factor federal officials cited last month as a barrier to improving the performance of the state's food stamp program, one of the worst in the nation. Malloy's proposed budget includes money for beginning the process of replacing the eligibility management system, which is expected to take several years and could cost between $120 million and $150 million. Much of the cost could be reimbursed by the federal government.

The department has also struggled with a surge in demand for services as its staffing levels have fallen. The current staffing level--1,962 people--is down 20 percent from 2001.

The food stamp program, in particular, has drawn attention after federal officials warned that the state could face financial sanctions if the program's performance does not improve significantly. The program ranks worst in the nation in the rate of wrongly denying or terminating food stamps, and among the worst in paying inaccurate benefit levels and missing deadlines for processing applications.

Commissioner Michael P. Starkowski has attributed the problems largely to having too few staff and outdated technology while demand for services rises. The department recently received approval to fill vacant positions for handling program eligibility and hire retired eligibility workers on a temporary basis to handle food stamp applications.

The new commissioner will also oversee major changes to the way the Medicaid programs, which together serve nearly 600,000 people, are administered. The HUSKY program, which serves close to 400,000 mostly low-income children and their families, will be moved out of managed care, and other Medicaid programs for low-income adults and people with disabilities will be moved into a system in which care is more coordinated than it is now. The new system is expected to be in place by Jan. 1, 2012.

DSS also administers programs including cash assistance, child care subsidies, elderly prescription assistance, winter heating aid and some employment services.

Bremby graduated from the University of Kansas in 1982 and received a master of public administration degree from the university in 1984. He served on the board of Kansas Action for Children and the Kansas Health Policy Authority, and founded the Lawrence Partnership for Children and Youth. He also served as president of the Lawrence, Kansas, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 2007, Bremby and his then-wife filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the result of health problems that required her to stop working. The source said they are repaying their debts and will be done repaying them next January. They are now divorced and Bremby is remarried.

Malloy reappoints Leo Arnone as Dept. of Corrections chief
Stamford ADVOCATE
Published 01:40 p.m., Friday, March 4, 2011

HARTFORD -- A 22-year-veteran of the Conn. Department of Corrections will be staying there for a little while longer. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy reappointed DOC Commissioner Leo Arnone of Somers to the position on Friday.

In addition to his 22 years at the DOC, he also spent 12 years working for the state Judicial Branch and for three years at the Department of Children and Families. An interim commissioner prior to his reappointment, Arnone was initially put into the position by former Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

"Leo is well-liked by staff at the department and well-respected by members of his peer community," said Malloy in a statement. "He believes, as I do, that public safety comes first, but we also need to spend less and find ways to reduce recidivism in our inmate population. His ties to community-based providers and his special insight into early intervention and juvenile justice programs are also of particular interest to me as we find ways to reform our criminal justice system."

Arnone was appointed to be the commissioner of the Department of Corrections in 2010.

"I'm looking forward to working with Gov. Malloy - a former prosecutor and someone who deeply believes in the reformation of our current system," said Arnone in a statement. "With my career spanning two branches and as many departments, I have a broad understanding of the ways in which we can better address the needs of our criminal justice system."

Arnone began his career at DOC in 1974, starting as a Correctional Officer and rising to the position of Correctional Captain. He then served as Deputy Warden and Warden at the Hartford Correctional Center from 1988 to 1993, a high security, 1,000 bed pre-trial facility. Then from 1993 to 1995 he was a regional director with the department and oversaw six correctional facilities in the Enfield and Somers area. He supervised 1,800 employees on 1,700 acres of property and over 100 buildings. There were 4,000 inmates in his control.

Arnone then moved into the Judicial Branch, working there from 1995 to 2007 as Superintendent of the Hartford Juvenile Detention Center. He became the Deputy Director of Operations for Juvenile Detention Services. He last served from 2007 to 2010 he was the Bureau Chief at the Bureau of Juvenile Services within the Department of Children and Families where he oversaw the Conn. Juvenile Training School, five privately-owned residential training schools, parole and reentry programs for children and specialized community mental health programming.

Malloy names ING executive to oversee economic development
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
March 3, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy today named a top insurance executive, Catherine H. Smith of ING, to oversee economic development, a recruiting coup and a sign of his desire to grow one of the state's best-known industries.

Smith, 58, the chief executive of ING U.S. Retirement Services and a former high-ranking executive at Aetna Financial Services, brings corporate star power to the administration's economic development efforts, a top priority in a state with nearly flat job growth over the past 20 years.

"I'm thrilled that Catherine has agreed to take on the immense task - and I do mean it's immense," Malloy said. "We've got to reverse a 22-year history of failing to grow jobs, and do it as quickly as we can."

In Smith, Malloy has hired an executive with experience in operations and marketing. She helped streamline operations in ING during the recession, consolidating 14 service centers into four and cutting costs for those services by 30 percent over three years, Malloy said.

Her salary at ING is not public record, but she smiled during the press conference when asked about her $170,000 state salary. "Let me put this way, I'm taking a big pay cut, and I believe it's the right thing to do for me," she said. "My husband and I are financially able to do this, but we are very committed to helping the state."

Smith, who worked for a non-profit environmental organization in Washington after graduating from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., said she always planned to eventually work in the public sector. Her graduate degree from the Yale School of Management is in public and private management.

"Under the leadership of the governor the lieutenant governor, I think we're finally putting the spotlight back on creating jobs in the state," Smith said.

Smith said the state has high costs, but a good system of higher education, a skilled work force and a great quality of life. "I'm very much looking forward to getting those strengths out into the marketplace," Smith said.

The potential market for employers who should be recruited to expand or relocate here must be viewed broadly, she sad.

"I'm not just talking about great start up in biotech or bio medical. I'm talking about looking at other, more mature industries as well," she said.

Malloy said she will have a free hand in remaking the state's economic-development bureaucracy.

"Catherine will be fully empowered to create a new organization," Malloy said.

Smith's last day at ING is March 31. She begins her new job the next day.

"This is great," said an insurance industry source before Malloy's announcement. "He is taking very calculated steps to show the industry they are not a punching bag any more." Last month, Malloy chose Thomas Leonardi, a venture capitalist and not a consumer advocate, as his insurance commissioner.

Smith was a top executive at Aetna Financial Services when the unit was obtained by the Dutch financial services giant, ING. Her tenure at Aetna overlapped with Timothy Bannon, the governor's chief of staff and co-chairman of Malloy's transition team.

Bannon said Smith initially was invited to help with the transition, but the administration then began to recruit her, a process that took months to complete. "This is a great outcome, well worth the wait," Bannon said.

ING is preparing an initial public offering for its U.S. insurance business, a project that makes leaving the company difficult. "That would have been fun," she said.

Smith worked at Aetna from 1983 through 2000, when ING purchased its financial services business. She has been chief executive of the retirement unit, which has 3,000 employees and oversees $285 billion in assets, since 2008.

"Throughout her career, Catherine has modeled community service, community involvement, and community leadership," said Rob Leary, the chief executive officer of ING Insurance U.S. "Therefore, this next step in her career is a natural extension of her life-long passion for public service.

Her name was 9th on American Banker and U.S. Banker's 2009 list of the 25 most powerful women in insurance, asset management and other areas of finance outside banking.

In 2005, InformationWeek named her as most influential in the information-technology field Smith, then the chief operating officer of ING, took over the financial -services company's IT operations.

According to her ING bio, she serves on the board of Outward Bound, Connecticut Fund for the Environment and the Trust for Public Land's Connecticut Advisory Council.

Smith is married and lives in North Branford. She and her husband, Peter, are the parents of two children.

Malloy to name Carpenters' official as labor commissioner
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
January 24, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has settled on a Fairfield County carpenters' union official as his choice for labor commissioner, despite a push by another of his labor backers, the Service Employees International Union, for one its top executives.

Glenn Marshall, the president of Carpenters Local 210, which endorsed Malloy in April, is the governor's choice from a field of candidates that included Kurt Westby, the state director of the SEIU affiliate, 32BJ, according to political sources.

In Marshall, whose appointment is expected to be made Wednesday, Malloy is selecting a down-state union leader he knows well over an executive from SEIU, a union that endorsed him in May and made more than $270,000 in independent expenditures on his behalf.

The labor job is one of special interest to the construction trades, who often look to the state for enforcement of labor laws and funding of training programs.

The Malloy administration declined to comment on the selection of Marshall, but one union leader said that the appointment of either Marshall or Westby would be welcomed by organized labor.

"Kurt and Glenn are pretty well-known in the labor movement," said John Olsen, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO. "They are seasoned. They are tested. They have been around the block. They both have good political skills."

Olsen, a former Democratic state chairman, said he was not informed by the Malloy administration if the governor had a made a choice. Both Marshall and Westby are on the executive board of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, which endorsed Malloy after he won the Democratic primary.

Marshall, who also is the district business manager for New England Regional Council of Carpenters and the treasurer of its political action committee, testified last year at the General Assembly in favor of legislation increasing fines on employers who misclassify employees as subcontractors to avoid paying workers' compensation and unemployment compensation.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed the bill.

The carpenters' PAC last year contributed $10,000 each to the campaigns of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Reps. Joe Courtney, Chris Murphy and Rosa DeLauro and $8,000 to U.S. Rep. Jim Himes.

Marshall was at Murphy's announcement last week for U.S. Senate.

He did not return a call seeking comment Monday.

Malloy names Big Tobacco foe to head Consumer Protection
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
January 24, 2011

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy tapped a member of the legal team that helped bring Connecticut a multi-billion settlement against the tobacco industry one decade ago to become the new head of the Department of Consumer Protection.

Malloy, who announced his selection of Hartford attorney William M. Rubenstein, 59, Monday morning in the Legislative Office Building, charged his new commissioner with keeping a close watch on the "charlatans" that are bilking consumers on ever-growing Internet markets.

"The Department of Consumer Protection has a broad mandate - spanning a range of marketplace regulation - from keeping the public safe from nefarious business practices and ensuring that professional licensure standards are maintained," Malloy said. "Bill's exhaustive experience in public service ... leave me with no doubt that we have a commissioner who will be a diligent and thoughtful protector of, and advocate for, Connecticut residents.

Rubenstein, who will serve on an interim basis while his nomination is considered by the General Assembly, pledged that those who perpetrate fraud on consumers "deserve no quarter, and get no quarter on our watch."

Though fraud isn't limited to the Web, Rubenstein said the relative distance between merchant and consumer, and--in some instances--the speed with which transactions occur, make it easier for consumers to be mistreated.

For example, customers who used to be handled a paper contract or other type of formal agreement that they read carefully in front of a clerk or salesman now make purchases online through sites that allow them to swiftly "click through all of the 'yes' boxes," without actually reading terms of sale.

But while the new commissioner said he wants to use department rules, consumer information, and new regulations and laws developed in cooperation with the legislature to better protect Internet customers, he also wants to department that fosters online commerce.

"I think we're a far ways away from when most retailing was done by brick and mortar," he said, adding that the efficiency of online purchasing does offer benefits to consumers.

As commissioner, Rubenstein will lead an agency with an $11 million annual budget and nearly 130 employees. His salary was not immediately available from the Malloy administration.

Rubenstein served in the Antitrust and Consumer Protection units within the Attorney General's Office from 1986 through 1997. As an assistant attorney general in 1996, Rubenstein served on the legal team that represented Connecticut in a landmark lawsuit against five major tobacco companies, largely in response to marketing efforts aimed at teen smokers.

Connecticut was one of 46 states that participated in that case, which led to a 1998 settlement that awarded $246 billion settlement to the states, and dramatic new restrictions on how tobacco companies could market their products.

Connecticut was guaranteed between $3.6 billion and $5 billion of that settlement over 25 years. Since payments began in 2000, the state has received nearly $1.3 billion.

Prior to his service in the attorney general's office, Rubenstein was counsel for the Federal Trade Commission. Most recently he has led the antitrust division at Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider in Hartford, where he is a partner, and also has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

Rubenstein and his wife, Judith Eisenberg, live in West Hartford.

Malloy taps hospital association executive to take the lead on health reform
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
January 4, 2011

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy has appointed a Connecticut Hospital Association executive and former head of the Hispanic Health Council to lead state efforts to implement federal health care reform.

As a deputy health commissioner and special advisor to Malloy, Jeanette DeJesús will oversee a wide range of efforts intended to prepare the state for an expansion of health care coverage. Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does not fully roll out until 2014, it leaves considerable responsibility to the states.

By 2014, each state must have a health insurance exchange, a marketplace for purchasing coverage that will also be charged with collecting data, reporting to the federal government, certifying and rating insurance plans, and tracking which employers do not offer insurance to their workers. By 2015, the exchanges must be financially self-sustaining.

In addition, states must prepare to ramp up their Medicaid eligibility by 2014. Connecticut is projected to have 114,000 new Medicaid enrollees, which will likely require additional staff to process applications.

DeJesús will succeed Cristine Vogel, who led health reform implementation efforts as a special advisor to Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Vogel has also led a Health Care Reform Cabinet, which includes the commissioners of 11 agencies.

As a newcomer to the health reform role, DeJesús won't be alone. Many states have political appointees leading health reform implementation efforts, and with more than two dozen states inaugurating new governors, many of those positions are likely to change hands.

But DeJesús already has been involved in efforts to promote health reform on the state and federal levels. She co-chaired a task force on tobacco and smoking cessation for the SustiNet Health Partnership board, which designed a proposal for a state public health insurance option. In 2009, she spoke as part of U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd's "Prescriptions for Change" health care listening tour, and described working daily with people who had no health insurance and often worked two or three jobs.

DeJesús, who has a degree social work from New York University and a degree in public administration from Harvard, currently works as vice president for strategic alliances at the Connecticut Hospital Association. She previously served as president and CEO of the Hispanic Health Council.

She also previously served as executive vice president of the National Conference for Community and Justice, and managed a rape crisis program at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.

She also is a member of the Board of Directors of The Connecticut News Project, publisher of The Connecticut Mirror. She will resign from that position.

Heinrich to quit House for new post in Malloy administration
By Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
Jan 04, 2011 1:31pm

Rep. Deborah W. Heinrich, D-Madison, who was an early supporter of Dan Malloy's campaign for governor, was named today by the governor-elect to a cabinet-level position that doesn't yet exist -- to lead a Community Nonprofit Human Services Cabinet.

"I have been clear that getting our fiscal house in order will require a shared sacrifice on all our parts, but I've been equally clear that I will not cut the safety net," Malloy said in an emailed press release. "Engaging the nonprofit community in a concerted, strategic way to maximize services and minimize cost will be a large part of the way in which we do this."

The new position runs counter to Malloy's campaign pledge to cut gubernatorial appointments by 15 percent, but Malloy cast the job as a potential money-saver.

"Representative Heinrich has been an advocate for those who need our help the most and I'll be looking to her to find ways in which the services people need can be provided at a lower cost to taxpayers," he said.

Heinrich was elected to the legislature in 2004 from a Republican district that the GOP will have hopes of recapturing. The seat will be filled by one of eight special elections likely to be held in March.

She is the fifth legislator tapped by Malloy to join his administration. In addition, two others are quitting for other jobs and Sen. Thomas Gaffey announced yesterday he is resigning in the wake of facing misdemeanor larceny charges.

Malloy's window for hiring legislators is fast closing. Once they take the oath of office for their new terms tomorrow, they are barred from taking a job in another branch of government for two years.

East Hartford mayor to take over DMV
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
December 30, 2010

East Hartford Mayor Melody A. Currey, Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's choice to head the state Department of Motor Vehicles, said Thursday she is taking over with the goal of making the much-maligned agency more streamlined and efficient.

"My marching orders are very direct: Make sure the customer is taken care of and make sure we do it in an efficient and effective manner and as fiscally conservative as possible," Currey said after Malloy announced her appointment.

Malloy said he would like Currey to help move the DMV in a direction that would allow state residents to be able to do more online at home or at more convenient locations.

"In a perfect world she would put herself out of business," he said, adding it's a "real possibility" that the agency could be merged with another state agency down the road.

The DMV's budget has remained almost unchanged over the last decade, with the state spending $53 million from the general and transportation funds in both fiscal 2003 and in the current year. However, the number of employees has been drastically reduced during that same time -- from 883 to 768 people this year.

Currey, who served as a legislator for 16 years before becoming mayor, said during an interview following the announcement that while she intends to streamline the DMV, it is too early to tell if that will mean a further reduction in the number of employees at the agency.

"We are looking for savings and that may mean using technology and the Internet to our advantage," she said.

The DMV also will face numerous management challenges. Earlier this month, an investigation by the attorney general's office concluded that agency officials were lax in investigating apparent violations by one of the state's largest driving schools.

A recent state audit also found problems such double payment of bonuses to employees and failure to suspend licenses or registrations paid for with a bad check. The auditors also said the agency was slow to look into complaints from the public, police agencies and local tax authorities.

In response, the agency announced this week it will start notifying cities and towns when it receives complaints that a resident has registered a vehicle out-of-state to avoid local property taxes.

Currey said cracking down on improper registrations will be a priority. She is currently president of CCM, and has fought at the Capitol against state mandates on cities and towns and to preserve state funding.

Jim Finley, executive director of CCM, said out-of-state registrations are a significant problem. Better enforcement of the current law -- which requires people to register their car after 60 days of moving to the state or if they spend more than six months in the state each year - could bring towns millions in additional revenue, he said.

Finley, who has worked with Currey for years, said has what it takes to transform the DMV.

"She's good at reinventing government and she has a history of convincing other state legislators to jump on board," he said.

A good choice, "About Town" thinks, by Gov.-elect Malloy: Sullivan's has the heft to get the job done!

Sullivan returns to state government as tax chief
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
December 29, 2010

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy tapped West Hartford Democrat Kevin B. Sullivan, a former longtime state Senate leader and lieutenant governor, to lead the state's tax agency.

Sullivan, 61, will assume control of the Department of Revenue Services as the new Malloy administration prepares to address what effectively amounts to the largest budget shortfall in state history--a gap Malloy concedes cannot be closed without tax hikes.

"I've known Kevin for years and while he's no longer a public official, that's never stopped his commitment to public service," Malloy said. "As commissioner, Kevin will draw upon his experiences and relationships born out of his time in the legislature to help Connecticut find new and innovative ways in which to collect the money it is due."

The department oversees collection of nearly $13 billion in tax revenues from the General and Transportation funds and processes nearly $1 billion in refunds. With an annual budget of $66.9 million and a staff about 730 employees, the department also includes Division of Special Revenue, which oversees Indian gaming and the Connecticut Lottery Corp. More recently the state's tax system has come under scrutiny because of the increasing problems that Connecticut--like most states--is facing collecting taxes tied to Internet transactions.

Though state law requires residents to report on their state income tax returns any sales taxes owed from online transactions, legislators and other state officials have long conceded most residents do not abide by this requirement, either through ignorance or indifference. Estimates for revenue losses tied to this problem have ranged from $10 million to more than $60 million, though nearly all analyses agree that this problem is growing as online shopping increases in popularity.

Malloy said Connecticut can't afford not to properly enforce all of its existing tax laws, though he declined to discuss any specific proposals to bolster collections. Malloy must submit a plan in mid-February to close a projected $3.67 billion deficit built into the 2011-12 fiscal year, a gap that is equal to nearly one-fifth of all current state spending.

"We need to collect all of the money that is rightfully owed to the people of Connecticut," he said, adding that the problem was getting a serious review by his staff. "I think what we're looking for is a department that is very proactive but also works with people."

Sullivan quipped that "I do not intend to be the tax man" known only for enforcing tax codes, adding that he also hoped to contribute to be "part of the economic development, job development, jobs creation agenda" of the new Malloy administration."

Malloy praised Sullivan for bringing a wealth of experience to his administration, and predicted he would call upon the new commissioner to assist with other projects "above and beyond the traditional role of commissioner of revenue services."

First elected to the state Senate in 1986, Sullivan served for 18 years, including four terms as president pro tem. A former assistant to the state commissioner of education, Sullivan also served as vice president of Trinity College in Hartford during much of his Senate career. He had to leave his Senate leadership role in July 2004 when then-Gov. John G. Rowland resigned amid an impeachment inquiry.

In accordance with the state Constitution, Rowland's lieutenant, M. Jodi Rell, became governor, and Sullivan, as president pro tem of the Senate, became her lieutenant. That created an odd dynamic for 18 months as a Republican governor was forced to share an administration with a Democratic lieutenant governor who also was one of the prior administration's most vocal critics. When Rell was re-elected for a full term in November 2006, her running mate was Stamford Republican Michael Fedele, while Sullivan became president of The Children's Museum in West Hartford.

"I'm honored that Governor-elect Malloy believes my skills and experience will be of use to him in his administration," Sullivan said. "I'm looking forward to stepping back into public service on behalf of the people of the state of Connecticut."

Sullivan is married to Dr. Carolyn Thornberry, a former West Hartford town councilor who was recently elected that community's Democratic registrar of voters.

Geragosian and Ward named new state auditors
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
December 28, 2010

For the first time in nearly two decades, state government will start the year with a new team of fiscal and programmatic watchdogs with Tuesday's naming of Democrat John C. Geragosian and Republican Robert M. Ward as the auditors of public accounts.

Geragosian's appointment also opens another key position in the legislature: The New Britain lawmaker currently serves as co-chairman of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee. Sources said the post will go to veteran Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven.

The new auditors, who still must be confirmed by the full legislature, will replace the retiring Robert G. Jaekle and Kevin P. Johnston, who have served as the Republican and Democratic auditors, respectively, since 1993.

Though Ward's endorsement as the new GOP auditor had leaked out earlier this month, Democrats had been quiet as sources said both Geragosian - an eight-term representative and co-chairman of appropriations for the last two years - and Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr. of Brooklyn both were rumored to be interested in the Democratic slot.

Williams and House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, announced the new auditors today in a joint statement also issued by the House and Senate Minority Leaders, Republicans Lawrence F. Cafero of Norwalk and John McKinney of Fairfield.

"The auditor's position requires individuals of high integrity and a thorough understanding of financial matters," Donovan said. "I can't think of a person who better exhibits those characteristics than John Geragosian, who served the General Assembly with distinction for many years."

"John has always been a fair-minded legislator and he will make an excellent state auditor," Williams said. "I'd also like to thank outgoing state auditors Kevin Johnston and Robert Jaekle for their years of fair-minded and dedicated service."

Geragosian said he hopes to place a strong emphasis on performing additional programmatic audits and on attacking a growing backlog of state employee whistleblower complaints.

The legislature's Program Review and Investigations Committee reported in December 2009 that the whistleblower process is inefficient and unable to handle an annual caseload that more than doubled between 2002 and 2008.

The auditors' office routinely processes between 80 and 90 cases each year of corrupt and illegal practices, mismanagement, and dangers to public safety, the report found. But nearly 200 cases were backlogged when the December 2009 report was issued, including 29 that were more than two years old.

"I think fiscal constraints have diminished the auditors' ability to deal with these areas over time," Geragosian said, adding that these priorities would mesh well with Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's stated desire to enhance government transparency.

The auditors currently oversee an annual budget of $13.4 million and a staff of 117 employees.

Cafero called Ward "the consummate public servant who over the years gained the trust and confidence on both sides of the aisle. Bob has always commanded the utmost respect from his colleagues. He will prove to be a great choice for this critical position."

"Bob's record of public service and reputation for fairness and hard work are beyond reproach," McKinney added. "He will be an effective watchdog for Connecticut's taxpayers, helping to assure sound fiscal management of all state agencies and assets at this critical time when we all must work to reduce the size and cost of state government to close our budget deficits."

The longest-serving Republican House leader in Connecticut history, Ward retired from the legislature after 22 years in 2006 and was named commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles by Gov. M. Jodi Rell in January 2007.

"I'm honored by this and I take it very seriously," Ward said Tuesday, adding that in tough fiscal times "it is increasingly important that the auditors look for issues of waste, fraud and inappropriate spending."

The auditors' posts are two of Connecticut's oldest, dating back over 200 years. A relatively small office within the legislative branch, the auditors review the books and accounts for state agencies, boards, commissions, state-supported institutions and quasi-public entities created by the legislature.

The General Assembly passed an amendment in 1895 requiring that the auditors be from separate political parties. Their compensation is set by the legislature. Jaekle and Johnston earned $219,978 and $216,648, respectively, last year.

But other than the bipartisan rule regarding the two auditors, the statutes are relatively silent on any minimum qualifications the auditors must possess.

Connecticut's auditors have come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

According to legislative researchers, Robert Claffey, who served from 1959 to 1965, owned a store. Raymond Thatcher, who served from 1956 to 1958, was a pharmacist, while Leo Donohue, auditor from 1967 to 1992, was a career state employee.

Though Jaekle and Johnston both were state legislators, Jaekle also is an attorney and Johnston was a banker.

Geragosian has been a Realtor in New Britain for the past 26 years. Ward is an attorney.

Malloy reappoints Pitkin as banking commissioner
Political Mirror
Keith M. Phaneuf

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy reappointed state Banking Commissioner Howard Pitkin on Tuesday to serve in his administration.

A 30-year veteran of the Department of Banking, Pitkin has lead the agency for the past five years.

"Howard Pitkin has had a long, successful tenure ... and I've been impressed with his leadership since becoming commissioner five years ago," Malloy said. "The Connecticut Department of Banking will play a large part in our state's economic recovery and I'm pleased he will continue in this role."

The commissioner administers state laws governing commercial and savings banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, consumer credit, broker-dealers, investment advisers, securities, tender offers and business opportunities.

Pitkin also will continue to oversee the supervision of 40 state-chartered banks and thrifts and 34 state-chartered credit unions. The Banking department has a $20.6 million annual budget and nearly 120 employees.

"I appreciate Governor-elect Malloy's confidence in me, and I'm looking forward to continuing on in my current role under his leadership," Pitkin said. "Connecticut consumers need to have confidence in their banking institutions as we begin to reemerge from the recession and move toward recovery."

Prior to serving as commissioner, Pitkin was chief of administration, which included overseeing the agency's technological initiatives, and restructuring the bank examination and credit union divisions into the financial institutions division.

Pitkin had served on the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and the board of the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors.

A graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University, Pitkin also is a veteran of the United States Army Reserve. A resident of South Windsor, Pitkin has two children and three grandchildren.

Also Tuesday, Malloy named three commissioners from Gov. M. Jodi Rell's administration to serve on an interim basis while his staff continues with national job searches.

Peter O'Meara of Developmental Services, Jeffrey Parker of Transportation and Michael Starkowski of Social Services will continue to head their respective departments when Malloy takes office on Jan. 5.

Malloy names Farm Bureau head as agriculture commissioner
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
December 28, 2010

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy has selected Steven K. Reviczky, who has been the voice for Connecticut's 4,000 farmers for the last five years at the Capitol, as the state's commissioner of agriculture.

Currently the executive director of the Connecticut Farm Bureau and a farmer in Coventry himself, Reviczky is versed in the issues facing the state's agriculture community, including attempts to ban outdoor wood furnaces, regulating water-flow for reservoir owners and the severe drop in the number of dairy farmers in the state.

Lawmakers are gearing up now to propose once again banning outdoor wood-burning furnaces statewide, but Reviczky opposes a ban. He says wood harvesting is a form of farming and a ban would eliminate the market.

As agriculture commissioner, Reviczky will also be at the center of brokering a compromise on water flow rules. Earlier this month the state Department of Environmental Protection proposed requiring dam operators to release water to maintain river and stream water levels. But agriculture interests are among those opposing the DEP's rules, saying they would prevent farmers from being able to draw water for their crops during the summer months when water levels are low.

Also at the top of Reviczky's agenda in the continuing months is renewing a state subsidy given to dairy farmers in the state to help them pay their bills. That subsidy is set to expire in July.

Prior to his time at the non-profit farm bureau, Reviczky led the state agriculture department's review of applications for grants through the Farmland Preservation Program. He also led the drafting of Connecticut's proposals for funding under the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program. Reviczky is a former First Selectman in Ashford. He graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Public Policy and Government.

George Jepsen, AG-elect in CT - former State Senator from Stamford-Darien

Jepsen Sees AG Job As Ally Of Business
By Greg Bordonaro, gbordonaro@HartfordBusiness.com
27 December 2010

When Attorney General-Elect George Jepsen takes office next month he knows he won’t have a direct role in job creation.

But that doesn’t mean the 56-year-old former state lawmaker can’t help improve Connecticut’s business climate. And that’s exactly what he said he intends to do.

Attorney General-elect George Jepsen says his approach won’t be to “shoot first and ask questions later.” In an interview with the Hartford Business Journal, Jepsen said one of his top priorities when he’s sworn into office Jan. 5 will be opening up a direct line of communication with the business community. He said his office needs to better educate businesses on where the lines in the legal sand will be drawn.

And taking businesses to court won’t be his first priority.

“I’m not a person who is going to shoot first and ask questions later,” said Jepsen, who describes himself as a problem solver by nature. “I’m not a litigator of first resort; I’m a litigator of last resort. While there are some moral and civil rights issues where I take a very hard stance and see things in very stark terms of right and wrong, I find in the real world — and especially the business world — most of the issues aren’t black and white. I try to understand all sides of the issues and get all stakeholders to the table to figure out how to solve the problem.”

During the campaign, Jepsen said he heard a lot of frustrations from the business community, including that businesses often learn they are on the wrong side of the law only after an enforcement action is taken against them. He wants to change that.

He also wants his office to better distinguish between businesses that inadvertently step over that line and the business that has a culture of playing close to the line, and going over it whenever it can get away with it.

“Businesses want the bad guys put away because they can’t compete with cheats,” Jepsen said.

Some critics, including Jepsen’s Republican campaign opponent Martha Dean, have accused the attorney general’s office of being business unfriendly and overly litigious in recent years.

Jepsen said that perception is overblown, and that outgoing Attorney General Richard Blumenthal did a lot to protect consumers and businesses. He noted that 97 percent of the 54,000 cases the AG’s office deals with annually are nondiscretionary, where the state is playing defense. Only 3 percent of cases involve the state proactively suing someone, and most of those cases are initiated by executive branch agencies.

Still, Jepsen said, he will bring his own style and approach to the job.

When asked how he will be different than Blumenthal, Jepsen said his background as a lawmaker and lawyer has made him more of a negotiator and mediator than a litigator. He said he’s not afraid to litigate if he has to, but his general approach is “to try to understand the nuance of why a problem exists and work it out.”

And although he shares many of Blumenthal’s values, he’s not as likely to seek the spotlight as much as his predecessor either. One early example of that: he’s reducing the size of the office’s press staff.

“I would make as a matter of confident prediction that you will see a lot less of me in the press,” Jepsen said.

Jepsen’s tone demonstrates just how far Connecticut’s public figures — even those with limited roles in economic development or job creation — are going to help reverse the perception that the state is anti-business.

Although new to the attorney general’s office, Jepsen is a household name in Connecticut’s legal and political landscape. George Jepsen is credited with helping reform the state’s workers comp system.He is a Harvard Law grad and served 16 years in the state legislature representing Stamford, first as a state representative, and then as a state senator. He spent six years as the majority leader.

John Rathgeber, the CEO of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, said Jepsen has always taken a balanced approach when it comes to working with the business community. He remembers, for example, the role Jepsen played as a state lawmaker in helping pass sweeping workers compensation reform in 1993, a measure that helped to reduce costs for employers.

Democrats including Jespen, who used to work as a lawyer for the carpenters’ union, took heat from organized labor as a result of their support for the law.

“George understands the importance of private sector investment,” Rathgeber said. “He sees himself as a problem solver and someone who can bring people together.”

In terms of policy issues, Jepsen said implementing the Dodd — Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will be among his top priorities. He said attorneys general are going to be deputized to enforce many of the consumer protections under the law, especially related to predatory lending and mortgage fraud.

And he wants to move aggressively in both of those problem areas.

He also said the state needs to be more aggressive in helping homeowners who face foreclosure, including strengthening loan modification programs. If that means making more banks take a hair cut on a loan, rather than absorb a foreclosed property that will likely be sold below market value, he’s open to the idea.

“The quicker we can sensibly move our way through homes that are underwater or are being foreclosed, the sooner property values will once again rise, which will have a positive impact on the economy,” Jepsen said.

Working with the Department of Public Utility Control, the attorney general also has a direct role in prompting energy conversation, something Jepsen said he will push extremely hard. He said there are several conversation programs that need to be expanded, including initiatives that help individuals and businesses underwrite efforts like insulating a facility or weather-stripping doors.

Jepsen also wants to crack down on businesses that misclassify employees as independent contractors, and speed up the time it takes for the state to issue permits and contracts.

“I think I want the public faces of Connecticut to be welcoming to businesses and I’m going to look for ways to work with them,” Jepsen said.

Malloy reappoints Rehmer to lead DMHAS
By Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
Dec 23, 2010 4:57pm

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy has reappointed Patricia Rehmer to serve as commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, a post she has held since last year.

Rehmer joined the agency in 1999 and served as deputy commissioner from 2004 to 2009. A nurse by training, Rehmer has also worked at the Institute of Living and served as CEO of the Capitol Region Mental Health Center.

"Commissioner Rehmer has been a leader in the fields of mental health and addiction services throughout her career, and I'm pleased that she and I will be working together to help those citizens in Connecticut who need our help the most," Malloy said in a statement released by his transition team. "Particularly because the population she serves relies on the continuity of service and programs DMHAS provides, I'm glad that she and I have a shared vision for the department and will continue her tenure uninterrupted."

In a statement, Rehmer said, "I appreciate Governor-Elect Malloy's confidence in me as he takes office and begins to implement his own vision and ideas for the state. Working together I believe that we will continue to provide these essential services for those in our state very much in need. In these difficult times, we cannot forget those who need our help the most."

News of Rehmer's reappointment drew praise from advocates for people the department serves.

"We're more than pleased," said Alicia Woodsby, public policy director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Connecticut. "People feel comfortable with her and they really feel like she's listening and cares about our needs."

Terry Edelstein, CEO of the Connecticut Community Providers Association, which represents groups that serve people with disabilities, substance abuse, mental illness, and disabilities, called Rehmer "a responsive and conscientious partner with community providers and the people they serve."

"Some of the things that have happened in the past year are very promising," Edelstein said.

Those include converting state-administered general assistance, which served many people with addictions, into a Medicaid program, allowing the state to receive federal reimbursement and more people to enroll. Edelstein also cited DMHAS' role in the state's highly regarded behavioral health partnership.

In announcing Rehmer's reappointment, the Malloy transition team noted Rehmer's effort to maximize federal resources. That's something she will likely need to do more of as the state grapples with a massive budget deficit, said Sheila Amdur, a National Alliance on Mental Illness board member and a former member of the DMHAS state advisory board.

Mental health departments across the country are facing the prospect of budget cuts, but Amdur said DMHAS has some advantages because Connecticut has not used Medicaid to finance all the services it could. Making better use of Medicaid program options could bring the state more federal funds, she said.

Amdur praised Rehmer for embracing community-based services and focusing on program outcomes.

"She has really continued to try to move the department to much more accountable services, more outcome-driven services," she said.

Connecticut has a "pretty well-run" mental health system, but it has holes, including money being spent on prisons and nursing homes for people who could be cared for in the community, Amdur said.

"Pat knows this," Amdur said. "She's open, she's I think very eager to work with a broad range of stakeholders, and that to me is very encouraging."

Malloy taps DeFronzo for DAS commissioner
Ted Mann, NLDAY
Article published Dec 22, 2010

Hartford — Gov.-elect Dan Malloy announced Wednesday that he will make state Sen. Donald DeFronzo, D-New Britain, the new commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services.

DeFronzo will lead an agency that is at the center of some of the structural reforms that Malloy's transition team is contemplating for the state government, the governor-elect said at a news conference at the Legislative Office Building.

"I need his expertise," Malloy said of DeFronzo, who won reelection to a fifth Senate term in November, but will not be sworn in and will join the Malloy administration instead.

Malloy highlighted DeFronzo's previous experience, in addition to his tenure in the legislature, where he has served as co-chairman of the Transportation Committee.

Before serving in the Senate, DeFronzo was the mayor of New Britain, worked for 10 years in the Office of Policy and Management, overseeing federal block grants for human service programs in Connecticut, and later was the executive director of the Human Services Agency of New Britain, the Malloy team said.

"He knows how to stretch a dollar," Malloy said at the news conference, going on to confirm that he and his advisors are considering a number of possible agency consolidations. Those could include merging the Department of Administrative Services with another agency, like the Department of Public Works, or the Department of Information Technology, Malloy said, though final decisions on those discussions have not been announced.

DeFronzo said he was excited by a chance to "reshape and restructure state government."

"I think we've all come to the conclusion that Connecticut can do better, that we need to do better, and that we will do better," DeFronzo said.

In addition to DeFronzo, Malloy has selected two powerful legislators — Judiciary Committee co-chairs Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven — to join his administration.
McDonald who was corporation counsel for the city of Stamford when Malloy was mayor, will serve as legal counsel to the governor. Lawlor, a former state prosecutor and the longtime House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will become a deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, with a focus on criminal justice and corrections issues.

And contacts.

New Public Health Commissioner Puts An Emphasis On Prevention
Three Months Into The Job, Jewel Mullen Discusses Vision For Public Health
The Hartford Courant
BY WILLIAM WEIR, bweir@courant.com
9:00 PM EDT, May 26, 2011

When the Department of Public Health is working well, its new commissioner said, you probably won't notice it.

"When public health is really successful, people don't realize that public health is at work — because we're in the background," said Dr. Jewel Mullen. "I say that public health is like one of our vital organs. It's like your heart: Unless it skips a beat, you don't notice it."

With that philosophy, she took over in February from Dr. J. Robert Galvin, health commissioner since 2003. Mullen, 56, previously was with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, serving as the director of the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention.

She brings with her the same focus on prevention.

"Investing in prevention and public health upfront does a lot more to keep us healthy than intervening after people are sick," she said. "It's one thing for anybody to do smoking cessation, but it's another thing to keep people from smoking in the first place. It's one thing to address all the needs of a low-birthweight child, but it's another thing to address the factors that lead to pre-term deliveries and low-birthweight babies."

To some extent, she said, this effort involves educational programs. But it also involves looking directly at what she calls the "social determinants of health."

"Where people live, their education and their access to services," she said. "All those determinants have a big influence on what their health and well-being are. Public health is increasingly about looking at social determinants and how to address those."

Among those determinants are so-called "food deserts" — low-income areas that don't have a full-service grocery store. All the educational programs about healthy eating aren't going to help if people don't have a place to get food that meets their basic nutritional needs.

"We want to help towns figure out ways to get a supermarket in their community," she said.

During Mullen's tenure in Massachusetts, the public health department faced steep budget cuts, so she braced herself for a difficult state budget in Connecticut, as well. The proposed budget for 2011-12 was a pleasant surprise, she said.

"I felt really fortunate, given the constraints of this budget, that we were not really cut," she said. "If the budget is passed, we will actually have a bit of an increase, so I see that as a commitment both from the executive branch and legislative to public health."

That doesn't mean her department will have an easy time of it financially.

"In general, these are really hard times for public health across the county," she said. "We stand the chance of losing a lot of federal dollars. … The department's funding for public health comes much more from federal monies than from state monies."

Among the most pressing concerns, Mullen said, is the reduction of funds in the Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant, which pays for programs that address chronic disease, environmental health and preventive screenings and services. It also funds programs for emergency preparedness.

The state currently receives $1.1 million from the grant program, a $300,000 reduction from the previous fiscal year. And when the new fiscal year begins, she said, "This has the potential to be zeroed out."

She's also crossing her fingers that Connecticut's share of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, won't be hit too hard. Connecticut now gets $45 million for it, a $3 million reduction from the previous year. Mullen said the amount of the upcoming grant is uncertain.

Mullen, whose annual salary is $170,000, lives in Guilford with her husband, and has two adult children. She is still getting to know the workings of the department, so it's been a lot of meetings since February.

Mullen received her bachelor's degree and master of public health degree from Yale University. Specializing in internal medicine, Mullen began her clinical career with the National Health Service Corps at Bellevue Hospital in New York. She also has been on the medical staffs at the Hospital of St. Raphael and Yale-New Haven Hospital.

It was only a few years ago that she decided to give government work a try. In 2008, she accepted a position in Massachusetts.

"As somebody who looks at systems and tries to figure out how they can serve people, I decided that from the health care delivery side and public side, if I really wanted those systems to work better for people, I should work in government."

It can be difficult, she said.

"When you look at it from the outside, you're really only looking at it from your perspective, but once you start doing the work from the inside, you have a much stronger appreciation for how many different perspectives inform a policy or law," she said. "People criticize government all the time. It's not easy work."

Copyright © 2011, The Hartford Courant

Malloy picks Mass. health official to head state DPH
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
December 17, 2010

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy has selected Dr. Jewel Mullen, a Massachusetts public-health official and a lecturer at Yale University, as the state's commissioner of public health, according to sources. She will be the second woman and second African American selected by Malloy to lead a state agency.

Mullen, the fourth agency head selected so far by Malloy, oversees community health and prevention for the Department of Public Health in Massachusetts, where she also serves as the chronic disease director.

Mullen has bachelor and master of public health degrees from Yale University, a medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and a master of public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Malloy is expected to announce her appointment Monday. Malloy had pledged during the campaign to promote diversity and increase the number of women in the top ranks of state government.

"I said I would do that," Malloy said earlier this week, as he named Reuben Bradford as the first black commissioner of public safety. "I am doing that."

Teresa Younger, the executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, said she Malloy's transition team is committed to assembling a diverse, qualified administration.

"They are very conscious of this," she said.

Younger said the public should resist keeping score on gender and race until the administration takes form. An NAACP official objected to the racial makeup of Malloy's transition team, even before the names were announced.

"Sometimes people are looking for controversy. They are ready to jump on things that aren't there yet," Younger said.

But the commission will issue a gender and diversity scorecard in March, seeing if Malloy was able to match or exceed his predecessor's success in bringing women in government. Gov. M. Jodi Rell, only the second woman to become governor in the state, filled 37 percent of her top executive posts with women, including the first woman to oversee the Department of Correction. Younger said that percentage put Connecticut among the top ten states with women in the upper levels of government.

To assist Malloy, the commission solicited resumes from women interested in joing state government and forward the names of 61 female candidates for executive-level positions.

"They are out there," Younger said.

Malloy said earlier this week he was not keeping score.

"We're not keeping score by category. What I'm trying to do is staff immediately and as quickly as possible commissionerships," Malloy said.

His previous department-head appointments are: Ben Barnes, Office of Policy and Management; Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz, Department of Children and Families; and Bradford, Department of Public Safety.

Malloy's inner circle so far consists of men he has known for years, plus his running mate, Nancy Wyman. He has named Timothy F. Bannon as chief of staff, state Sen. Andrew McDonald of Stamford as his legal counsel and Roy Occhiogrosso, his media strategist on two campaigns, as a senior adviser.

While the rest of the State of Connecticut was watching UCONN...
Top state education official resigns, citing 'stress'
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
December 21, 2010

Saying the stress of the job had become too much, State Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan announced his resignation today, one day after a public outburst that stunned members of a panel appointed to make recommendations on school financing.

"I reached this decision yesterday when I realized that I no longer wanted to do this work and saw all too plainly that the stresses of my job are more than they should be and more than I am willing to accept," McQuillan, 62, wrote in a letter to state Board of Education members and other education officials.

On Monday a panel composed of representatives of unions, businesses, municipalities and education groups met to begin drafting some of their final recommendations on how schools should be financed by the state. McQuillan opened the meeting by saying he wanted to defer that discussion until January. As various members of the group objected to the delay, McQuillan showed increasing irritation.

"Do you want to run this meeting?" he finally snapped at board chairman Allan Taylor. When Taylor said yes, McQuillan raised his voice and said, "No, I am running this meeting."

He quickly adjourned the meeting and was out the door in seconds, leaving the room of about 30 people stunned. People familiar with the episode said two events likely contributed to McQuillan's outburst.

One was the fact that Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's transition team for education had scheduled a meeting at the same time McQuillan's group was to convene. The majority of the members of the school finance panel were late because of the transition meeting. McQuillan also was taken off guard when a group of finance panel members presented him with their own set of recommendations shortly before the meeting began.

Taylor said he was surprised by McQuillan's actions.

"I am sorry it happened that way," he said.

McQuillan has up until today said he intends to lobby to remain the state's education commissioner. McQuillan has been the commissioner for the last four years. His term was set to expire at the end of the year, but the state board members voted to keep him on until Malloy has decided who he wants as the next education leader. Malloy has said McQuillan is a strong contender for the position but said he is also looking elsewhere to fill the position. During a recent trip to Washington he asked U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for names of possible candidates.

The final decision will ultimately be up to the 11-member State Board of Education, but Malloy will gets to begin appointing eight of those members when he takes office Jan. 5. McQuillan's resignation is effective the same day.

"I’m focused on working with the State Board of Education to find an interim replacement while the search for a permanent replacement goes on,” Malloy said reacting to McQuillan's decision to step down.

Malloy rounds out top policy and politics jobs
Mark Pazniokas
December 16, 2010

The top public policy and political ranks of Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's administration took shape today with the appointments of his legal counsel and communication strategist, followed hours later by other key posts at the Office of Policy and Management.

Malloy named two close advisers, Roy Occhiogrosso of New Britain and state Sen. Andrew McDonald of Stamford to his senior staff. Deputy Comptroller Mark Ojakian of Hartford, state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor of East Haven, Gian-Carl Casa of Hamden and Anne Foley of West Hartford are filling the other top policy jobs at the Office of Policy and Management.

The appointments of McDonald and Lawlor, the co-chairs of the legislature's judiciary committee, will set off a scramble for two of the higher-profile committee assignments at the State Capitol. Lawlor is the committee's longest-serving co-chair.

Lawlor is one of the legislature's leading opponents of capital punishment. Lawlor and McDonald, who are both openly gay, also helped lead the legislative push to legalize same-sex civil unions and then codify in state law a court decision legalizing gay marriage.

Occhiogrosso, who was Malloy's media adviser for his gubernatorial campaigns in 2006 and 2010, will be the administration's communication strategist. McDonald will be general counsel.

"Roy and Andrew have provided me professional guidance on a number of issues throughout the years, and their acceptance of these offers will allow me to rely on a senior leadership team in my office ripe with experience inside and outside of state government, cognizant of the great challenges that lie ahead for us, and uniquely prepared to deal with them effectively and efficiently," Malloy said in a press statement.

Occhiogrosso, McDonald and Timothy Bannon, the chief of staff, all will report directly to Malloy.

With his inner circle complete, Malloy''s transition office named the four other advisers who will be based at the Office of Policy and Management, which is state government's budget office and often acts as its think tank, providing policy advice directly to the governor's office.

Ojakian, who is now the deputy to Comptroller Nancy Wyman, the incoming lieutenant governor, will be the deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management. Malloy previously had named Ben Barnes, a top aide during his mayoral administration in Stamford, as OPM secretary.

"I'm grateful that these public servants have agreed to join my staff at such a critical juncture in our state's history," Barnes said.

Placing Ojakian at OPM serves at least two purposes: one, it gives Barnes, a newcomer to the Capitol, a deputy well-versed in the political players, as well as fiscal issues; two, it reinforces Malloy's promise that Wyman will play a policy role in the administration. Ojakian is Wyman's closest adviser.

Lawlor, Casa and Foley will be undersecretaries, each overseeing areas of public policy. Lawlor will be the undersecretary for criminal justice, giving him an opportunity to shape Malloy's approach to sentencing and prison issues.

Casa, the top lobbyist for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, will be the undersecretary for legislative affairs. He is a former colleague of Barnes, whom Malloy hired away from CCM to join his mayoral administration.

Foley, who already is a senior policy adviser at OPM, will be the undersecretary for policy development and planning. She has worked at OPM for 23 years.

The vacancies caused by the coming resignations of McDonald and Lawlor will force the first of several special elections. Others are expected.

Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, the co-chairman of the appropriations committee, is a top contender for the job of Democratic state auditor, a post appointed by the House speaker and Senate president pro tem, with the consent of the legislature.

Rep. Jamie Spallone, D-Essex, has been offered a job by Denise Merrill, the incoming secretary of the state. Legislative leaders have delayed making committee assignments until they see who leaves for the executive branch.

McDonald to ascend to Malloy administration post
Stamford ADVOCATE
Brian Lockhart And Magdalene Perez, Staff Writers
Published: 10:16 p.m., Wednesday, December 15, 2010

STAMFORD -- State Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, handily won a fifth term in November, but will instead return to Hartford in January as counsel to long-time friend Governor-elect Dan Malloy.

Malloy, Stamford's former mayor, announced he will be naming two important appointments Thursday at noon at the city's Government Center, rather than the capitol in Hartford.

Hartford Courant Columnist Kevin Rennie first reported Wednesday afternoon on his blog that McDonald, a Stamford native and long-time Malloy friend and confident, will be named the new governor's top lawyer.

Sources contacted by Hearst Connecticut Media Group supported Rennie's claim.

A Malloy spokesman declined comment and McDonald did not return phone calls.

"If it's true it's a superb choice," said Attorney General-Elect George Jepsen, whom McDonald succeeded in the state Senate in 2003. "Andrew is immensely capable. Works very hard. Has the utmost integrity and, in addition to being an excellent lawyer, has excellent political judgment and knowledge of governmental process. He's about as complete a package for that job as you could possibly find ... He enjoys Dan's complete confidence."

A former Stamford corporation counsel under Malloy, McDonald earned notoriety when, as a freshman legislator, he was made co-chairman of the legislature's powerful Judiciary Committee.

"Regardless of what you think of his politics, Andrew McDonald is a very accomplished attorney," House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, himself a lawyer, said. Cafero noted McDonald is employed as a litigation partner with Stamford-based Pullman and Comley.

"Pullman is no slouch firm," Cafero said.

Although there has been speculation among political insiders that McDonald, a member of Malloy's transition team, would join the administration, there have been some who thought Malloy would maneuver to elevate his friend to a more powerful role within the state Senate to ensure passage of priority legislation.

"I heard the rumors they were going to find a spot for (Senate President and Brooklyn Democrat) Donald Williams ... and clear the way for Andrew as far as being senate majority leader or president," Cafero said. "And in that way the Malloy/McDonald partnership would take effect, with him being head of one chamber of government."

Asked why an influential senator like McDonald might choose to leave the General Assembly, Jepsen, a one-time senate majority leader, said as Malloy's counsel, McDonald "would be an immensely powerful figure in the administration during what promises to be four of the most important years for determining Connecticut's future course."

The thought of McDonald gaining even more power is sure to worry some of his critics who have been concerned he and Judiciary Committee co-chairman Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, have overstepped their bounds in recent years. Though fiscally conservative, McDonald is socially liberal and was at the forefront of efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Connecticut. He has also clashed on numerous occasions with the Catholic Church, most notably in 2009 when his proposal to alter oversight of parish finances ignited a political firestorm and was soon withdrawn.

State Rep. Arthur O'Neill, R-Southbury, a ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called McDonald "an able chairman" who brought "a fairly rationale approach" to the position and was respectful of his colleagues.

"It makes a lot of sense Governor-elect Malloy might pick someone like Andrew, and being chief counsel to the governor is a tremendous opportunity to influence public policy," O'Neill said. "Obviously Andrew and I have disagreed on a variety of different issues over the years ... As the governor's counsel he will be acting on behalf of the governor and not a completely free agent. He'll have influent ... but I get the distinct impression the new governor has a lot of his own ideas and specifics of how he wants to handle things."

Reached by phone Lawlor declined to comment for this story. State Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, who, with McDonald, also represents a portion of Darien, said McDonald joining the Malloy administration will be a big win for the governor-elect.

"I know that Dan relies on Andrew and frankly Andrew has a great legal mind," Duff said. "He's been such a good force on the Judiciary Committee and as a legislator. But if he can serve the entire state, I think that's good too."

Duff and McDonald have been voices for Fairfield County on the Transportation Committee. Asked if McDonald's departure will be a loss in that area, Duff said, "I think anybody who takes his seat would still be a strong voice on transportation. And he'd continue to be a strong voice within the administration."

Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University, said it would be a "logical choice" if state representatives in the district run for the seat. Those, excluding the seat won this fall by Republican Michael Molgano, include state Representatives Gerry Fox III, Carlo Leone and Patricia Billie Miller, all Democrats. However, moving from representing a house district of about 29,000 to a senate seat encompassing 90,000 constituents can be a big change, Rose said.

"You're really talking about double the responsibilities in terms of constituent services, in terms of issues," Rose said. "All of a sudden serving in the state senate, it's a whole different dynamic. It's two different worlds in many ways."

Republican Board of Finance member Bob Kolenberg, who ran against McDonald for the senate seat, questioned why McDonald ran for the office if he was going to accept an administration position. But he said he is open to running again.

"I'm not going to say no and I'm not going to say yes but I'd definitely consider it," Kolenberg said. "I'd have to see what kind of support is out there for me."

Democratic City Committee Chairwoman Ellen Camhi said there are "many Democrats that would fit the bill" for a special election, but did not elaborate.

Asked whether he would consider running, Fox said it was too early to comment.

"I'm sure there will be a number of announcements in the next few weeks and I don't want to speculate on what might be," Fox said.

Leone and Miller could not be immediately reached for comment.

Stamford Democratic Registrar of Voters Alice Fortunato said she and her Republican counterpart would have to look into how and when a special election would take place, as there has never been one for a state senate seat during her 12 years serving in the office.

"We'd have to research that, it hasn't happened in my time as registrar," Fortunato said. "Certainly that's a very important position."

Malloy names former trooper public safety commissioner
CT POST
Ken Dixon, Staff Writer
Published: 11:33 p.m., Wednesday, December 15, 2010

HARTFORD -- A retired state trooper who directs security for the NFL was named Wednesday by Gov.-elect Dan Malloy to be the next commissioner of Public Safety, the first black to hold the position.

Reuben F. Bradford was called a "great and seasoned leader" by Malloy during a noontime news conference. Malloy also said Bradford will make the state police department "sharp and glow."

"It is truly and honor to come full circle," said Bradford, who started his 22-year career with the state police in 1974.

Bradford, who rose to the rank of major in the State Police, will not join the Malloy administration until after the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl early next year.

The current chief of the department, Commissioner James Thomas, has agreed to remain in his current post until then.

Bradford has worked for the NFL for 15 years and is responsible for ensuring games and venues across the country are safe.

The 64-year-old Bradford anticipated retiring next August, but the lure of public service beckoned. He said the commissioner pay is "substantially less" than his current salary.

Bradford, an African-American, who recalled overcoming racism while in the state police, also has a motor-neuron disease that affects his balance.

A state trooper for 22 years, he at one time commanded Troop G when it was based in Westport. Troop G is now located in Bridgeport. Bradford lives in Glastonbury with his wife and three children.

The Department of Public Safety is composed of three divisions: the Division of State Police, the Division of Fire, Emergency and Building Services and the Division of Scientific Services.

As a retired state trooper, Bradford gets a $3,069 monthly pension, according to a state database.

Malloy names state's first black public safety chief
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
December 15, 2010

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy today named Reuben F. Bradford of Glastonbury, the NFL's senior director of security and a retired state police major, as Connecticut's first African-American commissioner of public safety.

Bradford, 64, retired from the police in 1996 after a 22-year career that saw him rise through the ranks from trooper to major, with assignments that included commanding a barracks, two regional districts, the training academy and being the chief of staff.

"He has a great understanding of the needs of the department, has been an insider and an outsider and is prepared I think to be an extraordinary commissioner for this department," Malloy said at a press conference at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.

Bradford said Malloy was offering him a rare opportunity to end his career where it began.

"It's not often that you get a chance to come full circle," Bradford said. "It is truly an honor."

Bradford, who has been with the NFL for nearly 15 years, will not join the Malloy administration until after the football season concludes. Public Safety Commissioner James Thomas has agreed to remain in office until Bradford is available, Bradford said.

The commissioner of public safety is a civilian post with responsibility for the state police, the state crime lab, the state fire marshal's office and state building inspector.

Bradford will assume command of an agency that was the subject of a scathing investigative report in December 2006 about shortcomings in its internal affairs division. Its crime lab suffered from a backlog that drew Malloy's attention during his campaign.

A year ago, the lab had more than 10,000 DNA samples from convicted criminals that had yet to be processed and entered into the DNA registry, but the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell says all the samples have been entered since the state used $1 million in federal stimulus money to hire forensic examiners. The lab still has a smaller backlog of DNA investigation for open criminal cases.

In March 2008, Gov. M. Jodi Rell said that all pending internal affairs investigations referenced in the 2006 report had been completed.

"The Department of Public Safety is on the right track in transforming the internal affairs process," Rell said. "We want the State Police Internal Affairs unit to be a model for the rest of the nation in promoting integrity within the department, and I am pleased with the progress that is being made."

At various times, the state police also have been subject to allegations of racial discrimination. Asked if he ever had faced discrimination in his state police career, Bradford replied without hesitation, "Yes, but it was overcome." He did not elaborate.

"I've selected someone who I think will make the department sharp and glow. He will not be subject to political pressures from my office. I was very clear," Malloy said.

Asked about the best and worst elements of the department's culture, Bradford said the ethic of public service was the best. "I really can't come up with a worst-case scenario," he said.

As the security chief for the NFL, Bradford traveled widely, helping to coordinated security for major events such as the Super Bowl. He had just flown back for his press conference on a red-flight from meetings in Hawaii.

Bradford has a neurological disorder, ataxia, that affects motor control and sometimes leaves him unsteady on his feet, especially when fatigued. He mentioned the disorder during the press conference. In some people, ataxia also can affect speech.

The return to public service will cost him a significant pay cut, but it will keep him close to family in Connecticut. He is married and the father of three.

Bradford is Malloy's fourth major appointment. He is the governor-elect's first minority appointment.

He previously has named Timothy Bannon as chief of staff, Ben Barnes as budget chief, and state Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz as commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. Other appointments are expected this week and next, but Malloy has ordered a national search to fill other jobs.

Malloy tells labor he'll 'protect the most vulnerable' from budget cuts
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
December 16, 2010

MERIDEN -- For those state employees who are worried how Dan Malloy's plans to solve the state budget crisis will affect them, the Democratic governor-elect cautiously reminded them Wednesday night that it could be worse: Republican Tom Foley could have won the election.

Malloy, who was greeted loudly and enthusiastically at the Connecticut Working Families Party's winter awards dinner, also thanked the public- and private-sector labor groups behind the party for the crucial role they played in securing his narrow win on Election Day. His warm reception at the labor gathering came just a day after a business group, the MetroHartford Alliance, applauded Malloy's pledge to improve the business climate in the state by balancing the budget and providing the stability needed to promote economic development.

But the governor-elect reasserted Wednesday that fixing the state's fiscal problems would not be at the expense of Connecticut's neediest and most vulnerable citizens.

"How bad would it be for the people we embrace... if we had not accomplished what we had accomplished on Election Day?" Malloy told a crowd of about 150 gathered at the Augusta Curtis Cultural Center. "We in Connecticut stood up on a principled basis and said we care about our fellow human being."

Foley had frustrated Malloy throughout the campaign by insisting he could close the largest budget deficit in state history -- a projected $3.67 billion budget gap-- without raising taxes. Malloy never referred to his chief gubernatorial rival by name, nor did he refer to Foley's no-tax-hike pledge directly, saying only that the campaign was marked by "people saying what they never should have said."

Foley had said he would seek major concessions from state employees and would consider trimming state social services to close the deficit. And while Malloy repeatedly said "we're not going to shred the safety net," he generally was more vague about the prospect of seeking wage- and benefit-givebacks.

The next governor was gracious and appreciative Wednesday in his 10-minute address to the Working Families Party, whose member unions played a key role in delivering Malloy huge margins of victory in Connecticut's urban centers while Foley was capturing most other communities across the state.

"We're all part of one big family," said Malloy, who arrived with running mate Nancy Wyman. "We wouldn't be here without all of the hard work of the people in this room. I know that. I appreciate it."

The party honored Carmen Boudier, president of New England Health Care Employee Workers Union, District 1199, and Malloy hailed her as "a great leader" and advocate for "people who have been forgotten in society... who care for the sickest."

Malloy said that he would take a physician's approach to the budget crisis, following the foremost principle behind the Hippocratic Oath: "We should do no harm."

"Some way, along the way," he added, "we have to protect the most vulnerable among us."

Pledging to break from past Republican administrations that have clashed loudly and at times bitterly with public-sector unions, Malloy again emphasized his willingness to consider all labor proposals to reshape government.

"We're going to talk to more people," he said. "We're going to be in more places. No one is going to be shut out."

Malloy wasn't alone in offering a glass-is-half-full outlook to the difficult budget solutions Connecticut must face.

"I know we all have breathed a big sigh of relief" when Malloy won on an Election Day when Democrats lost the governor's office in many other states, said Julie Kushner, president of the United Auto Workers Region 9A, one of two party leaders who introduced Malloy. "The rest of the country went right down the tubes."

Working Families Party Director Jon Green said afterward he believes many party members recognize that Malloy's fiscal choices are limited.

"There's rhetoric and there's reality and the reality is the state is in a very deep hole," Green said.

But the party leader also was careful with his comments, making it clear that organized labor believes it also is one of the new governor's highest priorities. "I believe the governor's remarks tonight were a reminder on how important it is to have a leader in this state who recognizes the important role working families play in our economy."

Malloy consistently has endorsed one of the party's highest legislative proposals, mandating paid sick leave for part-time workers. Legislation defeated last year would have required companies employing more than 50 workers and not already providing any paid time off to allow them to accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked.

The Connecticut Business and Industry Association, the state's chief business lobby, has said that regardless of whether this proposal would impact a significant number of companies, it would break ground no other state has stirred up yet, and send a dangerous anti-business message. During an interview after his address, Malloy, who also has said Connecticut must carefully monitor its tax policies against those of competing states, said he doesn't believe mandating paid sick leave for part-time workers would contradict that principle.

"I think it will benchmark us, but in the right category," he said, adding it would demonstrate Connecticut's commitment to healthy, safe working environments that protect both workers and consumers.

"I'm willing to talk with anyone," he said. "We can still talk about the details. But people shouldn't come to work sick."

Malloy vows to tackle fiscal mess ignored by Rell, legislators
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
December 9, 2010

In increasingly blunt talk about the state's fiscal crisis, Governor-elect Dan Malloy says his Republican predecessor, M. Jodi Rell, and the Democrat-controlled legislature clung to futile hopes for a quick economic recovery instead of making long-needed structural changes to Connecticut's operations and finances.

"They should've been done earlier. They should have been done by the governor," Malloy said in an interview with The Mirror in his transition office at the State Capitol. "They should have been done by the legislature. Now I have to do them."

Malloy offered a view of the state's multi-year fiscal crisis that is sharply at odds with his fellow Democrat, House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan of Meriden, who has largely blamed the crisis on the recession and resisted calls for sweeping changes.

In public speeches and private conversations, Malloy said he is making the case that legislators are wrong if they believe Connecticut can take stop-gap measures and then wait for a rebounding economy to erase a deficit of more $3.5 billion

"They had the hope that this recession would be like other recessions, that the recovery would be well under way right now," Malloy said. "Now, I never agreed with that. I never supported that."

Despite his blunt language, Malloy said he is casting no blame or criticism at anyone who has been hoping that an economic recovery would save the state from painful spending cuts and tax increases, a pattern followed after most previous recessions.

"It doesn't mean that they were evil, it just means that they were wrong," Malloy said.

Rell proposed a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 that guaranteed the next governor would face a deficit. Her proposed $18.9 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year was based on $2.7 billion in one-shot revenue, including federal stimulus dollars, reserve funds and borrowing against future revenue. In a speech Monday to the House Democratic majority, Malloy said he wanted to acknowledge that many Democrats have pinned their hopes on a recovery. But they must embrace a tougher reality, he said.

"We've got to turn the corner on that, and our aspirations are undoubtedly going to be delayed. Those were two very pointed messages," Malloy said.

Other than acknowledging he intends to propose a mix of new taxes and spending cuts, Malloy has declined to spell out what he means by structural changes. The details will come in his first budget proposal in February, a month after he takes office as Connecticut's first Democratic governor in 20 years. Donovan, who is completing his first term as speaker, resisted calls for fundamental changes in the state's budget this year, saying that a combination of federal stimulus money and an improving economy could get the state through the crisis.

"Unfortunately, Dan wasn't the governor then," Donovan said Wednesday. "Now, we're going to make those changes."

Donovan said state revenues have picked up, but not enough to offset rising costs for Medicaid and other services. With the Republican takeover of the U.S. House, Donovan said he no longer is expecting more federal help.

"That's a big change. We need to react to that change," he said.

In an interview late last February, Donovano did not accept that government must downsize or that the state needs to renegotiate state employee benefits to reduce the state's unfunded liability for pensions and retiree heath costs.

"I think in some ways government is the whipping boy for other structural changes that have to take place," Donovan said then. "The Obama administration is right to look at health care. That's a major cost."

Donovan said unwarranted negativity is itself a drag on the economy.

"I think some people, constituencies hurt themselves by trying to make this worse. They don't look for the silver lining," Donovan said in the February interview. "They look for the most negative thing. In some ways putting out that attitude, throughout the state, throughout business, throughout the community, it hurts our recovery."

Malloy said Donovan was hardly alone in viewing the recession as something the state could merely outlast.

"In fact, I think all but a handful of people in that room fall into that category. They are not bad people," Malloy said of the House Democratic majority he addressed Monday at the Hartford Hilton. "It means that they were optimistic. They were overly optimistic."

Malloy said he was not being critical of what failed to happen in the past; he is trying to focus the legislature and public on what must happen today.

"I have to acknowledge that no one acted out of malice. That's my message. It's not that I'm being critical of other people. I was acknowledging their good intentions."

After Malloy addressed the House Democrats at a luncheon retreat Monday at a hotel in downtown Hartford, Donovan stood next to the incoming governor and pledged a partnership.

"We're looking forward to working with the governor, facing the deficit squarely and saying, what do we have to do? What are the ideas?" Donovan said.

"There's going to be disagreements," he said, standing outside a room where most of 101 Democrats in the House had just applauded Malloy."There are disagreement among the 100 people in that room right there, but we have dialogue."

Lt. Gov.-elect Nancy Wyman: 'We might as well face the problems' (Keith M. Phaneuf). Like pulling teeth?

Conversion to GAAP means kicking bad fiscal habits
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
November 23, 2010

It's the budgetary day of reckoning that state officials have avoided for nearly two decades.

But when Gov.-elect Dan Malloy attempts to convert state financing to generally accepted accounting principles starting next year, it's likely to mean more than paying for over $1 billion in papered-over problems from the past. For a legislature that initially mandated GAAP conversion in 1993--and has postponed it repeatedly since 1995--it will mean immediately swearing off an array of fiscal gimmicks that has enabled it to balance a series of budgets with hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom savings and creative accounting.

"The fact is that the gimmicks are gone," said Lt. Gov.-elect Nancy Wyman, who has spearheaded the push to follow GAAP rules since she became comptroller in 1995. "While we're facing our new problems, we might as well face the problems we avoided previously."

According to the Government Accounting Standards Board, that means following a series of common financial guidelines--already imposed on Connecticut cities and towns--that emphasize transparency. Unlike the modified cash basis currently used, under GAAP expenses must be promptly assigned to the year in which they were incurred. Similarly, revenues are counted in most situations in the year in which they were received.

In the context of the state budget, that means no more pushing the last monthly payment for nursing homes from June 30 to July 1--a move that artificially helps to balance the books by shifting state expenses from the last day of one fiscal year into the first day of the next. Similarly, other Medicaid expenses incurred in one year and paid in the next can't be recorded as part of a future budget. And tax revenues accrued at summer's end no longer can be drawn back into the prior fiscal year.

At first glance that appears harmless. If an extra payment to nursing homes was added in July, at the start of a given year, wasn't it offset at year's end, when the June 30th payment was similarly pushed into the future, and so on? The problem with this never-ending shifting theory is inflation, which always leaves the future inheriting a somewhat higher cost.

According to calculations by the comptroller's office in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, these gimmicks have gradually amassed a sizable spread between the budget set under the modified cash system and a budget that adheres to GAAP. Since 2003, that difference has risen annually by an average of $85 million. By the end of 2008-09 fiscal year it had grown beyond $1.35 billion. Though Malloy pledged to sign an executive order directing all agencies to begin converting to GAAP rules immediately after he is sworn in on Jan. 5, untangling this fiscal mess could take some time.

Agencies traditionally work for three months or more preparing their budget requests, and the respective plans for 2011-12 from more than 60 departments, boards, commissions and offices already have been submitted. That means Malloy's first biennial budget proposal due in February, which will cover the 2011-12 and 2012-13 fiscal years, likely would have to wait until the second stage to operate under GAAP finances from start to finish.

The more immediate challenge for Malloy simply will be not making the GAAP margin worse as he tries to close a deficit which could run as high as $3.7 billion in 2011-12, equal to about one-fifth of current spending and one-half of all annual receipts from the state income tax. Though the new governor's first budget still is under development, Wyman said the incoming administration is committed to beginning the conversion and stopping the cumulative GAAP margin from getting any worse. That would mean Malloy, in addition to closing what effectively equals the largest deficit in state history, also would have to find about $85 million or more in offsetting spending reductions or new revenues.

"Dan understands this will be hard, but this whole budget will be hard," Wyman said. "But this has got to be transparent. People have to understand what is going on. We call it honest budgeting."

But what about the $1 billion-plus difference that ultimately must be addressed? A 1994 study by the Office of Policy and Management suggested closing a much-smaller GAAP margin at that time by making annual payments into a separate fund for 15 years, using that and the fund's interest earnings to complete the conversion. Wyman declined to speculate whether Malloy would expect state government to begin whittling that $1 billion-plus margin down right away, noting that the legislature's plate already would be filled addressing a huge deficit and the first stage of GAAP conversion. But she did predict Malloy would propose a long-range strategy for finishing the job.

Malloy made the GAAP conversion one of the cornerstones of his platform, vowing to veto any budget that did not begin the changeover. His promise to adopt strict budgetary standards sparked considerable speculation over whether his fellow Democrats, who have controlled both chambers of the legislature since 1997, would be willing to give up their fiscal leeway. Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee, predicted his fellow Democrats would adopt a GAAP conversion "in some form" in 2011.

"We've all heard about the deficit and we all know what the nature of the problem is," he said. "I think it's always good to know where you stand."

But Rep. Craig A. Miner of Litchfield, ranking House Republican on the Appropriations Committee, noted that when outgoing Gov. M. Jodi Rell warned of a potential $46 million gap in federal funding for the winter heating assistance program, legislators opted neither to scale back the program nor appropriate additional funds.

"If that was any indication, it might (not?) be happen right away," he said.

Malloy unveils transition team
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
November 22, 2010

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy unveiled a 22-member transition team Monday that includes officials from state and municipal government, representatives of business, labor and the private, nonprofit community, political consultants and several individuals from a racial or ethnic minority background.

Malloy made the announcement two days after being publicly accused by the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP of lacking diversity within his transition effort--a charge the Malloy team quickly countered was unfounded.

"I've chosen people from public and private life, Republicans and Democrats, and those who have participated in state government before--as well as those who never have," the governor-elect said in a written statement. "I'm confident that the people selected will help me find the best and brightest hires for positions within my administration and make sure we get off to a strong start."

Malloy announced shortly after Election Day that Timothy F. Bannon of Manchester, head of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority and holder of several key posts in former Gov. William A. O'Neill's administration, would be his chief of staff, and that Bannon and Lt. Gov.-elect Nancy Wyman would co-chair the transition effort.

Several of those appointed have strong backgrounds in state government.

Lorraine M. Aronson, who is Bannon's wife, is a former chief financial officer for the University of Connecticut, is a former deputy budget director under Govs. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. and John G. Rowland, and commissioner of the Department of Income Maintenance--the forerunner of the Department of Social Services - under O'Neill.

Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford has served eight years in the legislature and co-chairs the powerful Judiciary Committee.

Former Superior Court Judge Kathryn Emmert of Stamford also is a past president of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers' Association.

Mark Ojakian has served as deputy comptroller since 1995.

A former mayor of Stamford for 14 years, Malloy named three mayors, Pedro Segarra of Hartford, Adam Salina of Berlin and Scott Jackson of Hamden, to the transition.

Among the business and labor leaders Malloy tapped are: Northeast Utilities senior vice president Greg Butler; Juanita James, the recently retired chief marketing and communications officer for Pitney Bowes Inc.; Johnna Torsone, general counsel at Pitney Bowes; longtime state AFL-CIO President John W. Olsen; Ben Cozzi, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 478; and Shawn Wooden, a partner with Day Pitney LLP and formerly an official with the national AFL-CIO's investment office.

Malloy also appointed Joseph McGee of Fairfield, a former state economic development commissioner and currently a vice president for the Business Council of Fairfield County.

Having pledged in the last campaign to protect Connecticut's social service safety net, Malloy named several individuals from the private, nonprofit community to assist with the transition, including, Marilda Gandara, who has held leadership roles with several groups including the Hispanics in Philanthropy Funders Collaborative, which raised over $50 million for Latino-linked nonprofits; Linda Kelly, president of the Hartford Foundation for Giving; Len Miller, co-founder of the Nonprofit Collaborative Alliance; and Sanford Cloud Jr., chairman of the Connecticut Health Foundation.

Malloy also reached into his most recent campaign and his 2006 gubernatorial run for political advice.

Roy Occhiogrosso, a partner with the Global Strategy Consulting Group and senior advisor to the 2010 campaign, was chosen, as was Chris Cooney, Malloy's campaign manager in 2006 and president of The Wilmark Group, a marketing consulting firm.

"These teams reflect the diversity of opinion, experience, political party, and cultural background that make Connecticut the great state it is," Malloy added.

The governor-elect was chastised Saturday by the Connecticut NAACP, which released a list of nine individuals--all of whom are white--that it believed were involved in the transition effort, adding it reflected a "shameful" lack of diversity.

But the Malloy transition quickly responded Saturday that half of the names were incorrect, that the transition team would be diverse, and that it still was a few days away from being announced.

The group Malloy announced today includes eight individuals who are African-American or Hispanic. Segarra, a native of Puerto Rico, is Hartford's first openly gay mayor.

Connecticut NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile could not be reached for comment immediately after the Malloy team was announced on Monday.

Supreme Court justice to head troubled child welfare agency
Mark Pazniokas and Jacqueline Rabe
November 30, 2010

Governor-elect Dan Malloy today turned to Justice Joette Katz of the Connecticut Supreme Court to lead the Department of Children and Families, a troubled agency that has been under court supervision since 1991.

Katz, 57, is giving up a seat on the state's highest court to take over an agency that has frustrated efforts by three gubernatorial administrations to escape the oversight of the U.S. District Court. The choice announced today during a press conference in Hartford was a political blockbuster by a governor-elect who has enjoyed offering surprising choices to populate his new administration.

Katz brings to the job a reputation for a first-rate intellect, but no experience in running a major bureaucracy. Prior to going on the bench, she was the chief of legal services for the Office of the Public Defender.
Malloy said Katz, who also serves as the administrative judge for the appellate courts, has significant management experience in the judicial system, but he made clear he was most interested in bringing a keen mind and an outsider's perspective to a difficult job.

"Quite frankly, I'm hiring a pretty smart person right now," Malloy said.

Katz called her new appointment, which is subject to confirmation by the General Assembly, "my most important challenge."

She said Connecticut should be grateful to the advocates who first filed suit during the administration of Gov. William A. O'Neill to demand improvements in DCF, which has been subject to court oversight since the administration of O'Neill's successor, Lowell P. Weicker Jr.

"The DCF today is not the same DCF that it was," Katz said. "Having said that, however, it is clear to me that it is not the DCF that it can be."

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney refused a request by the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell to end court oversight, the latest reminder of the difficulties of bringing the child-welfare agency up to national standards. In response to a reporter's question, Katz dryly acknowledged she was giving up a "monastic" life on the court for the rough and tumble life of running an agency that often invites the harsh glare of the media.

"You mean, have I seen my psychiatrist this morning?" she said, smiling.

She was appointed to the Superior Court by O'Neill in 1989 and became the state's youngest justice at age 39 in 1992 with her appointment by Weicker to the Supreme Court. She was reappointed by Gov. John G. Rowland and Rell. Once justices are confirmed for an initial eight-term term, by tradition they are reappointed every eight years until retirement, an effective lifetime appointment. Katz could think of no one who had left the court for another career.

Jamey Bell, the executive director of Connecticut Voices for Children, called Katz a “brilliant choice” to lead DCF.

“It takes the precisely right person, and I think this choice is the best shot we’ve had in a long time to bring this agency up to where it should be,” said Bell, who rushed to the announcement from another meeting at the Legislative Office Building. Among the agency's failings, according to a court-appointed monitor, were inadequate health and dental services, as well as delays in moving children from state institutions to foster care.

“We don’t have a scarcity of foster parents. We have enough if we could just retain them,” Bell said.

Bell and Malloy have also said the state’s inability to comply with the consent decree is not from a lack of money – the agency has a $865 million budget for the current year.

“Money is not the barrier, retaining foster parents is,” Bell said.

Martha Stone, one of the lawyers behind the class-action lawsuit that led to federal oversight, said she knows from her professional dealings with Katz that "she is not going to tolerate bureaucracy hindering progress. ... She has absolutely got her eyes on the prize. She wouldn't have left a job with as much prestige unless she is dedicated."

Stone also said Malloy's selection is "unique" from any other previous DCF commissioner.

"It's definitely a different kind of appointment from what we've seen because she doesn't have a child welfare background. That will make it that much more important who her team is made up of," Stone said. "I think she is going to get the job done."

Betty Gallo, who was a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union when it helped bring the DCF suit, complimented Malloy for "a best-and-brightest" approach to his initial appointments.

"This augers well," Gallo said.

Katz is an honors graduate of Brandeis University and the University of Connecticut Law School. She was a public defender from 1978 to 1983 and the chief of legal services for the Office of the Public Defender from 1983 until she became a judge in 1989.

Katz was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is married to Dr. Philip Rubin, the chief executive officer of Hoskins Laboratories in New Haven. She is the mother of two adult children, Jason Rubin and Samantha Katz.

Martha Stone

DCF commissioner appointment a 'high priority'
Jacqueline Rabe, CT MIRROR
November 22, 2010

For two decades, the state has failed to meet the mandates of a federal court order to improve the way it cares for children in its custody, making Gov.-elect Dan Malloy's choice to head the Department of Children and Families a closely-watched decision.

"He has to get this right," said Martha Stone, one of the lawyers behind the class-action lawsuit that led to federal oversight of DCF. "Enough is enough. Let's finally fix this."

"This appointment is a very high-priority,' said Malloy's chief of staff and transition team leader, Timothy F. Bannon. "Now that the focus is no longer on filling the [budget director] job, we have shifted to this."

The latest quarterly report by the court-appointed monitor overseeing DCF cites both the state's continued lack of foster homes and the lack of medical and mental health treatment for too many of the 4,000 children in DCF care. Overall, DCF adequately met the needs of children in just over half the cases reviewed, the report said

"You can't change things overnight, but it shouldn't take 20 years to fix things... Many children still aren't getting the care they deserve," said Stone, who still represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Among the problems resulting from the lack of foster homes, she said, are the 300 children living in out-of-state facilities at any given time and infants living in large group settings.

"When Malloy chooses who will run DCF, hopefully they will be able to make progress pretty quickly," she said.

Malloy has said the problems at DCF stem from the lack of leadership and the state's inability to recruit and retain enough foster care parents.

"We just about need to change everything we've been doing... We have to change directions," Malloy said during the campaign after a federal judge rejected Gov. M. Jodi Rell's request to relieve DCF of federal supervision. Malloy said he agreed with U.S. District Court Judge Christopher F. Droney's ruling.

Three Connecticut governors have failed so far to reform the state's child welfare agency enough to end federal supervision. Now it's up to Malloy and whomever he appoints as the next commissioner to reshape the $865 million bureaucracy.

Bannon said they have begun reaching out to potential candidates to replace current-commissioner Susan Hamilton, who announced the day before Malloy was elected she would resign at the beginning of the year.

"We have been focused on top-tier appointees who just haven't come out of the process in the past. They have been unsuccessful," Bannon said. "We are going to solve the problems at the root of that consent decree."

Stone said the constant turnover of leadership in DCF has been part of the problem.

"It's a revolving door," Stone said, noting that no DCF commissioner has lasted more than 3 years since federal oversight began. "We need real leadership."

The state's child advocate, Jeanne Milstein, is confident Malloy understands what needs to be done.

"He clearly understand the need for a new leadership team at DCF," she said.

Why do you think?
Bridgeport decides to keep controversial Election Day ballots away from state audit
CT POST
Ken Dixon, Staff Writer
Published: 12:51 a.m., Wednesday, November 17, 2010

HARTFORD -- Bridgeport officials have rejected a plan to audit the voting in 12 city precincts that ran out of ballots and were kept open an extra two hours, stunning the state's top election official who pushed for a review to clear up lingering Election Day questions.

Arthur C. Laske III, deputy city attorney, said Tuesday night that Bridgeport's two voter registrars never agreed to such an audit and that Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz does not have the authority to order one. Laske, speaking before Tuesday night's public hearing on the Election Day confusion, said the local registrars are unprepared to undertake another recount and there is no budget for such an endeavor.

"What's the legal authority, who agreed to do it and who's going to pay for it?" Laske asked during an interview in the City Hall Annex. "They (state officials) haven't answered any of those questions."

Laske said that "preliminary" discussions with a member of Bysiewicz's staff occurred, but her staff never followed up, so there was never an agreement on Bridgeport becoming part of the statewide post-election audit.

City Attorney Mark Anastasi called Bysiewicz's office Monday afternoon to announce the city would not participate. In a joint statement Tuesday night, Laske and Anastasi reiterated their belief that the city and Bysiewicz agree there is no legal authority requiring -- or even allowing -- the state or the city to conduct such a recount that does not involve the random audit of machine-cast ballots.

Bysiewicz disagreed with that account.

"Bridgeport did not want to conduct an audit," Bysiewicz said in a Tuesday phone interview. "This is contrary to what we agreed upon with the voter registrars last week." Bysiewicz initially had attempted to order Bridgeport officials to conduct the audit, a posture she had to abandon in favor of persuasion when it was found that she lacked the authority to compel such a review.

On Monday, Bysiewicz said that Santa Ayala and Joseph Borges, Bridgeport's Democratic and Republican registrar, respectively, said they were willing to have a review of the cardboard ballots -- essentially a recount -- that were cast on the state's optical scan machines as well as the lighter, photocopied ballots used when the cardboard ballots ran out.

Bysiewicz Tuesday said she was surprised by the development in the scandal that embarrassed the city on Nov. 2, when the dozen precincts ran out of the election ballots, resulting in a three-day delay in deciding the close gubernatorial race between Democrat Dannel Malloy and Republican Tom Foley.

"We understand that we don't have the statutory authority to order an audit, but given the situation, we thought that Bridgeport would be eager to participate in a hand count, which would have gone a long way toward reassuring voter confidence," Bysiewicz said.

The much lighter photocopies do not scan and they had to be counted by hand. It delayed the final tallies until Friday, Nov. 5. Foley finally conceded on Monday Nov. 8, losing by 6,707 statewide. In Bridgeport, Malloy had 17,973 votes to Foley's 4,099.

Anastasi's call to Bysiewicz's office Monday occurred hours after a morning news conference to randomly select 74 precincts -- 10 percent of all statewide polling places -- for routine audits of the use of optical scanners.

Barnes warms to the challenge of Connecticut's fiscal crisis
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
December 3, 2010

Those close to Gov.-elect Dan Malloy say they never doubted who'd be asked to tackle a massive budget deficit, end billions of dollars worth of fiscal gimmicks and help revitalize a stagnant job market. Connecticut's fiscal Rubik's Cube was destined for Ben Barnes' hands from the moment the election was over.

"Ben is one of those rare talents," Tom Cassone, former Stamford city corporation counsel, said. "He develops his thoughts, expresses them so well, and carries them out. He even speaks in fully developed paragraphs.

"Anybody who knew Stamford city government knew Ben Barnes would be OPM (Office of Policy and Management) secretary."

The appointment of Barnes, the 42-year-old chief operating officer for the Bridgeport public schools and an outsider to Capitol circles, stunned many political observers earlier this month. He will head the budget office for an administration facing the worst fiscal challenges in two decades. Raised in St. Petersburg, Fla., Barnes has spent most of the past two decades connected to municipal government, first as a policy expert for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, then by holding three posts under Malloy in Stamford, and lastly with his current job in Bridgeport.

But while no one expects Barnes to reverse overnight fiscal problems that have developed over years--and in some cases decades--his supporters say the new budget chief has insight to find solutions others would miss.

"Ben always wants to get to the heart of the matter," Malloy said. "He's a very bright guy, very inquisitive and he's willing to peel the onion."

"Ben is unflappable," said Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, another veteran of Malloy's municipal administration. "He has the unique capability of mastering any aspect of government in short order."

McDonald, who also had served as city corporation counsel, first met Barnes 10 years ago when he applied to lead the city's efforts to promote affordable housing. Over the next decade, Barnes also would oversee Stamford budget and financial operations, as well as its public works and engineering departments.

But it was while pursuing his master's degree in urban planning at New York University in the late 1980s that Barnes first gained his interest in economics and government finances.

"I learned that if you wanted to build stuff and make cities better places, the single biggest impediment was figuring out how to pay for it," he said during an interview Thursday.

For example, when a city program to help poor families purchase affordable housing bogged down about five years ago, Barnes moved "decisively" to help hundreds of families, according to Joan Carty, president of The Housing Development Fund, Inc., the Stamford-based nonprofit working with the city on that project. Delays in receiving federal funds kept some eligible families from closing on homes. But Barnes arranged a broader funding pool that temporarily leveraged city funds to resolve the problem without added costs, she said.

"It was fixed virtually overnight because Ben got the problem and he knew how to solve it," Carty said. "It became immediately apparent to me he could home in on whatever challenge you had and then take it to the next step."

Barnes, who lives in Stratford with his wife, Tania, and their three sons, conceded that when it comes to politics, he's comfortable with a low-key approach. His friends say that might be an understatement.

"Ben would gladly sit at the back of the room," Cassone said. "He's not a big personality, like Dan is, but he's just as bright."

"Ben is good with words and he's good with numbers," CCM Executive Director James Finley said. "That's a rare combination."

Barnes' father, Andrew, a who retired two years ago as chief executive officer for the St. Petersburg Times, spent nearly four decades in journalism as a reporter, editor and newspaper executive, including stints at the Washington Post and Providence Journal-Bulletin. Despite taking on one of the most sensitive positions in state government, Barnes said he doesn't anticipate an adversarial role with the news media, even though there will be times he can't comment on issues under development.

"I really believe in the public's right to know," he said. "I'm a big supporter of the news media, and a big consumer. Hey, they paid for me to go to college."

McDonald, who once described Barnes as a "little geeky," said his former colleague is shockingly bright with a dry sense of humor. He doesn't take himself too seriously, but he takes his job very seriously."

And though no one said they expect Barnes to find any fiscal silver bullets to solve the budget crisis, they predicted his recommendations will speak for themselves. Fiscal gimmicks, such as paying tomorrow for expenses incurred today or using one-time funds to support ongoing programs, have been a prerogative of legislatures throughout history, Barnes said. But if Connecticut is to begin moving in another direction, it means reminding officials of the price tag that comes with those short-cuts.

"If you build a cliff for yourself, you have to remember that the day of reckoning does come," he said, referring to a nearly $3.7 billion built-in deficit in the first budget Malloy must draft, a shortfall equal to nearly half of all annual revenue from the state income tax.

Barnes' tenure in Stamford also taught him the value of taking "well-considered risks to make government work better"--a philosophy Malloy uses to empower his staff. "If my people can convince me of the rightness of their ideas, they can probably convince anybody," Malloy said.

"I've been very frustrated because I don't think the state of Connecticut has lived up to the potential that it has," Barnes said. "I think there is a lot of room for more creativity and some ideas to make things work better."

A small strategic investment can make a huge difference, he said, recalling how assigning one city employee in Stamford a few years ago to expand health care outreach resulted in thousands of uninsured, needy residents being enrolled the state's HUSKY program.

"It was a tremendous benefit to the community and it took just one person," he said.

Barnes and Malloy haven't tipped their hands regarding the fiscal solutions they'll present to the legislature in just over two months, but the new budget director said he expects his boss will be fully engaged. Barnes said his relationship with Malloy is built both on professionalism and friendship--along with a mutual fascination with how government works.

"Dan does his homework," Barnes said. "He remembers everything you tell him with astonishing clarity. I like to talk about public policy myself, but he will keep needling you to keep telling him details about things. ... He is very interested in how everything works."

The two met in 1990s when Barnes was working on education policy for CCM, and the new Stamford mayor had been chosen the coalition's president.

Barnes had become fascinated with public funding strategies for education and Malloy was grappling with a system that penalized Stamford for its wealthy tax base while failing to recognize the city's large pockets of poverty.

"He was a very exciting new mayor of a big city and we raised a number of ideas," Barnes said.

Barnes returned briefly to Florida for less than a year in 2000, but ultimately decided he wanted to return to Connecticut. A resume was sent unsolicited to the Malloy administration, and a few interviews later, Barnes would begin a 10-year tenure in city government.

"Ben and I have always worked well," Malloy said, adding that those who suspected Barnes always had been part of his plans for state government are correct. "He was always going to play a role in my administration."

Malloy names Capitol outsider as OPM chief
Mark Pazniokas and Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
November 17, 2010

Governor-elect Dan Malloy today named one of the top aides from his mayoral administration in Stamford for the pivotal role of overseeing the budget and contract negotiations with state employees.

Malloy introducing Ben Barnes

Gov.-elect Dan Malloy introduces his OPM choice, Ben Barnes, as Lt. Gov-elect Nancy Wyman looks on (Mark Pazniokas)

Ben Barnes, 42, who held three top jobs in Stamford, brings an outsider's perspective to the post of secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, a job that in recent administrations often has gone to former legislators.

Along with the chief of staff, the OPM secretary tends to have one of the closest and most important relationships with a governor, especially one who will be confronted with a deficit of as much as $3.7 billion.

"He knows how I work," Malloy said with a smile, talking about some of Barnes' qualifications. "I think ultimately in my choosing an individual to move forward with, I had to feel confident the person fully understood what it is I am trying to accomplish."

He introduced Barnes at a press conference at the Legislative Office Building by joking that his latest appointee should not expect a vacation before August.

Barnes was a government finance expert at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities when Malloy, then mayor of Stamford, hired him away nearly 10 years ago. Of the three posts that reported directly to Malloy, Barnes held three of them.

"I am terribly honored by the selection and the trust Dan has shown in me," Barnes said. "I am looking forward to facing some rather enormous challenges the state of Connecticut faces."

Barnes, who lives in Stratford with his wife and three sons, is now a facilities manager for the Bridgeport schools. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and has a graduate degree in urban planning from New York University.

Friends describe Barnes as smart, even-tempered and detail-oriented, all traits that will be tested in the first months of the new administration. Andrew J. McDonald, a state senator from Stamford who was Malloy's legal counsel, says Barnes can be a "little geeky," with a wickedly dry sense of humor.

"There is no doubt that Ben understands the rhythms of Dan Malloy's style of leadership," McDonald said.

When asked if he felt a special affinity for cities and towns, which rely heavily on state aid to balance their own budgets, Barnes nodded and deadpanned, "I wouldn't live anywhere but in a city or town."

Advisers to the governor-elect say Barnes enjoyed Malloy's complete confidence while overseeing, at different times, such diverse areas as finance, administration and operations.

"Dan Malloy has offered me some extraordinary opportunities in my career, and in accepting them and working with him I have prospered, and I hope that communities we served together have prospered," Barnes said.

Barnes will get his first briefing at OPM on Wednesday.

He said there is no "silver bullet" that will erase the state's fiscal challenges.

Malloy's decision to reach outside of legislative circles for a strategist to solve what effectively equals to largest budget deficit in Connecticut history was applauded by fellow Democrats.

"Sure, a former legislator can come in to the job knowing more people," state Auditor Kevin P. Johnston, himself a former legislator, said after the announcement. "But somebody can be colored by having been here so long. We need to have someone who is open to new ideas."

"They should have the best people around, be they from the legislature, municipal government, the business world or academia," said Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee, adding that a legislative background is not essential for a budget office to have a good relationship with the General Assembly.

"Ben is going to be part of a larger team and there probably will be others who can provide that background," Geragosian added.

Sen. Donald DeFronzo, D-New Britain, the subject of some speculation that he might have been under consideration for the job, said Barnes can be brought up to speed on the budget.

"The number one consideration is whether the governor is confident" in the OPM secretary, DeFronzo said. With Barnes, he added, "There is a confidence level that doesn't have to be created. This, by all accounts, is a relationship that is intense and well-established."

Malloy's running mate, Nancy Wyman, said the new administration wanted someone who wouldn't be dissuaded by politics from examining any solution to the state's fiscal problems. The new team faces a built-in shortfall for the fiscal year that begins July 1 that ranges from $3.4 billion to $3.7 billion, based on estimates from the Rell administration and nonpartisan legislative analysts.

But both projections represent nearly one-fifth of current spending, and more than half of all annual receipts from the state income tax.

"With what we're facing, a fresh look is what we need," said Wyman, a former legislator who has been state comptroller since 1995. "Maybe an idea didn't work out before, but it could now. Ben has the experience and he understands how budgets work."

Johnston added that legislative experience, though valuable in many instances, isn't always an advantage.

"People can come out of the legislature with a lot of baggage," he said. "You can have a former legislator that nobody cared for."

A transition begins, for a governor-elect and Connecticut
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
November 8, 2010

In his first press conference as governor-elect, Democrat Dan Malloy today praised his opponent, Republican Tom Foley, as "a classy guy," then quickly turned to Connecticut's first full-fledged gubernatorial transition in 16 years.

"Now it's time for Nancy and I to get to work," said Malloy, standing with his running mate, Nancy Wyman. "I want the people of Connecticut to know that we are committed to putting Connecticut back to work and getting Connecticut's fiscal house in order."

Malloy, 55, the former mayor of Stamford, will be inaugurated Jan. 5 as the state's 88th governor, assuming responsibility for a deficit of $3.3 billion and control of a government with the nation's second-worst record of creating jobs over two decades.

Less than two hours after Foley conceded defeat and announced he would not challenge the election results, Malloy and Wyman stepped to a lectern in the ornate Old Judiciary Room of the State Capitol for the first time as the undisputed governor-elect and lieutenant governor-elect.

Malloy, who unsuccessfully sought the office in 2006, said he was fully cognizant of the weight of expectations and challenges that soon will fall on his shoulders.

"The good news is the state of Connecticut is filled with good, honest, hardworking people who have great strength and resiliency, and this will be an administration that will match the people's strength and resiliency," he said.

He pledged to the public and press to be as open and transparent as possible as he takes office as the first Democratic governor since William A. O'Neill left office in January 1991, giving way to the independent, Lowell P. Weicker Jr.

"We will treat you with honesty, with forthrightness and look to have a strong working relationship," Malloy said.

The first real trappings of power will be visible Tuesday, when Malloy is expected to come under protection of a State Police security detail that will be his constant companion for the next four years.

Malloy, who is married and has three sons, the youngest of whom is a college freshman, intends to live in the Executive Residence on Prospect Avenue in Hartford's fashionable West End, near Elizabeth Park.

Connecticut has not seen the governor's office pass from one party to another since January 1995, when Weicker was succeeded by Republican John G. Rowland. Rowland resigned under threat of impeachment for corruption in July 2004 and was replaced by his lieutenant, M. Jodi Rell.

Malloy used the Rell administration as a constant foil on the campaign trail, calling the governor a disengaged chief executive. Foley was only marginally friendlier to Rell, who remains personally popular.

Rell congratulated Malloy today.

"I want to offer my personal congratulations to Governor-elect Malloy. I also extend my appreciation to both candidates for the patience they have shown during the extraordinary and often trying days that have followed the election," she said.

She offered her cooperation, even though she issued a memo last week barring her commissioners from direct contact with Malloy. Today, Malloy said he assumed the memo was a reflection only of the uncertainty about who had won.

"I take the governor at her word," Malloy said. "She wants to have a robust dialogue, concerning the transference of authority, and I expect that will take place."

Tim Bannon, Malloy's chief of staff and the co-director of the transition team with Wyman, already has met with Rell's chief of staff, Lisa Moody.

Bannon, who served in the O'Neill administration when Moody was a legislative staffer, called Moody an old friend. He said he anticipates a smooth transition.

So far, the transition team has no work space, other than Bannon's kitchen. Even before the election, Bannon was tasked with the responsibility of completing a check list for the new governor.

Malloy will take office with less than 50 percent of the vote, as did Weicker in 1991 and Rowland in 1995. He dismissed a question about a lack of a mandate.

"I have 100 percent of the responsibility," he said. "My mandate is to do the best I can with my running mate."

His first question was an easy one: Why did he stop wearing the green neckties he wore every day since May 1? They had become a good luck charm for Malloy, the seventh son of an Irish-Catholic couple.

Today, he wore a maroon tie.

His answer: "Because I won."

Ballots previously stored in City Hall Annex building; LWV counts at McLevy Hall (l). Jasper McLevy, former Mayor of Bridgeport on snow removal: "God put it there, let Him take it away".

Bridgeport vote recount shows widespread miscalculations, cascading errors
CT POST
Tim Loh, Staff Writer
Published: 01:07 a.m., Sunday, December 12, 2010

BRIDGEPORT -- If you cast a photocopied ballot in last month's gubernatorial election in Bridgeport, there's a 1 in 4 chance your vote was miscounted.

A recount of the Bridgeport governor's vote from the chaotic Nov. 2 election shows that about 1,500 of the nearly 6,000 photocopied ballots used when polls ran out of regular ballots were incorrectly counted, never counted at all or misrepresented on the city's final returns. The photocopied ballots were a part of the overall 24,000 cast in the governor's race.

In three precincts, the photocopied ballots weren't even included in the city's final report.

The net effect was that Democrat Dannel Malloy was shortchanged by 761 votes; Republican Tom Foley by 174; and Independent Tom Marsh by 19.

The errors affected the candidates in roughly the same proportion as Bridgeport's reported results, which suggests there was no fraud afoot. The missing votes would have increased Malloy's margin of victory by nearly 600 votes above the official statewide margin of 6,404. Thus, the final result of the gubernatorial race would not have been swayed.

But the scope of the mishandled ballots raises a troublesome prospect: Had Foley earned about 9,000 more votes in the rest of the state, Bridgeport's botched returns might have prevented a statewide official recanvass for races closer than 2,000 votes.

The recount illustrates the profound consequence of the city's failure to order enough ballots, which set off the chain of cascading errors that grew into Connecticut's biggest Election Day meltdown since it switched to optical-scan voting machines four years ago. The recount also points to a lack of training and leadership in the city's election offices and to issues of oversight the state Legislature may soon be addressing.

"What if the election was a little closer and our result brought the race into the recount territory?" asked Luther Weeks, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition, which conducted the recount. "But now, it's too late by state statute to recanvass, so you'd probably have to go to court."

The Connecticut Post sponsored the recount in an effort to clear up confusion surrounding the Nov. 2 election in Bridgeport. The newspaper obtained access to the ballots under the Freedom of Information law. The troubles grew out of the two registrars of voters' decision to order only 21,100 ballots for the city's roughly 68,000 registered voters. City officials agreed to the recount and cooperated fully on the project.

It has no legal impact on the outcome of the election.

Many voting districts on Nov. 2 ran out of ballots by early afternoon, creating long lines for people hoping to vote and forcing city officials to send waves of photocopied ballots to every district. The photocopied ballots, which can't be read by the scanning machines, had to be hand counted by polling station workers after the voting closed. The problems delayed the city's reporting of its results to Hartford until Nov. 5, as head moderators holed up in McLevy Hall, working around the clock through the labyrinth of numbers.

HOW BAD WAS THIS?

The margin of error found in Bridgeport's results is hard to put in context because there are few comparisons.

For one thing, most areas of the country that use optical-scan machines only started doing so recently, so there are few recounts like this one. Most have been limited to the machine-read totals, such as Connecticut's post-election audits of 10 percent of the state's voting districts. And when hand-counted tallies are included, they generally account for such a small portion of the votes as to be statistically negligible.

Bridgeport was different. Hand-counted ballots represented 1 in 4 votes cast. And the circumstances in which they were counted -- by poll workers following a 15- to 17-hour work day, between midnight and Wednesday morning's sunrise -- were far from conducive to accuracy. What's more, election experts assert, the inclusion of hand counting immediately increases the prospect for error.

"If it weren't so late, and people hadn't been working all day, and you didn't have this confusion with the paper ballots, there would likely still be some mistakes," said Lawrence Norden, senior counsel of the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. "But a 4 to 6 percent error rate is not acceptable. It may happen sometimes, and it's not the end of the world in a situation like this, where it's not impacting an election outcome, but I think that's clearly too high a number. And Bridgeport and the state should be looking to bring that down significantly in future elections."

To be fair, Bridgeport's margin of error pales when compared with the 17 percent margin of error that the New York Board of Elections discovered in its own recanvass of last month's election. That error stemmed from the city not reporting nearly 200,000 votes on Election Day.

But that discrepancy, which included only machine-read votes, was unearthed by the election board before the vote was certified. This was not the case for Bridgeport, which failed in its own opportunity to identify some of the discrepancies before the election was certified.

Some good news for Bridgeport: The recount found there were about 50 fewer votes recorded overall than the total number of voters whose names were checked off precinct lists. In other words, there is not the remotest indication of any ballot-box stuffing.

WHO MESSED UP WHERE?

The recount found mistakes at several steps -- in the hand counting of ballots at almost every polling station, in the delivery of the hand counts to the city's head moderators who were compiling results in the registrars' office, and in the head moderator's transposition of the districts' results into the final report that was sent to Hartford.

For example, the moderator of the City Hall voting district, who counted and tallied roughly 110 ballots by hand after the polls closed, mistakenly sealed up those results with the photocopied ballots in a bag separate from the machine-read ballots. The moderator returned both bags of ballots, but only provided the head moderators with the machine-read tally sheet. The head moderators never knew there had been a hand count at the polling district.

That misplaced tally sheet only resurfaced during the Connecticut Post's recount -- and only after several hours of head-scratching when it was discovered that the district's machine-read numbers clearly didn't match up with the district's voter check-in list. The hand-counted votes would have given Malloy 86 more votes and Foley 12 more votes. These numbers represented two out of every five votes cast at the City Hall district.

Nor was that the only polling station where this mistake seems to have occurred. Bridge Academy never reported its hand-counted ballots -- there appear to have been 93 of them -- and neither did one of the two Bassick High School districts.

Also, most of the districts that hand counted ballots -- 20 of them --seem to have made minor counting mistakes compared with the recounted figures. But in a handful of cases, the coalition found, the city's counters appear to have erred with whole stacks of the ballots, creating discrepancies that, on a few occasions, exceeded 100 votes.

For instance, the Park City Magnet district seems to have missed roughly 130 hand-counted votes for Malloy. And the Central High School 129-2 district appears to have given Foley 14 extra votes and shortchanged Malloy by 87, the coalition reported.

At seven of the voting districts, it appeared that moderators incorrectly handled the so-called "unknown votes" for Malloy, which occurred when a voter filled in two bubbles for the candidate -- once in the Democratic row, once in the row for the Working Family Party, which also endorsed him. These votes should have gone to the Working Family tally, but sometimes were excluded from the results entirely. In the Read Middle School district, for example, it appeared that the moderator excluded the 25 of these votes from the tallies.

In a half-dozen cases, the recount found discrepancies between the results that polling stations reported to the head moderators and what the head moderators reported to Hartford. These discrepancies occurred while the head moderators were transposing the districts' results. One example was the Longfellow School 129-03 district, whose moderator reported 39 fewer votes for Malloy than what the head moderators reported to Hartford.

That latter problem is troubling because Bridgeport's town clerk's office was supposed to have identified at least some of those errors before it was too late. By state law, the town clerk is required to compare the district moderators' returns with the numbers the head moderator sent to Hartford. The town clerk is given three weeks to find any discrepancy, sort out the problem, and report amended figures before the secretary of the state certifies the election.

This did not take place. For example, the moderator for the Roosevelt School district reported 117 votes for Foley and 35 for Malloy in the Working Family Party. The head moderators, however, reported to Hartford 110 votes for Foley and 18 Working Family votes for Malloy. (This particular district had no hand-counted votes.) Had the town clerk's office identified this discrepancy -- and some of the handful of others, which in one case provided for a 71-vote swing -- then the city could have eliminated at least some of the miscounts before it was too late.

"There were counting errors," concluded Luther Weeks, "yet there were also accounting errors in transcribing, adding and including district totals to provide official results to the state. These accounting errors caused the greatest differences in the reported results."

OFFICIALS RESPOND

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch declined to offer an opinion as to how to prevent such a mess from recurring or who should be held responsible, citing the ongoing work of the five-member commission he charged with investigating the matter.

"The public will was confirmed," he said, referring to the recount. "It was in our self-interest to show the public that the outcome was accurate, that the right candidate won -- the one who had the most votes. That's the most important thing."

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz repeated calls for the state Legislature to mandate that municipalities order ballots for every registered voter.

"I have great difficulty trying to require that registrars do things that aren't in the law," she said. "That's why it has to be a law. If that were the law on Nov. 2, the registrars would be subject to complaint and fine for violating a statute."

Santa Ayala, Bridgeport's Democratic registrar of voters, said that more training for moderators and poll workers may be needed. "They have been trained, but it's like learning a foreign language," she said. "If you don't practice it, it's not going to be as fresh in your mind -- even though we go over everything in a general formal way."

Moderators, she said, may be trained for hand counts, but not for the scope of what Bridgeport underwent. And seizing Bysiewicz's claim that hand counting might start the following morning, she said: "Unfortunately, everyone is saying that now, but no one was saying that that night when we were being rushed from every which side."

Were she to repeat the experience, she said, she would have sent the poll workers home before the recount: "And I'll never allow them to work with cameras in their faces and microphones on top of the table where they're trying to do a tally," she said. "They were working under super stressful circumstances and I'll never allow that to happen."

Both registrars have acknowledged the most serious blunder was their decision not to order enough optical-scan ballots, a decision that had a snowball effect in poll after poll Election Day.

Neither Malloy nor Tom Foley was shocked by the 1,500 errors found in the recount of Bridgeport ballots. Both indicated that the state should do whatever it can to make sure the shortage of ballots does not happen again.

"There were persistent problems in Bridgeport and not just the last time around with this election, but voting in the past," said Foley. "They might want to bring in someone at the state level to help them. When you have problems it calls into question the results and the integrity of the election process and that shouldn't really be happening in Connecticut."

For two days after the election, Foley insisted he had won a narrow margin out of the 1.1 million-plus votes cast. Until Bridgeport's numbers came in, Foley did indeed hold a slim lead. The outcome had been earlier muddled when The Associated Press reported incomplete numbers out of New Haven that failed to show all of Malloy's vote.

Roy Occhiogrosso, a top adviser for Malloy, who takes office Jan. 5, agreed with Foley that mistakes were made in Bridgeport, but he said they were inadvertent and that officials acted in good faith to sort out the mess. Occhiogrosso said that Malloy would support rectifying any official miscues that resulted in the mistakes.

Just who are the people counting the ballots?
CT POST
Tim Loh, Staff Writer
Published: 05:53 p.m., Saturday, December 4, 2010

BRIDGEPORT -- Bill Bunnell is leaning over a blank worksheet, which is lined with many boxes and many rows. With a freshly sharpened pencil in hand, he evokes the image of a fifth-grader just before the big test.

Only Bunnell is 80. And for possibly the thousandth time of the day, he's waiting to hear the word "Democrat." That means he'll draw a hash mark on line number two. But if he hears "Republican," he'll make the scratch on line number one. There are two other options, which correspond with lines three and four.

Seated across the table, Ruth Karl grabs the first sheet of paper and states "Democrat." She slides it left and reaches for the second. She continues the process for several minutes. By the time she stops, her words have prompted Bunnell into action 49 times. Content with this, he lifts his head to find his supervisor frowning.

"I'd be satisfied if your box here had one more mark," David Anderson says.

An extra mark would, in fact, square Bunnell's worksheet with that of Cheryl Dunson, who's seated beside him. Then the team would move onto their final stack of ballots for Thursday, and soon be headed home. But what if Dunson's sheet is wrong and Bunnell's sheet is right? He seems to mull the thought as he rotates his pencil. He eyes the eraser; he eyes the graphite tip. Once more, Karl breaks the silence.

"We have to do it again, don't we?" she says.

Dunson whispers: "Yup."

For the dozens of volunteers inside City Hall Annex last week, pouring through Bridgeport's ballots offered a rare glimpse under Election Day's usually tightly clamped hood. The innards they encountered were particularly complex given Bridgeport's bungled election last month, when a shortage of ballots forced city officials to send photocopies to every polling station; when poll workers toiled nearly to Wednesday's sunup hand-counting the photocopied ballots; when head moderators needed three days to untangle all the tallies and file official results with Hartford.

When the city agreed to allow the Connecticut Post and a group of good government groups to recount the gubernatorial race just before Thanksgiving, the volunteer counters started signing up. They would be arriving from every corner of the state -- from Greenwich to Glastonbury, Deep River to Litchfield. (Bridgeport residents were barred from taking part)

So who are these volunteers? Most of them are members of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition, which joins the League of Women Voters in Connecticut, Common Cause, CTVoters.org and Connecticut Citizen Action Group. Many of them have spent the past three years observing the state's post-election audits, which only scrutinize ballots that are read by optical scanning machines. Here was their chance to do the recounting themselves.

During breaks, the counters often spoke of performing a civic duty: "If your vote doesn't count," said David Anderson, "then does anything else matter?" At times though, they were so swamped in voting sheets that the civic duty seemed not so much about mastering the election medium as fighting through the election tedium.

Anderson, who's 52, runs an epoxy manufacturing firm in Manchester. His business partner, also his brother, was "somewhat sympathetic" to his decision to skip work on Thursday and help with the recount. They would have to postpone a meeting until Friday so he could do so. "He said, `What's the big deal?'" Anderson told his counting team, of which Bunnell, Dunson and Karl were members. "And I said, `Well it matters to me!'"

He reshuffles the stack of 50 ballots and passes them to Karl, who lives in Windham. When she's finished reading each vote aloud, everyone cranes their necks to see if Bunnell's and Dunson's worksheets are equal. They are. This affords Karl to lean back and yawn. Anderson pulls a five-hour energy drink from his breast pocket. "Want some of this?" he asks. "I use it every day at work about 2 o'clock. Gets me through the afternoon."

Counting ballots is only one of the volunteers' tasks.

Others, like Laura Axthelm of Westport, were busy reading through voter check-in lists -- those thick stacks of stapled pages that list residents by street and alphabetically -- to make sure that everyone who checked in as having voted had their ballots counted in the results. It was a job that seemed to fit with Axthelm, a member of the League of Women Voters.

"I have two buttons at home," she said Friday afternoon. "The first one says `I care enough to vote.' The second one says `My vote counts.'" Pounding her fist on the table, she added: "That's what we're doing here. Making sure everyone's vote counts."

Her partner was Tom Flynn, a former deputy registrar of voters in Fairfield. He watches as Axthelm bounces her pencil eraser down Page One, landing for a moment on each voter who's checked off as having voted at Hallen School.

"Thirty in-person voters," Axthelm stated. "And zero absentee."

Flynn put those numbers in box number one on two different sheets. Then the pair went through 16 more pages of names, finding 650 in-person voters and 13 absentees. This was nearly a perfect match with what the moderator reported after the polls closed. Opening the next packet, this one for Black Rock School, Axthelm asked, "Should we mix it up and do the absentee ballots first?"

"Oh," Flynn answered. "That'll be exciting."

Bill Bunnell couldn't work Friday. He'd worked Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, but on Friday he had to "catch up with the doctor appointments." So when his team counted through the last stack of 50 ballots Thursday afternoon, he strapped his jacket on and consulted the train schedule that had been poking out of his back pocket.

"It's less than an hour commute in the morning," he said, "if I get the connection right." The connection is in New Haven, where he switches to the Shore Line East train tracks and heads home to Madison.

This offers him several advantages. First, he can read through the report he brought one morning, subtitled "Eva Waskell and the Election Integrity Movement." Second, he doesn't have to deal with parking in Bridgeport.

"And it's cheap as hell," he adds, heading for the door. "Round trip is only $14." Then he stops.

"I mean it's $7; as a senior."

End in sight as Bridgeport recount breaks for the weekend
Tim Loh, CT POST Staff Writer
Published: 09:44 p.m., Friday, December 3, 2010

BRIDGEPORT -- On the sixth and seventh days, the recount workers will finally rest.

But they'll return to City Hall Annex on the eighth, Monday morning, and pick up where they left off -- tallying ballots from this city's 25th and final voting district, comparing their numbers with the ones sent to Hartford last month and allowing city officials one final crack at finding errors in the recount process.

Then they'll be done.

"But first we're going to go over it all with the city and see if there's anything they're not satisfied with," explained Luther Weeks, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition, which is co-sponsoring the recount of Bridgeport's gubernatorial race along with the Connecticut Post. "We'll see if there's anything the registrars of voters want us to review, or to review themselves."

The recount was undertaken after a shortage of ballots on Nov. 2 left Bridgeport election workers having to hand-count photocopied ballots and delayed reporting the city's final tally until Nov. 5. That delay tossed the governor's race between Democrat Dannel Malloy and Republican Tom Foley into limbo, until Bridgeport's numbers gave Malloy the victory.

The recount does not affect the outcome of the race, but city officials and good government groups have supported the effort, saying it will bring some clarity to Bridgeport's muddled results. Weeks noted that recount volunteers -- although they're given more time and rest than their Election Day counterparts -- also can make mistakes. Even though the recount system is steeped in double- and triple-checking, some mistakes in counting or transferring numbers could sneak through onto Weeks' master tally sheet.

And if that happens, which is one possible explanation if certain recount numbers disagree with the city's totals, then the registrars ought to have the chance to show the problem isn't theirs, Weeks said. That's how Friday ended, maybe.

While finalizing the recount numbers from one district, Weeks compared his team's numbers for photocopied ballots with the city's figures. He showed the comparison to Santa Ayala, Bridgeport's Democratic registrar of voters. The numbers weren't in alignment, so the two agreed to check for a recounting fault.

First, Weeks and his assistant, Cheryl Dunson, president of the League of Women Voters of Connecticut, checked that their master tally sheet -- which shows the district's total results, broken down into the number of machine-read ballots and hand-counted ballots -- matched perfectly the half-dozen or so working tally sheets that were affixed to each stack of 50 photocopied ballots. The stacks were located in the district's duffel bag, neatly paper-clipped, with the worksheet on top. The tally sheets agreed.

So out came the ballots for another recount.

"We're looking at the `Malloy for Democrat' numbers," Dunson told four female counters, who were sitting at the neighboring table. The statement distinguished the desired tallies with the two other Malloy columns, one of which represented voters who cast ballots for the Working Family Party, which also endorsed Malloy.

The roughly 15 minutes of recounting that followed yielded one hash mark being moved. It wasn't enough to account for the difference between the recounted numbers and the city's results.

"At this point," Weeks told Ayala, "we're going to put these ballots back in the duffel bag. Would you agree that our numbers are correct?"

Ayala thought for a second.

"I'd like to look at it again on Monday," she said. "With some fresh eyes."

Going on now...
How the recount will take place
CT POST
Tim Loh, Staff Writer
Published: 07:25 p.m., Saturday, November 27, 2010

Election Day was a mess. Bridgeport's ballot shortage and the resulting chaos is troubling, particularly with such a tight governor's race. Winners have been certified, but we want another look at the ballots. So on Monday, the Post's own recount will begin. It's no small task, but we'll take as much time as we need. In the end, we'll compare results with the city.

Who are the counters? How can I help?

The point man for the recount is Luther Weeks, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition, which formed in 2007 after the state switched to optical-scanning voter machines. Weeks hopes for between 30 and 40 volunteers each day at the recount, and said Friday that he has about half of that manpower signed up. Not just anyone can help. Carrying out such a sweeping recount poses myriad challenges, so Weeks is relying mostly on members of his coalition -- which includes the League of Women Voters of Connecticut, Common Cause, Connecticut Citizens Action Group and CTVotersCount.org -- to do so.

These volunteers typically monitor Connecticut's state-mandated audits, which follow primaries and full elections, and then brief state officials and the public on how effective the audits were. Now, though, the members will conduct the audit themselves.

"We just don't have the time to work with everyone that might sign up," Weeks explained. "A lot of our observers have been involved in the process one way or another and have experience. But we would love for people to just become involved in the next audit situation."

Anyone interested in watching the recount is invited to come to the City Hall Annex at 999 Broad St. What, exactly, are the counters counting? The recount starts Monday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and will run through the week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Throughout, counters will pore through every ballot cast in Bridgeport, tallying anew the governor's race.In its official moderator's report sent to the state, the city stated that 23,158 registered voters' names were checked off at polling stations and that 22,185 votes for governor were cast. That allotted Democrat Dannel Malloy 17,973 votes, Republican Tom Foley 4,099 votes and the Independent Party's Thomas Marsh 113 votes.

The recount will probe further, tallying the number of votes cast in more than five categories, which include machine-read ballots, photocopied ballots, provisional ballots, absentee ballots and write-ins.

HOW WILL THE COUNTING WORK?

Here's a broad outline of how the recount will be carried out, described by Weeks and Cheryl Dunston of the League of Women Voters. The details are subject to change.

Volunteers will form several sets of teams responsible for calculating votes, checking chains of custody, making judgments on questionable ballots and supervising the entire operation. The volunteers may switch among teams during the course of the week.

The process will kick off on Monday afternoon, when city officials deliver several bags of ballots from the registrar's office in McLevy Hall, located across the street from City Hall Annex.

Save for absentee and provisional ballots, which have their own bags, each bag will contain all of the ballots from one of the city's 25 polling stations. Before the bags are opened, the chain-of-custody team will check the numbered seal on the bag to make sure the bag hasn't been opened without documentation since election week.

Meanwhile, the counters will form teams of four, each team with two tables -- one for tallying, the other for storing a voting district's ballots. Before tabulating, the team will place all of a district's ballots in stacks of 25, making sure to sort out any "questionable" ballots, misplaced write-ins, or unclear hand-counted ballots, the processes for which are described below.

The counting teams will then start adding the stacks of 25 ballots at a time. Returning with a stack to their first table, one member of the team will read one ballot at a time, with a second looking on. The third and fourth team members, seated across the table, will register hash marks beneath each candidate's name. These two will compare results when the stack is finished.

After a team is finished with an entire bag of ballots, the ballots will be placed back in the bag, and a new seal on the bag. City officials will return that bag to the registrar's office, eventually bringing new bags to the recounting room. While counting teams will typically cover an entire voting district as a unit, there may be times when a bag is split between several teams, such as toward the end of a day, when the teams hope to finish a voting district before everyone heads home.

`QUESTIONABLE' BALLOTS

The term "questionable" refers here to the counters' uncertainty that a machine actually read a ballot, not the counters' confusion over who the voter intended to vote for. For example: a voter might have placed a check mark or an "X" beside a candidate's name rather than filling in the bubble. Generally, the machine isn't fooled by these mistakes and registers the vote anyway. But not always.

There are other problems. Occasionally, a machine might break down. Or a voter might make a more egregious error, such as circling a candidate's name or scribbling the candidate's name across the ballot. These ballots are unlikely to register. As a result, the counters sort out the "questionable" ballots from the beginning, passing them to a separate team that doles out votes based on their view of the voter's intention.

HANDLING 'PHOTOCOPIED' BALLOTS

A similar logic applies to the photocopied ballots, all of which were hand-counted after Election Day.

During the recount, whenever a photocopied ballot appears that is improperly filled out, it will be sent to the team charged with discerning voters' "intent." This also happened on Election Day, with the moderators making the judgment call. The two readings may at times be different, but Weeks expects that to happen infrequently. The rest of the photocopied ballots will be tallied in the way described above, with the teams making separate counts for how many photocopied ballots there were at each voting district.

"Questionable" machine ballots and unclear photocopied ballots don't bob up all too often, Weeks added: "It depends on who went to the polls, but people are getting better at filling out the ballots."

HANDLING 'PROVISIONAL' and absentee BALLOTS

Provisional ballots are those filled out by people who either weren't listed as registered voters on Election Day or who forgot to bring identification to the polling district. The ballots were separated then so that city officials could follow up on the voter's status. Depending on the finding, the ballots were either confirmed or tossed away.

Because of the review process, the provisional ballots aren't stored with the rest of the ballots. As such, they -- and absentee ballots, for a similar reason -- are bundled together. That's the only difference about these ballots for the recounters, who will re-tally each group.

WHAT IF these numbers are vastly different? are these numbers better?

The short answer is that nothing, legally, changes. But if the recount produces a widely divergent outcome, then it may form a basis for legal action by concerned parties. It could also expose problems with the voting system, both state and citywide.

"I don't want to speculate until I see the results," Weeks said, "but if there were significant differences, there would obviously be some lessons or implications."

As for the primacy of the recount's numbers in the public eye, Weeks would only say that these numbers will be "accurate."

"The recount will be observed, done deliberately by people who've gotten a good night's sleep and who haven't just put in a 17-hour day conducting an election," he said. "I'm not saying our numbers are going to be more accurate than Bridgeport's. But that's what we're going to find out."

And how long will this take? The recount is tentatively scheduled to last five days, starting Monday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and resuming Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. That may not suffice, but Weeks thinks that it will. He's hoping things will wrap up by Thursday. But he won't prognosticate.

"We'll just have to see what happens," he said. "We don't want to rush it, especially in the beginning if we have kinks in the system, people learning the process. We just have to make sure we get going at a good fitting."

Foley concedes, finding 'no credible evidence' of fraud
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
November 8, 2010

Republican Tom Foley conceded the race for governor today to Democrat Dan Malloy, ending Connecticut's closest gubernatorial contest in a half century. Nearly a week after the polls closed and three days after the last vote was counted in Bridgeport, Foley said he will not seek a court-ordered recount, despite errors and irregularities in Bridgeport.

Foley said a review of results over the weekend found "no credible evidence of fraudulent voting." He called Malloy's victory "conclusive," and he said he intended to call the Democrat after his press conference.

"I'll be congratulating him," Foley said.

The 5,637-vote margin of victory was well outside the statutory trigger for a mandatory recount: 2,000 votes or less. An automatic recount is ordered only when the margin is 2,000, so Foley and his lawyers have been examining the chaotic results in Bridgeport, where a shortage of scannable ballots forced city officials to use thousands of photocopied ballots that had to be counted by hand.

With the delivery Friday afternoon of results from Bridgeport, the secretary of the state's office announced that Malloy won with 566,498 votes to 560,861 for Foley and 17,586 for Independent Tom Marsh.

The town-by-town results showed Malloy winning a three-way race for governor with just under 50 percent of the vote. It was Malloy, 49.48 percent; Foley, 48.99 percent; and Marsh, 1.54 percent.

Despite Foley's decision, the Connecticut Republican Party has hired Ross Garber, a prominent Republican attorney, to conduct an inquiry into how the election was conducted in Bridgeport. Garber already has written to the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, David Fein, and Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane, asking them investigate, saying the GOP's has found evidence of "significant deficiencies, irregularities and improprieties."

Bridgeport's registrars ordered only 21,000 ballots in a city of 69,000 voters, assuming a record low turnout of 30 percent for a mid-term election. The city ran out of ballots in 12 of 23 polling places.

The Connecticut Republican Party also is seeking town-by-town voting results and records under the Freedom of Information Act, looking for mistakes and discrepancies that could provide a reason to seek a court-ordered recount. Healy said Sunday the party is gathering as much information as possible, but the decision to concede or challenge rests with Foley.

"Tom has been very thoughtful. He's been calm and cool," Healy said.

Malloy, who narrowly lost a Democratic primary for governor in 2006, has told his staff to refrain from criticizing Foley's refusal to concede. In his only public statement, Malloy has expressed confidence he is the winner, but he added, "I appreciate and respect Tom Foley's perspective."

Foley to announce today whether he'll concede or fight on
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
November 8, 2010

Republican Tom Foley said Sunday night he intends today to either concede defeat or outline sufficient grounds to challenge results showing Democrat Dan Malloy winning the race for governor.

"People will know where we're going," Foley said.

Foley is holding a press conference at 1 p.m. in Hartford to discuss his lawyers' review of election results completed Friday that showed Malloy winning by 5,637 votes - just under one-half of one percent. An automatic recount is ordered only when the margin is 2,000, so Foley and his lawyers have been examining the chaotic results in Bridgeport, where a shortage of scannable ballots forced city officials to use thousands of photocopied ballots that had to be counted by hand.

"I've been working pretty hard. We had a pretty big operation going around," Foley said of the examination of the election results. "I've been pretty involved as a candidate."

With the delivery Friday afternoon of results from Bridgeport, the secretary of the state's office announced that Malloy won with 566,498 votes to 560,861 for Foley and 17,586 for Independent Tom Marsh. The town-by-town results showed Malloy winning a three-way race for governor with just under 50 percent of the vote. It was Malloy, 49.48 percent; Foley, 48.99 percent; and Marsh, 1.54 percent.

The Connecticut Republican Party also is seeking town-by-town voting results and records under the Freedom of Information Act, looking for mistakes and discrepancies that could provide a reason to seek a court-ordered recount. But the primary focus remains on Bridgeport, said Chris Healy, the Republican state chairman.

"What we've concluded is the operation was consistently bad and consistently outside the law that required better care and custody of these ballots," Healy said.

Bridgeport ordered only 21,000 ballots for nearly 70,000 registered voters, betting on a record-low turnout of 30 percent. Half the polling places ran short, forcing the city to use the photocopied ballots. At the request of Democrats, a judge also ordered the polls to stay open an extra two hours. The late-cast ballots were segregated. If an appellate court rules them invalid, it only affects about 100 votes.

Photocopied ballots cast at the JFK School were not counted Tuesday night, as required by law, after a key polling worker fell ill. The 336 ballots were placed in a sealed bag and opened Thursday night to be counted. If the votes are invalidated, Malloy still wins by a margin that does not trigger a recount. The question Sunday was has Foley's campaign found wider problems? He declined to say.

Healy acknowledged that the Republicans need to find more than discrepancies. They must find irregularities of a scale that raise doubts about the outcome.

“If we added it all up with all the mistakes, would it affect the outcome of the election? I think that is a reasonable way to look at it,” Healy said.

In 2006, Republicans discovered that 300 more votes were cast in Norwich than voters had been checked off as having voted. The congressional race that year was settled by just 83 votes.

Was it sloppiness by the staff? Or was it evidence of fraud?

"How do you find out how they voted? It is an alarming thing. Those are the things that drive you crazy," Healy said. Ultimately, Republicans did not make an issue of the discrepancy.

Healy said the party is gathering as much information as possible, but the decision to concede or challenge rests with Foley.

"Tom has been very thoughtful. He's been calm and cool," Healy said.

Malloy, who narrowly lost a Democratic primary for governor in 2006, has told his staff to refrain from criticizing Foley's refusal to concede.

In his only public statement, Malloy has expressed confidence he is the winner, but he added, "I appreciate and respect Tom Foley's perspective."

Independent seen as spoiler in governor's race
Ken Dixon, CT POST Staff Writer
Published: 06:34 p.m., Saturday, November 6, 2010

Tom Marsh, the Independent Party candidate for governor, may have siphoned away enough votes from Republican Tom Foley to give the governor's race to Democrat Dannel Malloy. Marsh, the Chester first selectman - a long-time Republican before changing parties this year - doesn't believe he's the spoiler of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

But Republican State Central Committee Chairman Chris Healy said Saturday that it's as plain as the numbers on the page: Marsh, 17,586 votes; Foley's deficit to Democrat Dannel Malloy, 5,637.

"I don't like it very much, but what are you gonna do?" Healy said in a phone interview. "If people were responding to his message, it was very similar to Tom Foley's message, so certainly that's a sad conclusion of this campaign."

For months during the early part of the gubernatorial campaign this year, Marsh ran as a Republican, before he changed parties and became the Independent Party's standard bearer for the state's highest office.

"Tom being a Republican first selectman of Chester and talking about lifting the burden off local communities and cutting the size of government certainly had an impact on the election, I would say, to Tom Foley's detriment" Healy said. "But he got on the ballot legitimately and he campaigned legitimately and these are some of the `what ifs?' of any close election."

Marsh said in a Saturday afternoon interview that he has received a few e-mails from Republicans who believe Foley would have won if Marsh didn't take away votes. But Marsh doesn't agree with the premise. He thinks he took away support equally from Foley and Malloy.

"You can't just cherry pick," he said. "I'm quite certain it was an even split. I know for certain I took away Malloy votes in Chester, where I took 16 percent of the town vote. Everybody in town, through this whole thing, has been good about it."

What Foley thinks

Foley, in a phone interview Saturday, said that in some respects, Marsh was closer to Malloy in campaign proposals, particularly the need to raise taxes.

"I don't know the answer to the question of whether he took support away from me," Foley said.

"When we looked at our internal polling, it looked like Tom was taking support away from Dan and that he was not hurting me as much as he was hurting Dan."

Foley's polls showed Marsh shifting away support from Democrats at a rate of three-to-one, compared to Republicans.

"I was proud of the fact that I beat Tom Marsh in his hometown," Foley said with a laugh.

In Chester, Marsh got 261 votes, Malloy 765 and Foley 617.

Marsh did best in his running mate Cicero Booker's hometown of Waterbury, collecting 584 votes. The Independent Party duo topped 300 votes in Wallingford, Milford, Manchester and Bristol. They scored 113 votes in Bridgeport. Roy Occhiogrosso, Malloy's campaign adviser, said Saturday that there's no way to really find out where the damage was done without actually talking to those who cast ballots for Marsh.

"Some votes would have gone to Tom and some would have gone to Dan," Occhiogrosso said.

"Some people might not have voted at all. It's always speculative unless you talk to the people who voted for Marsh. All of the polling data indicated a close race and none of the polls even included Marsh. Dan was up a couple points until the end, when he was down a couple points. Dan might have won by more in Marsh hadn't run."

Marsh anticipated being crushed on Election Night. He and Booker, a Waterbury alderman, received only a fraction of the more than a million votes split nearly equally by Foley and Malloy. But the 17,586 votes allow the Independent Party to avoid the state's prolonged petitioning process in 2012.

Marsh, who had to collect more than 7,000 signatures this year to reach the ballot, said he believes the local Chester Democratic and Republican leaders were nice enough to only put up a few lawn signs of his better-financed opponents.

What a vote cost?

While Malloy participated in the state's public financing program and had $8.7 million to spend, Foley invested about $11 million of his own fortune and spent about $12.5 million, according to the latest filings with the State Elections Enforcement Commission posted Saturday. Marsh raised and spent about $10,000, spending about 57 cents per vote.

Malloy collected 566,498 votes, at a cost of about $15.36 per vote. Foley got 560,861 votes at a cost of $22.29 per ballot.

Marsh's overall aim was to get 1-percent of the total votes cast to give the group minor-party status and automatic-ballot lines in the next election. That target of about 11,000 was easily reached.

"The election more than met the objectives set early in the campaign. The Independent Party qualified for ballot status in every Constitutional office race, as well as numerous state legislative races," he said.

"We now set about the work of building on that success and expanding our grassroots organization.

"I congratulate Dan Malloy on his hard- fought victory and wish him well as he begins the task of addressing the significant challenges facing Connecticut," Marsh said in a statement.

Marsh was crowded out of the race for the GOP gubernatorial nomination by better-known and wealthier candidates including Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of Stamford and Foley, who won the primary.

Foley refuses to concede; says 'it may well take a recount'
CT MIRROR
Keith M. Phaneuf, Arielle Levin Becker
November 5, 2010

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley refused to concede the election Friday and continued to cast doubt on vote counts that showed Democrat Dan Malloy winning the race by more than 5,000 votes.

"It may well take a recount to get an accurate count," Foley said during a mid-morning press conference in the lobby of the Hartford building that houses the office of his campaign's counsel, former U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor. "There's no automatic recount, but there may well be plenty of basis for a recount."

Though Foley stopped short of pledging to wage a legal challenge, he said his campaign has identified several irregularities and improper procedures that it wants to research further.

"Until we know what an accurate vote count is, we are not going to make any decisions," he said.

But Foley also told reporters that he was less confident that he would win the election than he was a few days ago, saying that vote totals being reported in Bridgeport were less favorable to him than his campaign had anticipated.

"But I am determined, and I think the voters of Connecticut, the citizens of Connecticut, should be as determined that we have an accurate count of how they voted on Tuesday," he said.

What will make him confident in the results?

"We're not sure what it's going to take to have confidence," he said. "The voters of Connecticut will benefit if I can say with confidence that I believe in these results."

Because both candidates have formed transition teams, Foley said taking another couple days to parse the results would not hold up either side from preparing to take office.

"We are being laughed at around this country," he said. "I've even had calls from [overseas] about this vote and what our public officials have done here. I don't want to create a situation where a result is declared here and then it's changed. That could be even worse than where we are."

Malloy issued a statement Friday afternoon reasserting that he is "100 percent confident" he has won by "a margin comfortably outside what is required for a recount," but added that he and running mate Nancy Wyman appreciate and respect Foley's perspective.

"As is the case with more than a few other races in other states across the country, this race is taking a few extra days to play out. Nancy and I think it should be allowed to play out in an orderly fashion and we support the process established by law," Malloy wrote.

"We're as anxious as everyone else is to get the final numbers," he added. "We're also continuing our intensive efforts to create an administration that is up and running, and ready for the challenges awaiting us when we take office on January 5. To do otherwise would be irresponsible."

Foley took particular aim Friday at Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who released unofficial statewide results on Wednesday that showed Malloy ahead by more than 3,100 votes and called Malloy the "apparent winner" -- all while thousands of votes remained uncertain.

Foley noted that Bysiewicz's office altered the final vote count reported on its website for Torrington on Thursday to reflect about 2,000 additional votes for Foley.

The GOP nominee's campaign also objected to the prolonged delay in getting final results from the state's largest city. Bridgeport officials did not provide final numbers until about 5 a.m. Friday, more than 50 hours after the polls closed and 35 hours after the results were due, by law, to Bysiewicz's office.

"I think it is very unfortunate that the citizens of Connecticut had to wait three days to get even preliminary results," Foley said. "Connecticut deserves better from its public officials."

And Bysiewicz's office still hadn't received the Bridgeport results by late Friday morning, according to a written statement from spokesman Av Harris, who added that the office would spend considerable time reviewing them -- once received -- before reporting the totals.

"As of 11:30 a.m. we still have not received the return from Bridgeport," Harris wrote. "Once the return is received by our office, the data will be entered to our computerized database. Then the result will be tabulated. Then the figures will be double- and triple-checked to make sure any errors are eliminated. When we are confident that we have a complete and accurate election result, then we will release it to you. Secretary Bysiewicz will not have anything to say until then. I appreciate your patience."

Foley said his campaign would seek a meeting with Bridgeport election officials to review all of that city's election results, adding that it also would invite the Malloy campaign to participate.

On Thursday, Foley's campaign raised questions about the validity of the ballot count in Bridgeport, particularly about a bag of ballots that weren't counted for two days after polls closed Tuesday night.

"It is unclear where these ballots originated, where they have been for the last two days, and whether they are still valid ballots," Foley said in statement released by his campaign Thursday.

But it turned out the bag had been sealed by a polling place moderator after a poll worker fell ill and couldn't participate in counting the ballots Tuesday. It was opened Thursday night and the ballots -- like the rest of the Bridgeport vote--overwhelmingly favored Malloy.

Foley's running mate, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, told reporters Thursday afternoon that there was no need to declare a winner while vote counts were still in flux.

Boughton said it would make sense for Bysiewicz's office to double- and triple-check numbers coming from moderators. He said he believed the winner could be determined in the next day or two.

"Let's take our time folks, let's slow down a little bit, let's get it right," said Boughton, who expressed concern about Bridgeport workers who had been up for 36 hours and were counting ballots.

Bysiewicz spokesman Av Harris said the office had two teams double-checking and triple-checking vote totals Thursday and corrected figures on the website as necessary. The final corrections were made at noon or shortly after, he said, and everything on the website reflected up-to-date figures.

Late Connecticut Governor Ballots Favor Democrat
NYTIMES
By DAVID W. CHEN
November 5, 2010

Dannel P. Malloy, the Democratic former mayor of Stamford, inched ever closer on Friday morning to being declared the winner over Thomas C. Foley, the Republican candidate, in their bitter and bizarre battle to become the next governor of Connecticut.

In an early morning news conference, the mayor of Bridgeport, Bill Finch, declared that his city, after myriad delays and embarrassing problems, had finished counting all of its ballots. And the result, he told reporters, was that Mr. Malloy had 17,800 votes, and Mr. Foley 4,075 votes — a margin that unofficially would give Mr. Malloy a 5,000-vote lead statewide.

The vote count, Mr. Finch said, did not include the roughly 100 ballots that were cast after 8 p.m., when a state judge allowed 12 polling sites to stay open an extra two hours because of a lack of ballots. But in the latest revelation that has made Connecticut an electoral laughingstock this year, Mr. Finch also noted that the vote did include 336 ballots that were found, unopened, in a bag at a polling site.

The ballots were scheduled to be taken to Hartford later Friday morning by State Police, and delivered to Susan Bysiewicz, the secretary of state, who is the state’s top election official. She is then expected to make an announcement later declaring Mr. Malloy’s victory.

Of course, if the last four days are any indication, one never knows what may go awry.

Ever since the polls closed on Tuesday night — or, more precisely, ever since the polls closed two hours later than normal in Bridgeport because of ballot troubles — Mr. Malloy and Mr. Foley have played political chicken over who will actually become the state’s 88th governor.

The two were separated, it would seem, by a few thousand votes. But beyond that, voters across the state were experiencing symptoms of political whiplash, given all the confusion and contradictions over the past three days.

“I’m hoping that Connecticut is not becoming Florida,” said Thomas J. D’Amore Jr., a political consultant who was chief of staff to Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. “Or California. For all of the ribbing that California takes with so-called Governor Moonbeam, he is beginning to make California look like the Land of Steady Habits. At least they seem to know who they’ve elected to office.”

State and local election officials managed to add to the chaos on Thursday. At first, Ms.Bysiewicz declared that she would have the official results at noon. But that was delayed, and then delayed again, when state officials learned that a Bridgeport election official had gone home to take a nap only to be summoned by a police officer to return to work.

The drama, perhaps predictably, was prolonged when election officials said there were too many ballots from Bridgeport to be counted before the end of the business day. The work would resume on Friday.

Some officials criticized Ms. Bysiewicz, a Democrat who had once been considered the leading contender for governor, before opting to run for attorney general, only to be disqualified by a state court. She, in turn, blamed Bridgeport officials.

Regardless of the results, Republicans said they expected Mr. Foley, a wealthy financier who spent $10 million of his own money on the race, to explore every legal option.

“I’m sure there’ll be lively litigation over it,” Ms. Bysiewicz said on a radio program Wednesday.

The first sign of trouble came on Election Day, when officials in Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, ran out of ballots a few hours before the polls closed at 8 p.m. They had been banking on low turnout and did not order more. So Ms. Bysiewicz, over the objections of Republicans, persuaded a state judge to extend voting hours at 12 Bridgeport polling locations until 10 p.m.

Mr. Foley led the returns most of the night. But Mr. Malloy then declared victory, sort of, in a speech after 1 a.m. Not to be outdone, Mr. Foley declared victory, too, and then said he was going to bed.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bysiewicz declared that Mr. Malloy was indeed the winner, by 3,103 votes, unofficially, based on information provided by election officials in every town. But Mr. Foley was having none of it. Declaring that his own numbers indicated that he had won, he even called a radio program on Wednesday, when Ms. Bysiewicz was on as a guest, and chastised her.

“It was a bit out of character for him,” said Richard Foley, a former Republican Party chairman in Connecticut, who has known Thomas Foley for 20 years (they are not related). “He is not given to flights of fancy. This was not his normal M.O.”

Mr. Malloy, hoping to give his candidacy an aura of inevitability, held a defiant news conference later on Wednesday in Hartford, and announced a transition team, led by a former official in the last Democratic administration to run the state, in the 1980s. Not to be outdone, Mr. Foley announced his own transition team, led by a utilities executive and a former state representative.

By Wednesday night, the story took another twist. The Associated Press, which had originally called the race for Mr. Malloy, withdrew its declaration and said Mr. Foley held the upper hand.

By Thursday, though, The A.P. had revised its numbers, based on more information from New Haven, yet another Democratic stronghold.

Gary L. Rose, chairman of the government department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, said the confusion made him wonder, “What is happening to the quality of our politics in this state?”

“Bring back the bosses,” Dr. Rose said, half-jokingly. “They sure stabilized things, and things ran better.”

Connecticut voters, meanwhile, could barely keep up. Over burgers and beer at the White Horse Country Pub and Restaurant in Marble Dale, patrons watched big screen TVs that announced periodically that there was still no answer.

Michael Garrity of Washington, who classified himself as “an unemployed salesman who would vote for Mickey Mouse as long as he was a Democrat,” said he voted for Mr. Malloy and “was overjoyed” when he heard on the radio that he had won.

“But then I heard he didn’t win,” Mr. Garrity said. “And my heart sunk. Then I heard he won again. Then didn’t win.

“It’s just too weird. Now I’m just sitting here drinking wine, and waiting.”

WESTON FORUM HAS THE BEST REPORT HERE

On Wednesday morning, 9:30am, the numbers in our local races showed these interim results: updates an hour later from Connecticut POST added in 135th for Easton and the 26th for Ridgefield

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WESTON FORUM ELECTION NEWS

WATCH RESULTS ONLINE TONIGHT AT CT-N
CHECK OUT THE BALLOT HERE

RESULTS IN WESTON POSTED AT THIS LINK AS SOON AS THEY ARE AVAILABLE FOR ALL OFFICES ON THE BALLOT

FROM THE CT SECRETARY OF THE STATE: Statement of Vote page here

Lavielle is probable winner in state rep contest
Wilton Bulletin
Written by Jeannette Ross
Tuesday, 02 November 2010 20:47

Wilton Republicans have declared Gail Lavielle the winner of the race for state representative in the 143rd District. “I hope that today marks a new change of course for our district,” Ms. Lavielle said. “I can’t think of a group of ladies and gentlemen I’d want to represent more.”

...The Wilton Republican Town Committee did not have totals for Norwalk District B, saying only Ms. Lavielle won that district by 38 votes.

“We have a new state representative,” said RTC Chairman Al Alper. “She worked very hard for that.”

“It was a hard-fought race,” Peggy Reeves said. “I want to congratulate my opponent for winning in Wilton. I have loved serving the people of the 143d District.

“It was a difficult year to be an incumbent. I wish my opponent the very best of luck.”

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Click here to go to the LWVCT Online Voter's Guide - no state-wide LWV debates for Governor and possibly for U.S. Senator, either.
CONNECTICUT ELECTION SEASON 2010: This year we will stick to strictly reverse chronological order, by office

News;
Why the LWVCT is out of the debate picture state-wide - it is because they must include Minor Party representation at the debate;
Pre-Labor Day old tradition reborn - Crocodile Club at Lake Compounce.Results in Primaries in Weston same as statewide, as it turns out...Republicans; Democrats.
U.S. SENATE:
U.S. CONGRESS, 4th DISTRICT:
CT GUBERNATORIAL: FROM ELECTION REPORTS ON THE UNDERTICKET CONTESTS. DEBATES.
ISSUES 2010 that may surface in CT:

DEATH PENALTY?
For example, altered historical fact issue.
And there is always the shadow of Washington, D.C. "mid-term election" curse...
Did someone mention Campaign Finance Reform or De-form? Which campairns are we paying for? Tea Party influence in CT?
Health Care in CT?

EDUCATION FUNDING: For Weston, a mostly non-issue since we don't get much, but perhaps one the next Governor and Legislature needs to consider.

2010 Primary story:

How much did each vote cost?
U.S. Senate - no Democrat Primary; GOP major non-winner of Party nomination still on the ballot, commercial reminds G.O.P. Primary voters.

4th District G.O.P. U.S. House of Representative primary;

CT BALLOT: CT General Assembly, Governor/Lt. Governor Primaries coming - CANDIDATE$ $PEAK OUT ON MONEY WORRIE$; and other Statewide Offices...public funding gets the word out;

FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE STATE: Statement of Vote page here

OUR UNOFFICIAL TALLY: Number of votes cast total/percent of registered voters, Weston - est. 6700 registered voters and 3851 voted = 57%

W I N N E R S I N W E S T O N

Governor/Lieutenant Governor - FOLEY/BOUGHTON
United States Senator - BLUMENTHAL
Representative in Congress - HIMES
State Senators 26th &28th Districts BOUCHER26 & MCKINNEY28
House 135th - SHABAN
Secretary of the State - FARRELL
Treasurer - WRIGHT
Comptroller - ORCHULLI
Attorney General - JEPSEN
Judge of Probate - O'GRADY
Registrar of Voters - MORAN (2053) & SMITS (1917)

V O T I N G D I S T R I C T O N E (Most of Weston - the State Senate District #28)

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V O T I N G D I S T R I C T T W O (the smaller area in the southern part of town, State Senate District #26)

John Shaban and Carl Bernstein debate - 2 lawyers go at it.

Weston candidates square off at debate
Weston FORUM
Written by Liz Skalka
Wednesday, 27 October 2010 11:42

More job growth, a lower deficit and a more efficient state government — while the goals are common, how to achieve them is still a matter of debate between candidates vying for the 135th House District.

Carl Bernstein and John Shaban running in the district, which includes all of Weston, Easton, and part of Redding, along with candidates in Redding’s other House district (the 2nd), squared off in a Redding League of Women Voters debate at the Redding Community Center last Wednesday, Oct. 20, responding to questions submitted by audience members about taxes, state government, education and transportation.

Weston’s Carl Bernstein, a Democrat, and Redding’s John Shaban, a Republican, are jockeying for the 135th District seat being vacated by John Stripp, who is not seeking re-election. Gabriel Rossi is also on the ballot as the Green Party-endorsed candidate, but he did not participate in the Oct. 20 debate.

The 2nd District candidates at the debate were Bethel Democrat Jason Bartlett, the incumbent, and his challenger, Republican Dan Carter, also of Bethel. The district includes parts of Danbury, Bethel and Redding.

While they were able to reach a consensus on some issues, opinions about others spanned differing personal and party ideologies. Candidates were first asked by league moderator Charlotte Garrell to describe themselves and why they chose to run for office.

“As a citizen, I have an obligation to serve my community,” said Mr. Shaban. Mr. Shaban is a Greenwich law firm partner. He’s chairman of Redding’s Water Pollution Control Commission and vice chairman of that town’s Zoning Commission.

Mr. Bernstein, a New York litigation attorney, touted his active involvement in the Democratic Party.

“This is an extension of what I believe is my ability to serve,” said Mr. Bernstein, who noted he once ran for the New York State Assembly.

Revenue and deficit

The candidates responded to a question that broadly addressed taxes, revenue, the state’s deficit and state government.

Mr. Bernstein said he’s reluctant to raise taxes, but would consider it a solution of “last resort.”

He advocated “making the state as job-friendly as possible” through special economic zones. He also suggested working with universities to keep employment within the state. In terms of improving state government, it must be streamlined in order to be more effective and user-friendly, he said.

Mr. Shaban said his focus is on “people and business — that’s it.”

“Would I raise taxes?” he asked. “That’s like bleeding the patient … You can’t raise taxes and expect businesses and jobs to come back.”

He seeks to create a “predictable and stable environment” for businesses to grow. Mr. Shaban added that government size and spending has increased more than the population has.

Republicans can’t talk about slashing and burning without stating specifics, Mr. Bernstein responded.

Mr. Bartlett agreed with Mr. Bernstein that parts of state government need to be consolidated. He suggested merging agencies such as Homeland Security and Public Safety. State employees should also make concessions, he said.

Education cost sharing

The candidates were asked about their views on the Education Cost Sharing grant, the state’s largest funding program for kindergarten through grade 12.

“I see my job as getting every dollar Easton-Redding is entitled to,” Mr. Bernstein said.

“Let’s keep dollars here, don’t send them up to Hartford,” Mr. Shaban said. He added, “The focus should be on hiring talented people. Teachers first, bells and whistles second.”

SustiNet

Another discussion centered around SustiNet, the state health care plan for Connecticut. In 2009, the SustiNet law established a board to recommend details and plans for implementation to the legislature by January 2011.

Mr. Shaban said the program has some great ideas but “has the potential to put government in the insurance business.” We will be “nickel, dimed and quartered to death with government-run insurance,” Mr. Shaban added.

SustiNet is “critical to help Connecticut and those people with pre-existing conditions,” said Mr. Bernstein, who does not see it as government entering the health care business.
Business

Candidates were asked specifically about business regulations, but the discussion expanded to how business should be grown.

Mr. Shaban said taxes and regulations are speed bumps. “Regulations are just part of the problem. The biggest problem is taxes,” he said.

Mr. Bernstein is in favor of business enterprise zones, but added the state needs better public transportation and highway infrastructure to really have businesses thrive.

“We have a great opportunity to grow business here and I’d like to take more advantage of it,” Mr. Bernstein said.

“I think we’re all saying the same thing, but the devil’s in the details,” Mr. Shaban said. Mr. Shaban was also in favor of enterprise zones in Bethel, Danbury and Georgetown.

Other topics

Minimum wage: Mr. Shaban agreed with the idea that the only reason to lower minimum wage would be to encourage business growth in enterprise zones, but added that minimum wage adjustments would not solve employment issues. Mr. Bernstein said he was shocked with what Republicans had suggested, and described minimum wage as a “safety net to live with some degree of decency in the state.”

Danbury Branch rail line: Mr. Shaban said he would be in favor of making improvements to Metro-North’s Danbury branch to help revive industry along the rail line. Mr. Bernstein said capacity should be increased.

Agriculture: Mr. Shaban said state agriculture should be run like any other business — with an eye toward profit — while Mr. Bernstein said though he hadn’t given a lot of thought to agriculture, he agreed it should be profitable.

Closing remarks

“I understand what concerns people,” Mr. Shaban said. “I’m done sitting on the sidelines.”

Mr. Bernstein said, “I want to do everything to streamline government and bring an effective voice to government.”

This was the first and only debate among the candidates.

There is a wide division between making laws and following them.
Harry Reid aide off campaign after reports of sham marriage
YAHOO
By Rachel Rose Hartman
Tue Oct 26, 9:07 am ET

An aide for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) covered up an illegal seven-year marriage to a Lebanese national who was the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation, Jana Winter reported Monday night for Fox News.

Reid's office told Fox on Monday night that Reid had not known of the sham and that the aide, Hispanic-media press secretary Diana Tejada, is no longer with the campaign.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley also noted that the alleged conduct took place several years before Tejada had worked for Reid.

Tejada reportedly admitted to receiving payment in exchange for fraudulently marrying Bassam Mahmoud Tarhini in 2003 so he could attain permanent U.S. residency. She also reportedly lied to federal immigration and FBI agents and submitted false federal documents to the Department of Homeland Security.

Tarhini was deported for the fraudulent marriage in March 2010, but no charges were filed against Tejada.

The news broke just one week before Reid faces the fight of his political career against Republican nominee Sharron Angle.

Manley, in a statement to Fox News, suggested the story is "a desperation measure by partisan Republicans, who have stooped to slinging mud about junior staffers to score points in the waning days of [Angle's] campaign."

Candidates for governor differ over state DEP staffing
Keith M. Phaneuf
October 18, 2010 (we just noticed this today)

NEW HAVEN -- Connecticut's gubernatorial candidates split Monday over how to make the environmental watchdog process more efficient without putting the state's populace and natural resources at risk.

During a Yale University forum sponsored by the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and nearly a dozen other environmental advocacy groups, Democrat Dan Malloy stopped short of pledging more staff for the Department of Environmental Protection, but questioned whether it could improve responsiveness with current employee levels.

Meanwhile, both Republican Tom Foley and Independent Party nominee Tom Marsh said they believe that with appropriate leadership, the DEP could do its job with staffing at current levels or below.

The format for Monday's forum, which took place before about 150 guests in the university's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, also pressed the candidates about clean energy, brownfield remediation, open space preservation and clean water issues.

"Whatever we do (with the DEP) has to address appropriate levels of staffing," Malloy said, adding that while Connecticut's next governor must improve the agency's ability to process permit applications in an efficient and timely manner, there are complaints within the department that it lacks sufficient staff to do so now.

The DEP, which has been overseen by Republican governors since 1995, has been "purposely underfunded" for years, Malloy said, adding this problem cannot be ignored in the quest to create new jobs.

"It's fundamentally important that we hold ourselves to high standards, and timeliness is one of those standards," he said, adding that state government needs to focus on creating jobs and operating government more efficiently. "We have to understand that all of the things we want to do in Connecticut ... are going to require that we change how we do business, but not that we sacrifice the environment."

But Foley said the DEP has both a reputation and a track record of responding slowly to permit applications from the business community, and the problem doesn't stem from staffing issues.

When asked by National Public Radio journalist Nancy Cohen, the forum's moderator, to address a nearly 10 percent staffing reduction the DEP has faced since 2003, Foley said "I have complaints all over state government that there aren't enough staff. But that's attitudinal. We simply need to do more with less."

Foley added that he has heard complaints from businesses that application requests have taken close to two years to process, a delay that is driving businesses and jobs away. "No permit requires two years. I can promise you that's not a responsive organization," the GOP nominee said, adding that "I really think the answer is better management, better leadership, setting goals."

Foley, who has been a strong advocate of privatization as a means to reduce state spending, refused to rule out employing private contractors to handle environmental inspections currently being performed by state employees. "We should get the best deal we can," he said. "If we can get the same level or quality for less, we have an obligation to the taxpayers and the citizens to turn it over to a private contractor."

Marsh echoed the other two candidates in calling for a "systemic change in how we do business," but with a $3.3 billion deficit forecast for the fiscal year that begins in less than nine months, he would not rule out asking the DEP to do more with less.

Marsh did say, though, that the legislature and Gov.M. Jodi Rell made a "deplorable" decision in propping up more than $950 million in spending in this fiscal year's budget with borrowing to be paid off with a surcharge on state utility bills, and by raiding about 35 percent of a clean energy investment fund.

"We have to bring integrity back to our budgeting process," he said, adding that while the next governor cannot "wave a magic wand" and reverse this and other raids on special funds immediately, that would be a priority in a Marsh administration.

The format for Monday's event was designed by the Fund for the Environment to force the candidates to focus solely on issues and to eliminate the prospect of angry exchanges.

Each candidate was brought separately into the auditorium in Kroon Hall, given five minutes for an opening statement, and then invited to participate in a 15-minute discussion with Cohen, who specializes in environmental issues.

The three candidates did reach common ground in several areas, emphasizing remediation of polluted, former industrial sites, typically referred to as brownfields, to both spur job growth and protect the environment.

Malloy and Foley also agreed that while they support investments in fuel cells and other environmentally friendly or "green" technologies, they oppose the development of new wind turbine stations on Long Island Sound.

Both major party candidates also said they believe state government should continue with an open space preservation program, even amidst a large state budget deficit, calling it a top environmental priority and a sound financial investment.

EX-REP. SHAYS GOES ON THE AIR AGAINST HIMES
CT MIRROR
Tuesday, Oct. 12 10:35 a.m.

Ex-Rep. Chris Shays is back on the airwaves in Connecticut's 4th congressional district, even if he's not on the ballot. Shays has cut a TV ad for state Sen. Dan Debicella, a Republican from Shelton who is trying to oust freshman Democratic Rep. Jim Himes.

Himes narrowly wrested the seat from Shays in 2008, and he's tried to adopt Shays' independent label in his showdown with Debicella. The new Shays ad takes direct aim at that strategy.

"Voting with Nancy Pelosi 94 percent of the time does not meet my test for independence, and I can't imagine it meets yours," Shays says, as side-by-side photos of Himes and Pelosi appear on the screen before returning to Shays sitting in a comfy living-room setting, where he makes a pitch for Debicella.

Thanks to HIMES campaign for list - not an endorsement of candidate, however!

AARP Debate
October 13, 2010 at 10:30AM
Bridgeport Holiday Inn
1070 Main Street, Bridgeport
Please call HIMES HQ for tickets: (203) 987-3333 (Thanks to e-mail from HIMES, we have this list)

World Affairs Forum Debate
October 21, 2010 at 7:00PM
Downtown Stamford Holiday Inn
700 E. Main Street, Stamford
No tickets, first come-first served

CLOSEST TO WESTON!!!
League of Women Voters Debate
October 24, 2010 at 4:00PM
Wilton High School, Clune Auditorium
395 Danbury Road, Wilton
No tickets, first come-first served

Bridgeport Regional Business Council Debate
October 26, 2010 at 8:00AM
Housatonic Community College
900 Lafayette Blvd., Bridgeport
Please rsvp (203) 335-3800, Walk-ins welcome as space permits

Business Council of Fairfield County Debate
October 28, 2010 at 9:00AM
UCONN Stamford
1 University Place, Stamford
Advance registration is REQUIRED
$25 for members, $35 for non-members

Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce Debate
October 28, 2010 at 12:00PM
Norwalk DoubleTree Inn
789 Connecticut Ave, Norwalk
Advance registration is REQUIRED, please call: 203-866-2521

Worry and surprise, born of uncertainty. We'll have the answer soon.
September 29, 2010 Q-Poll stirs unease in Democrat's U.S. Senate camp and pleasant surprise for Republican candidate for Governor.

Latest Quinnipiac Poll: Tom Foley Closes In On Dannel Malloy In Race That Is Too Close To Call
Hartford Courant
By Christopher Keating on September 29, 2010 6:41 AM

Republican Tom Foley is quickly closing the gap against Democrat Dannel Malloy in a race for governor that is now too close to call, the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows.

Malloy is ahead by 3 percentage points, but the margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points makes the battle too close to predict in an increasingly nasty race.

One of the key shifts is that the all-important unaffiliated voters - the largest voting bloc in Connecticut - have moved toward Foley in recent weeks. The race had previously been a flat-footed tie among independents, but the latest survey shows Foley ahead by 6 percentage points among independents.

A longtime business executive from Greenwich, Foley has poured more than $4 million of his own money into the race against Malloy, who is receiving up to $6 million in public financing.

The latest Q-Poll, which was released at about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday, shows Malloy ahead by 45 percent to 42 percent with 12 percent undecided. Another 22 percent say they could change their minds before election day on November 2.

In the previous poll that was released in mid-September, Malloy had been leading by 9 percentage points with 8 percent still undecided and 26 percent saying that they could change their mind before the election.

The gubernatorial poll results came out a day after the Q-Poll had also shown Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal's lead narrowing to 3 percentage points over Republican nominee Linda McMahon -- again, shrinking to within the margin of error.

Meeting with reporters at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the state Capitol, Quinnipiac Poll Director Doug Schwartz explained the new results this way: "Similar to yesterday, when we found the Democrat in the Senate race leading by 3 points, we also find the Democrat in the governor's race leading by 3 points. In both races, we found a narrowing of the gap. The Republican is gaining ground."

Schwartz added that in the last gubernatorial poll two weeks ago, Foley had trailed by 9 points. "Now he trails Malloy by just 3 points. It's too close to call."

"One of the key differences between the senate and governor's races .. is that there are many more undecideds in the governor's race than in the Senate race," Schwartz said. "Twelve percent of voters in the governor's race are undecided, compared to 4 percent in the Senate race. This makes sense because in the governor's race the candidates are not nearly as well known as they are in the Senate race. More than 3 in 10 voters said they don't know enough about either Foley or Malloy to form an opinion. So there is more room in the governor's race for movement."

Schwartz said that in the Malloy-Foley race, about one-third of the voters are "persuadables" -- with "12 percent undecided and another 22 perecent of voters who say they could still change their minds." That means that the effect of upcoming debates may be greater on the Malloy-Foley race than on Blumenthal-McMahon, Schwartz said.

In both the Senate and governor's races, the reason for the narrowing is that "there's been a shift among independents," Schwartz said. "Malloy and Foley were tied two weeks ago among independents. Now Foley has a 6 point lead among independents."

While many politicians and political observers are obsessed with polls in the heat of the campaign season, Malloy's campaign manager says he views it differently.

In response to the survey showing that Foley is closing the gap, campaign manager Dan Kelly, said, "We don't pay much attention to polls. The same poll had Dan down by 3 the day before the primary, a race he won by 14 points. Dan tells us to campaign as if we're in second place, 10 points down. So that's what we do.''

Malloy and Foley have clashed sharply in television commercials in recent weeks, and several new ads are hitting the airwaves today.

Foley is broadcasting a new commercial this week that was being shown Wednesday on the morning news programs. The ad mentions that Malloy sought a pay increase as Stamford's mayor, saying, "Malloy raised taxes year after year. ... Dan Malloy: a career politician whose policies kill jobs.''

Foley has particularly focused on the loss of 13,843 jobs in Stamford since the peak employment year of 2000. Malloy has repeatedly stated in commercials that he helped create thousands of jobs as mayor, but state labor statistics show that there was a net loss of more than 5,000 jobs during his 14-year tenure leading the city. In addition, the unemployment rate - which measures the employment of Stamford residents as opposed to the overall number of jobs in the city - jumped by 58 percent during the Malloy years.

In a new ad, Malloy focuses on employees who had once worked at a factory that Foley owned at The Bibb Company in Columbus, Georgia. The company's longtime textile mill closed about two years after Foley left the firm as chief executive officer in 1996. Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele aired a similar commercial during the primary, but Foley countered that some of the workers who appeared in Fedele's commercial had never worked at the factory and others thought they were being interviewed for a documentary about the mill.

In another new, anti-Foley commercial by the Democratic Governors Association that aired before 7 a.m. Wednesday, a narrator says that Foley "devastated a community and thousands of lives'' in Georgia as he and his company "made millions.''

Folely is also airing a 30-second commercial that features his wife, Leslie Fahrenkopf Foley, an attorney who attended Yale University and the University of Virginia who says that she has worked with many impressive people during her career. She adds that there has been "no one more impressive than Tom Foley - so I married him.''

Malloy, Foley and Independent Party candidate Thomas E. Marsh of Chester faced off for the first time in the general election campaign on Tuesday night in a debate that focused on public education. They spoke on a stage in front of a live audience at a public school in Middletown.

Today, the three candidates are scheduled to discuss tourism in another forum at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. The televised debates begin next week on Fox Connecticut in a debate at 7 p.m. Tuesday that is co-sponsored by The Hartford Courant at The Bushnell Center For the Performing Arts in Hartford.

LWV scraps three gubernatorial debates
Mark Pazniokas
September 24, 2010

Ignored by Republican Tom Foley, the League of Women Voters said today it was pulling the plug on three televised gubernatorial debates planned for Bridgeport, Stamford and Danbury.

But there still will be at least four gubernatorial and three U.S. Senate debates televised between Oct. 4 and 29, though none will include minor-party candidates.

The Independent Party's candidate for governor, Tom Marsh, had met the League's criteria for inclusion in the cancelled debates, as has the party's Senate candidate, Warren Mosler, for a series of Senate debates.

The criteria includes evidence of a significant campaign and public support, including having raised $50,000. John Mertens, a minor-party candidate for Senate, is on the ballot, but he did not meet the League's criteria.

"We cleared their hurdles, and they invited us. We were ecstatic," said Alice Marshall, a spokeswoman for Mosler, a successful businessman. "Warren is running to get out a message about full employment and prosperity, and this would have been a chance to be heard."

Mertens, a Trinity College professor, said minor-party candidates often make points and introduce issues shunned by the major-party candidates.

"They don't answer questions in debates. They are rehearsed on how not to answer questions. The real answers come from third-party candidates," Mertens said.

The League's Senate debates have not been cancelled, but they are in jeopardy, as Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican Linda McMahon have not agreed to attend...

We note the following three (3) statements from Stamford ADVOCATE article:

"He's only been here two years. You can't change a country overnight," Carlo Leone said in reference to President Obama's record..
State Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, said he does not believe McMahon has the experience to serve in the Senate and has not told voters what she will do to solve problems. "When will she actually start to articulate meaningful solutions to the problems we have?" McDonald said. "She's got no public record." McDonald and other Fairfield County Democrats have in past years opposed fellow legislators' efforts to hike income taxes on households earning around $250,000, arguing they could be considered upper middle-class residents of the state.
"The President is in Connecticut today to put the administration's stamp of approval on Richard Blumenthal," McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said...

Your polling choices: Malloy, Foley and 'someone else'
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
September 15, 2010

Independent gubernatorial candidate Tom Marsh says his exclusion from today's Quinnipiac University poll is "unacceptable," but the poll's director says it is good polling practice.

Douglas Schwartz, the poll's director, said polls that prompt voters with a question about minor-party candidates get results that exaggerate their support.

Instead, Quinnipiac records the preferences of voters who say they intend to vote for someone other than Democrat Dan Malloy or Republican Tom Foley. In today's poll, the vote for "someone else" came to 1 percent.

Among unaffiliated voters, "someone else" got 2 percent.

Marsh can lay claim to any support registered in the name of someone else: He is the only other candidate for governor on the ballot.

Marsh, the first selectman of Chester, ran for the GOP nomination, then dropped out to run as the nominee of the Independent Party. He says he has been invited to participate in 10 gubernatorial forums this fall.

In an interview in March, he told the Mirror he is running as a small-town official frustrated with how local officials fare at the State Capitol.

"It all rolls down hill," Marsh said. "We're the tail on the dog here."

Marsh said he resented listening to legislators talk about a need to entice municipal officials to experiment with regionalization. He sees no one in Hartford with any business advising municipalities.

"The first thought was, 'I'm doing a lot of complaining. Why not give it a shot and get on the podium and say your piece?' " Marsh said.

By jumping to the Independent Party, a conversation that was going to end after the Republican State Convention in May has continued.

Stalking Craigslist
NYPOST
By JACOB SULLUM
Last Updated: 12:24 AM, September 8, 2010
Posted: 11:55 PM, September 7, 2010

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal may never have served in Vietnam (despite his recollections to the contrary), but he is a hero in the war on prostitution. Armed with nothing but sternly worded letters, indignant press releases and a seemingly inexhaustible store of self-righteousness, Blumenthal played a key role in pressuring Craigslist to shut down its "adult services" section, which he called a "blatant Internet brothel."

On Friday night, the online classified ad service replaced the hyperlink to the controversial section with a black rectangle labeled "censored." If Blumenthal has anything to say about it (and you know he will), no one will ever pay for sex again.

Strictly speaking, prostitution is none of Blumenthal's business -- and not just because consensual sex between adults, whether or not money changes hands, is beyond the proper scope of government. As Connecticut's Division of Criminal Justice explains on its Web site, the state's attorney general "has no jurisdiction whatsoever over criminal matters and no authority to prosecute criminal violations of the law."

Although fighting prostitution is not part of Blumenthal's portfolio as attorney general, it is part of his campaign for the US Senate, in which he portrays himself as a crusader who is unafraid to challenge "the biggest special interests." With an estimated $122 million in revenue this year, Craigslist is not all that big, but it dominates the online classified-ad business and runs one of the country's most popular Web sites.

Conflating prostitution with slavery and child rape, Blumenthal accused Craigslist of profiting from horrendous crimes. "We recognize that Craigslist may lose the considerable revenue generated by the Adult Services ads" if it closes the section, Blumenthal and 16 other state attorneys general wrote in an Aug. 24 letter to the company. "No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by Craigslist."

Blumenthal ignores both the law's role in fostering coercion and violence by driving the business underground and the protection that services like Craigslist can provide by allowing prostitutes to screen customers and avoid walking the streets. But to fully appreciate the audacity of his charge that money blinded Craigslist to the suffering of sex slaves, note that the company started charging for adult service ads in 2008 at the behest of law-enforcement officials. The idea was that fees would thin the section, while requiring a credit card and a valid phone number would deter criminal activity.

Craigslist also hired dozens of lawyers to screen ads for compliance with the company's terms of use, which prohibit "offer or solicitation of illegal prostitution." Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster reports that "more than 700,000 ads were rejected by those attorneys in the year following implementation of manual screening" in May 2009, while Village Voice Media's Backpage.com (where the ads are far more explicit) saw a big increase in business.

No doubt many of the masseuses, companions and erotic dancers advertising on Craigslist were still selling sex, but they were a little more subtle about it, which is all that the law requires of such ads. Look up "massage," "escorts" or "entertainment, adult" in a big-city phone book, and you will see ample evidence that Blumenthal's crusade is really a matter of taste.

As an "interactive computer service," Craigslist had no obligation to screen ads -- under federal law, posters are exclusively responsible for such content. By taking precautions that were bound to be less than completely effective, the company invited further demands from bullying busybodies like Blumenthal, who deemed last week's capitulation merely a "step in the right direction."

The ads that offended Blumenthal already have begun migrating to other Craigslist sections (which are unscreened and generally free) or to less fastidious competitors. As company founder Craig Newmark remarked about a CNN ambush interview aimed at revealing him as a virtual pimp, "The point was what?"

PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE OR TWO?

Coyote killed in Rye Brook confirmed rabid
Stamford ADVOCATE
Debra Friedman, Staff Writer
Published: 11:03 p.m., Wednesday, September 8, 2010

A coyote shot and killed by Rye Brook police in New York Monday was confirmed rabid Wednesday by the Westchester County Department of Health. It is the first report of a rabid coyote in Westchester County, officials said.

Police shot the coyote after it became aggressive toward a police officer and a coyote trapper who were trying to capture the animal following three coyote attacks on human that occurred Sunday. In one of the Sunday night attacks, a sick looking coyote lunged at a 2-year-old before her father, Jared Zuckerman, 28, of Greenwich, pulled her away and was bit in the back of his leg by the animal. A 14-year-old boy was also scratched by the coyote an hour earlier in Rye Brook, but scared the coyote away by hitting it in the face.

It was not clear Wednesday if the coyote killed was the animal involved in the attacks, but police said the coyote was similar in description and behavior. All three attack victims were treated in the hospital following the incidents and received rabies vaccines.

When administered early enough and before symptoms develop, rabies treatment is 100 percent effective, according to health officials. Once symptoms occur, in humans or animals, it is fatal.

Westchester County officials urge anyone who may have had contact with the rabid animal to contact the health department and seek immediate treatment. Officials said if residents notice any unusual or aggressive behavior of wild animals, they should contact their police department.

Greenwich father and daughter shaken after N.Y. coyote attack
Debra Friedman, Greenwich TIME
Published: 09:54 p.m., Tuesday, September 7, 2010

While authorities in Rye Brook, N.Y., believe they killed the coyote that attacked three people over the weekend, a Greenwich man who saved his daughter from the aggressive animal is still not sure how to feel about the turn of events.

"I don't know if I am relieved," said Jared Zuckerman, when asked how he felt that the animal was killed. "We've been told we are sharing nature and sharing spaces. I don't know what was going on out there."

It was around 8 p.m. Sunday night when Zuckerman took his two-year-old daughter outside to play on his father's driveway on Hillandale Road in Rye Brook.

"We were sitting outside at the bottom of the driveway of my father's house, kind of just playing and hanging out, when I caught something in corner of my eye," Zuckerman said. "By the time I turned around to look at (my daughter), it was lunging with its teeth (showing)."

Zuckerman said he grabbed his daughter, putting her underneath his arm and turned as the coyote growled and bit the back of his leg causing a superficial wound.

Zuckerman continued slowly backing away while making loud noises until he approached his father's garage and the coyote retreated to the backyard.

"It definitely shook me up," Zuckerman said. "I think it is unfortunate that any of it had to happen. You always want to feel safe in your own home. It is one of those things that definitely makes you more aware of what is going on."

Zuckerman and his daughter were two of three people attacked by the aggressive coyote Sunday night, according to Rye Brook police. A 14-year-old boy was also lunged at while he was playing at Eagles Bluff around 6:50 p.m., but scared the coyote away after striking it in the head.

The coyote believed to be responsible for both attacks was found Monday morning behind 257 North Ridge St. As police and a trapper attempted to catch the coyote, the animal displayed aggressive behavior and charged the officer, leading him to shoot the animal, police said.

The coyote appeared to be similar to the animal involved in Sunday's attacks, police said. The animal will be tested by the Westchester County Department of Health to determine if it is rabid, according to police.

The attacks took place three days after a Glenville resident reported encountering an aggressive coyote while running in her neighborhood. Donna Gaudioso-Zeale, director of the Greenwich Hospital's Center for Healthy Living, said a coyote came out of the woods and began following her on Thursday night. In defense, Gaudioso-Zeale started barking, growling and running after the coyote, which she said seemed to stop it from following her. The incident was reported to Greenwich Animal Control.

Lt. Kraig Gray, spokesman for the Greenwich Police Department, said he understood that the coyote problem in nearby towns could cause concern among town residents, but urged people not to panic, especially now that the coyote causing the trouble is dead.

"Coyotes are part of the natural landscape here, but people should continue to be aware of any out of the ordinary behavior," said Gray.

Animal Control officers said it is extremely rare for coyotes to act aggressively toward humans. The best way to avoid contact with coyotes is to keep food and small pets out of yards in the evening, police said.

Police first began issuing warnings about coyotes in June after two girls from Rye were attacked by a coyote during separate incidents. Neither girl was seriously injured, but the incidents prompted the city to start a trapping program.

Rye Police Commissioner William Connors said there is no way of knowing if the coyote killed Monday was responsible for the June attacks in his jurisdiction.

Connors said his department will continue to stay vigilant and he urged residents to do the same. "We've continued our trapping program," Connors said. "We urge people to exercise caution and take all the standard actions we've recommended in the past."

Gray said Greenwich residents should also follow previously released guidelines and never hesitate to call police or animal control to report aggressive behavior. "It is reasonable for people to be extra vigilant," Gray said. "If there are any sightings or issues, people should continue to call police."

Greenwich road runner bests wily coyote
Lisa Chamoff, Stamford ADVOCATE
Published: 08:42 p.m., Friday, September 3, 2010

GREENWICH -- When Glenville resident Donna Gaudioso-Zeale went out for a run in her neighborhood Thursday night, she got more than just exercise.

Gaudioso-Zeale, director of the Greenwich Hospital's Center for Healthy Living, found herself faced with a menacing coyote.

While Gaudioso-Zeale often hears and sees coyotes in her neighborhood, she said the one that came out of the woods on Glen Ridge Road near the Merritt Parkway seemed ready to attack.

Gaudioso-Zeale said she was concerned, especially after coyotes attacked two young girls in two separate instances in nearby Rye, N.Y., this past June, and because there's a bus stop on Glen Ridge.

With each step Gaudioso-Zeale took, the coyote followed. "When I backed up, it got more aggressive and I knew I couldn't outrun it," she said.

In defense, Gaudioso-Zeale started barking, growling and running after the coyote, which she said seemed to stop it from following her. Luckily, just as the showdown got intense, a motorist pulled up and Gaudioso-Zeale jumped into the car.

Gaudioso-Zeale later reported the incident to Greenwich police and animal control. Police spokesman Lt. Kraig Gray said area patrols likely will be informed.

Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the incident was "unusual, but not unheard of."

"Very often, it's cases where the people have a dog with them, and it seems like the coyotes are interested in the dog in particular."

There have been reports in recent years of dogs being attacked by coyotes in Greenwich. In 2003, three dogs in Riverside were killed by coyotes, including a bichon frise owned by pro football Hall of Famer Frank Gifford and his wife, Kathie Lee. Attacks on humans are rare, police officials have said.

Rego said there has been a gradual increase in the state's coyote population. "There may be a gradual change in coyote behavior where they're more habituated to developed areas," Rego said.

Police advise residents to call 911 if they witness a coyote attack. All other concerns can be reported to Greenwich Animal Control or the DEP's hot line at 860-424-3333.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
"Why didn't Eliot Spitzer run for the U.S. Senate?" Because he only wanted an excuse to go to D.C. Or maybe there was no seat available in New York (r)?

Amid Nasty Campaign, Politicians Take A Respite At Crocodile Club
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING, ckeating@courant.com
September 1, 2010

BRISTOL — Because Connecticut politics this year has become especially nasty, politicians welcomed a brief respite Tuesday with the restart of a light-hearted political roast.

The event was the 129th meeting of the Crocodile Club — a long-running luncheon that has traditionally attracted the top politicians in the state.

The club has been dormant since 2003, but politicians said that this year was the right time to resume the tradition because many insiders believe it is the most exciting political year in Connecticut since 1970 — which featured a three-way battle for the U.S. Senate and an open seat for governor when incumbent Democrat John Dempsey did not seek re-election.

The luncheon Tuesday drew about 400 people to the ballroom at the Lake Compounce amusement park, and they dined on the trademark menu — right down to the watermelon.

In an event similar to the famed Al Smith Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City that attracts presidential contenders, some of the state's top politicians sat on the stage and delivered speeches that were limited to five minutes. The two gubernatorial contenders — Republican Tom Foley of Greenwich and Democrat Dannel Malloy of Stamford — delivered remarks, along with their respective running mates, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton and state Comptroller Nancy Wyman.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has attended the luncheon dating to the late 1980s when he served in the state legislature, worked the crowd before delivering jokes and offering self-deprecating humor later in the program.

"I'm here without subpoenas,'' Blumenthal told the crowd. "I noticed a few of you were not laughing.''

"When I left my house today, I told my wife, Cynthia, that I was coming here and that I was going to be funny,'' said Blumenthal, who is often known for his formal nature. "She started laughing hysterically, and my bet is that she is still laughing.''

Known also for his long hours, Blumenthal mentioned that he has been campaigning everywhere for the U.S. Senate — at fairs, parades, senior centers and other venues.

"Just this week, I went to two job openings, three can openings and four garage openings,'' Blumenthal said.

"I just want to say that of all the places I have been, I have to confess that I have never been invited to a professional wrestling match,'' Blumenthal said as the crowd laughed. "And I thought for sure I would get an invitation this year. But, oh well, it's not really my cup of tea, anyways.''

Blumenthal then sat down and listened to his opponent — Republican Linda McMahon, who had been seated next to him in the front row on the dais.

McMahon, a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive, stepped to the lectern and said that Blumenthal could attend "any WWE event any time'' that he chooses.

"You don't have to be invited,'' McMahon told Blumenthal. "You just have to purchase a ticket.''

McMahon then said that she had been reading recently about what Republicans had been saying about President Barack Obama.

"They said his popularity is dropping,'' McMahon told the crowd. "They said he was political kryptonite for Democrats. They said they never wanted to see him set foot in this state. Oh, I'm sorry, these were the John Droney notes.''

That was a reference to the former state Democratic chairman who had said recently that Obama has been damaged politically and should not come to the state as the headliner at a fundraiser for Democrats.

She continued by saying, "As was mentioned, I am Linda McMahon, and some of you might have seen some of the mailers that I have sent out. But contrary to popular opinion, I am not running for postmaster general. I am running for United States Senate.''

"I've spent so much money on this campaign that Ned Lamont told me I should be governor,'' McMahon said as the crowd laughed.

McMahon added that it was fitting that the attendees had gathered to raise money for the carousel museum on Riverside Avenue in Bristol.

"I love carousels. Don't you?'' McMahon asked. "They remind me of Democrats — just going round and round and round and never seeming to get anywhere.''

McMahon said she was surprised to see Blumenthal on the stage.

"Howdy, stranger,'' she said. "When I looked around and saw Dick sitting here today, I thought, this must be the political equivalent of Groundhog Day — except that Dick came out of his bunker, saw his shadow and we've got eight more weeks of campaigning.''

The annual Crocodile Club meeting had been dormant due to the retirement and eventual death at age 86 of the longtime organizer, J. Harwood "Stretch'' Norton, but organizers resumed the event Tuesday with the permission of Norton's family.

State Republican Chairman Christopher Healy, who was sitting on the dais, said in an interview that it was a fine idea to restart the Yankee tradition.

"We need more of these collective events in which we can have a few jokes at our own expense,'' Healy said. "Politics should be more fun than it is. It's a small state, after all.''

The emcee was radio personality Ray Dunaway, who first attended the luncheon back in the early 1990s.

"People just like tradition in this state,'' Dunaway said. "It's been eight years. Stretch really was the event. It was all about Stretch.''

Stretch Norton was the great-grandson of the original founder, Gad Norton, who started the club in 1875 in an effort to thank lawmakers who had passed legislation to change the boundary line between Southington and Bristol. That maneuver placed Norton's property in Bristol and allowed him to vote there, which prompted a long-running dispute between the towns and caused some Southington officials to boycott the Crocodile luncheon even 100 years later.

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant

Abortion Issue Runs Through Some Key Connecticut Campaigns
By DANIELA ALTIMARI, altimari@courant.com
8:34 PM EDT, August 22, 2010

Abortion is a surprising subtext in a number of key political campaigns in Connecticut this year.

No one expects the outcome of any race to turn solely on the issue, especially in an election cycle dominated by the economy. Yet the success of several candidates who oppose legalized abortion in this reliably blue state has galvanized activists on both sides of the divide.

The shift is most visible within the Republican Party, where traditional Yankee moderation on social issues has not held sway with a number of GOP candidates on the issue of abortion. Among those clear about their anti-abortion stance are Martha Dean, a candidate for attorney general, and Mark Boughton, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. Dean and Boughton both beat primary opponents who support abortion rights. (On the Democratic side, abortion foe Michael Jarjura lost his party's nomination for state comptroller to Kevin Lembo, who was endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut.)

"'In Connecticut, traditionally the Republican voter has been pro-choice,'' said Jillian Gilchrest, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, "but this is a different kind of campaign and a different kind of election year.''

The success of Dean and Boughton prompted Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, to call 2010 "a breakthrough year for the pro-life movement'' in the state.

"Connecticut is not going to elect a Henry Hyde or a Rick Santorum in the next year or two,'' Wolfgang said, citing two widely known anti-abortion advocates on the national level. "But there is movement in our direction. … Below that veneer of New England Republican enlightenment, there is still a wellspring of pro-lifers to be found."

'Not A Side Issue'

Dean handily beat back a challenge from her fellow Republican, the NARAL-endorsed Ross Garber, to win the party primary earlier this month. She said she does not expect her anti-abortion stance to play a major role in her race against Democrat George Jepsen, who favors abortion rights.

"This is not an issue for the attorney general's office,'' Dean said. "Abortion policy is under the exclusive purview of the legislature.''

But, she added, it's not a side issue, either. "I would never characterize life as a side issue,'' Dean said. "I think voters want to know who candidates are as individuals. They want to know about their personal beliefs. I've been very open about who I am out of respect for the voters. I've been open about a variety of issues I have no impact over as attorney general. It gives voters an insight into your character, it gives them some insight as to the thinking process you go through."

Although Dean's stance is clear, others walk a more delicate line. Republican Linda McMahon, a political newcomer running for U.S. Senate, defines herself as "pro-choice, with a caveat." She supports requiring minors to obtain parental consent before undergoing an abortion and also favors a ban on a medical procedure known as "partial-birth abortion."

McMahon has been lobbied by both opponents and supporters of abortion rights. Woody Bliss, chairman of the Connecticut chapter of the Republican Majority for Choice, has spoken with her several times and plans to meet with her again soon. The group had donated to the campaign of her now-vanquished GOP opponent, Rob Simmons, a strong advocate of abortion rights.

Whenever Bliss meets with a candidate, he says, he tells that candidate that more than 70 percent of state residents define themselves as "pro-choice.''

"I counsel them: 'You may have religious convictions or [whatever] but that dog doesn't hunt in Connecticut,' '' Bliss said. "We try and sit down and talk to them, especially newly running candidates, and become a source of information to them [and] educate them.''

Wolfgang, too, has met with McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. "She may be a harbinger of things to come in the abortion issue,'' Wolfgang said. "Simmons staked out a position so extreme on abortion that all Linda McMahon had to do was be a little to the right of him.''

Yet Wolfgang said he is in "watch and see mode" when it comes to McMahon's candidacy. "She reached out to me early and often and she's running one of the most professional campaigns I've seen,'' he said. "The questions that linger have to do with the WWE and its effect on the popular culture."

NARAL called McMahon "an untested wild card" and has embraced her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal.

Himes-Debicella Race

The abortion debate is likely to resonate strongly in the state's 4th Congressional District, home to an affluent base of voters who tend to favor fiscally conservative, socially moderate candidates. Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, who favored abortion rights but also opposed "partial-birth abortions," represented the district for more than two decades before losing to Jim Himes in 2008.

Both Himes and his current GOP opponent, Dan Debicella, identify themselves as "pro-choice." But the Himes campaign senses softness in Debicella's support for abortion rights. When he served in the state Senate, Debicella was one of three senators to vote against a bill requiring all hospitals, even those run by the Catholic church, to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.

"I think the Himes campaign will want to highlight that vote,'' said Gilchrest of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut.

Himes is doing just that.

"Dan Debicella's vote against making emergency contraception available to rape victims is radical and wrong,'' said Himes' campaign manager, Mark Henson. "The economy is our main focus, but that's not the only area where Debicella is wrong for southwest Connecticut: he votes against the environment, he votes against consumers, he's against Wall Street reform, and he votes against the interests of women and families."

Suburban women are a key voting bloc in Connecticut, and a new group affiliated with the Himes campaign aims to capture their support. Himes "is also a firm believer that women should have complete control over their reproductive rights, without interference from politicians or government,'' states a press release announcing the creation of the group, Women for Himes.

Debicella's campaign manager, Jason Perillo, accused the Himes camp of misrepresenting Debicella's views.

"Jim Himes is trying to draw a distinction between himself and Dan Debicella that doesn't exist in order to distract voters from his failures on the economy,'' Perillo said. "Dan Debicella has been a strong advocate for women. He co-sponsored laws that help police departments convict rapists and that double the minimum sentence for abusive spouses. He is pro-choice. He proposed legislation to increase funding for rape crisis centers and increase breast cancer care funding.''

Debicella won kind words, if not the endorsement, of the Family Institute's Wolfgang.

In Wolfgang's view, Debicella isn't the perfect candidate. But the Family Institute's goal is "to build a bench of serious candidates who are pro-life, or open to the pro-life message, who can eventually get to Congress,'' he said, citing as examples Debicella and Republican Sam Caligiuri, running for Congress from the 5th District.

Wolfgang said he is aware of the realities facing Connecticut candidates who run on a platform that opposes rights to an abortion.

"A sure-loser, pro-life candidate who says all the right things then goes down to noble defeat won't save a single unborn life,'' Wolfgang said. "But a Caligiuri victory, even a Debicella victory, can. That's why 2010 is such a breakthrough year for the pro-life movement in Connecticut.''

Silly season about to start: Polls are tight, campaign funds uncertain in Conn. races
New Haven Register
By Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor
moleary@newhavenregister.com
Sunday, August 22, 2010

Enjoy the cessation of telephone robo-calls, campaign literature overflowing your mailbox and diving for the mute button to block out those endless television ads. The peace and quiet is not likely to last long, now that the contenders for the governor’s race and U.S. Senate contest are lined up at the starting gate. The voters eventually will tune in and, unlike the intraparty fights, there are real difference between the candidates who want to lead the state and those eager to replace U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd in Washington.

Less than a quarter of the eligible Democrats bothered to participate in the primary voting earlier this month, and just under one-third of the Republicans did. Taken together, those 309,283 residents are only about 15 percent of registered voters, but they determined the main contenders in the fall. As expected, Republican Linda McMahon easily beat two GOP opponents, while former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy soundly defeated his Democratic opponent, Ned Lamont, by surging from behind in the last few weeks of the campaign.

The only unknown is how much money will flow to Connecticut in attempts to sway the electorate. The U.S. Senate race, in particular, is being projected as possibly the most expensive in the nation’s history. It is also the first Connecticut race unfolding after the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave corporations the same status as individuals, allowing them to support issues directly from their coffers.

“The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee will be weighing in, just as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, MoveOn.org, the whole circus is going to be here,” predicted Scott McLean, chairman of the political science department at Quinnipiac University.

McMahon already has put $24 million of her own money into her campaign. She is willing to increase that to $50 million. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate, has raised some $3.5 million, $483,000 of it from political action committees, and is only beginning to campaign seriously.

McMahon can be expected to keep hammering at misstatements by Blumenthal on his service during the Vietnam War and his decision to take PAC money, which he avoided as attorney general. The Democrats will have things to say about McMahon’s leadership at World Wrestling Entertainment, the misogynistic themes it is said to have promoted and the steroid investigations into the business. National pundits such as Charlie Cook and Chuck Todd are predicting a close Senate race here and a heavy investment in the expensive New York media market, which McMahon entered during the primary.

The latest Rasmussen Report has Blumenthal at 47 percent to 40 percent for McMahon. It has the race in the leaning Democratic column, dropping it from a solidly Democratic win.

“Our opponent is trying to buy herself a Senate seat, spending a record-breaking $50 million for a negative campaign,” said Mindy Myers, Blumenthal’s campaign manager. “People want more than the politics as usual she’s offering.

“All the money in the world can’t hide the fact that she made her millions at the expense of the health and safety of her workers and by peddling violence and sex to children.

“We expect to be outspent in a tight race, but we’re not going to be outworked. Dick Blumenthal has a record of standing up for the people of Connecticut against even the most powerful special interests, and people know they can count on him to stand up for them in Washington. That’s going to make the difference.”

Shawn McCoy, deputy communications director for McMahon, put the campaign in a different light.

“Connecticut voters are deeply worried about the economy, and they are looking for a senator who knows how to put people back to work. Dick Blumenthal has rapidly dropped in the polls because he’s admitted he doesn’t understand why unemployment is so high, he’s never created a job and he thinks lawsuits create jobs.

“Linda is a proven job creator who has the real-life business experience we need to get our economy moving,” McCoy said.

In the governor’s race, Malloy now is guaranteed $6 million to spend in a little over 10 weeks, up from the $3 million basic grant he qualified for in the general election under the Citizens Election Program.

The General Assembly, controlled by Democrats, made the change Aug. 13, overriding Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s veto, after the courts threw out a trigger mechanism tied to high spending by candidates not in the election program. Under the original program, Malloy counted on getting up to $6 million in increments, depending on the amount raised by Foley, who decided not to participate in the program. Malloy got $2.5 million in public campaign financing for the primary after raising $250,000 in contributions of no more than $100. The Citizens Election Program is an attempt to end special interest contributions, encourage grass-roots involvement in elections and level the playing field for those challenging wealthy candidates.

Foley, a multimillionaire from Greenwich, lent his primary campaign $3 million and raised $799,354, with individual contributions of up to $3,500, to win in the three-way primary contest. He recently said he will spend what it takes to get his message across by Nov. 2, but there is an unanswered proposal that both candidates keep the spending to $3 million if they agree not to run negative ads. A major fundraiser for President George W. Bush — he raised at least $100,000 for the president — Foley is not expected to have any problems gathering the money he needs, which leaves open the question of how expensive the governor’s race will get.

In the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, Rell spent $4 million at a time when she already had high name recognition and was extremely popular. She easily beat her Democratic opponent, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., who spent $4.7 million. Republican John G. Rowland, with Rell as his running mate, spent $6.6 million in the 2002 election and $6.9 million in 1998.

It is not know if direct corporate spending will play a role, in addition to traditional PACs and other independent campaign spending by interest groups.

Dave Levinthal, communication director for the Center for Responsive Politics, said there has been little in the way of outside groups weighing in, “but that doesn’t mean they won’t come in September and October.”

Having a lot of personal money to put into a campaign doesn’t always guarantee success. The prime local example is millionaire Lamont, who outspent Malloy in the Democratic primary 4-to-1, with $8.6 million of it his personal money, and yet lost by 16 percentage points.

Tyler Evilsizer, lead researcher at the National Institute of Money in State Politics, said an institute study found that self-funders had an extremely poor success rate: Only about 11 percent won races from 2000 to 2009. Based on data collected prior to May 2010, that trend appears to be continuing.

Incumbents usually win 92 percent of the time, but if they are self-funders that drops to 73 percent, according to the study. The institute said self-funders bet on themselves to the tune of $925.1 million in the last decade, representing about 12 percent of campaign spending. Those who provided the majority of the money for their campaigns represented only 8 percent of candidates.

Beth Rotman, head of the Citizens Election Program, said there were almost no expenditures by independent groups in 2008, and only a handful in the last governor’s race, in 2006. But, given all the open seats this year, “if we are going to see them play a healthy role, we’d see it now,” Rotman said. She said it’s good that, in the governor’s race, Foley and Malloy should be on an equal footing.

McLean agreed that, in Connecticut, “money isn’t everything,” noting McMahon had to spend $24 million to get 49 percent of the primary vote when only 30 percent of eligible Republicans showed up at the polls — an expensive endeavor. He foresees the national Democratic Party coming to the assistance of Blumenthal to help against McMahon. “Blumenthal and Malloy are going to have more than enough to run competitive campaigns,” he predicted.

Jennifer Duffy, however, in her analysis in the Cook Report, said that given the size of McMahon’s financial resources, the Democratic Party will be limited in what it can send Blumenthal’s way, balancing it against other candidates’ needs in this important midterm election.

“It’s possible that an outside group could get involved on Blumenthal’s behalf, but there are no signs of that yet. Blumenthal is personally wealthy, but he has shown no interest in spending his own money on the race at this point. Ultimately, he may not have a choice, if Democrats can’t or aren’t willing to make a significant investment here,” Duffy wrote.

NOTE: No tie on Tom Foley a week later!
Odd couple on Republican ticket covering new ground
CT POST
Published: 01:16 p.m., Friday, August 13, 2010

Here are some thoughts while waiting for the primary losers to cart off their lawn signs, so we can reclaim partial vistas of our summer flora.

Who said that the (so-very-male) pretenders to political glory in Congress and the governor's office have to wear ties, as if they were on job interviews?

Yeah, they are kind of looking for employment, or at least job titles.

But wasn't it decided a long time ago that voters identify more with people who look like themselves? Doesn't that explain the whole Linda McMahon-as-viable-candidate scenario?

Do the image makers -- you know them as the people who have softened McMahon, the zillionaire crotch-kicking P.T. Barnum of our time, into a thoughtful grandma so very concerned about our futures -- really think we want to see our top-of-the-ticket candidates wearing ties on the hottest days of the year?

Pity the poor, perspiring Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, saying howdy to the line workers at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford after their shift last Wednesday afternoon.

If it wasn't 100 degrees, it was close enough for government-contract work and there's the one-time anointed Democrat, the master of one-minute receiving-line schmooze, wearing a tie.

It was such a long distance from last January, back when there were ice floes on the Connecticut River down past his backyard and Chris Dodd announced he was retiring from the U.S. Senate.

Blumenthal trumped him in the same news cycle, proclaiming he would seek the seat he had coveted for so long, back more than 20 years, when Sen. Joe Lieberman proved the state attorney general's office was a stepping stone to the Senate.

Dodd's proclamation broke up such a huge log jam of Connecticut Democrats, for a while, but they and their lawn signs are littering Connecticut's Boulevard of Broken Political Dreams.

Ned Lamont, now a four-time elective-office loser, wore a tie in his concession speech when he lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz was hoist with her own petard, an old phrase from Shakespeare that, by the way, means blown up with your own small bomb.

Desiring of Lieberman's anticipated 2012 vacancy -- surely he's unelectable now and ready to make big bucks on K Street -- via Blumenthal's attorney general job opening, Bysiewicz was flummoxed when the state Supreme Court said she failed to meet the required years of legal practice.

By then, she couldn't even fight for her current job, because House Majority Leader Denise Merrill, sensing that the state budget crisis is going to be so very gnarly next year, bailed out of the Legislature and is running for secretary of the state.

Blumenthal, who's been in recovery mode for months since McMahon fed The New York Times that video of him remembering someone else's Vietnam experience, just couldn't loosen up and join his blue-collar Pratt brothers and sisters with an open shirt.

Sheesh. Who can I blame? Those high-price image consultants who have only 13 weeks now to make Blumenthal more electable, while McMahon, with nothing to lose but 50 million bucks, romps throughout the state, spreading campaign cash like fairy dust.

I guess it's time to say that both McMahon and Blumenthal -- and Lamont, for that matter -- are from Greenwich.

Dannel Malloy, the former 14-year Stamford mayor who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, was another one who resorted to the suit and tie the morning after his victory. And he keeps wearing the same green ties, over and over and over.

The day after winning the GOP gubernatorial nomination, Tom Foley, the zillionaire corporate takeover artist from, yes, Greenwich, showed up at O'Rourke's Diner in Middletown Wednesday lunchtime wearing, yep, a suit and tie, as Brian O'Rourke himself was flipping eggs-over-easy on the blazing sidewalk.

Foley, showing signs of the inexperienced politician, didn't have a public schedule the day after defeating Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele of Stamford by a fragile 3 points.

Foley's booby prize is Fedele's running mate, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, who, like Fedele and indeed, Malloy, participated in the voluntary public-financing program.

Foley, who has written personal checks to his campaign totaling at least $3 million, is now in the position to continue dissing the funding program that got him his running mate.

Since this is the first time that the governor's race has used the financing program of 2005, much new regulatory ground needs to be broken. It seems to me that Boughton may not even be able to show up at Foley fund-raising events, because the public-financing law prohibits it.

Maybe Foley can get Boughton working for him behind the bar at his next cocktail fundraiser, or planting "Foley-Boughton" lawns signs in the hinterlands. But he'll have to wear a tie.

UNITED STATES SENATOR: Linda McMahon v. Dick Blumenthal

SEN. BLUMENTHAL DOES FANCY BOOKKEEPING, TOO. LIKE "" OF THE DEBT!!!
In this contest, there is no incumbent, only millionaires. Hey, after the dollar is worth zip, we'll all be millionaires!

Check this out!
Blumenthal joins the ranks of self-funded candidates
Deirdre Shesgreen, CT MIRROR
April 28, 2011

Sen. Richard Blumenthal has joined the ranks of self-funded candidates--those who use their own money for all or a substantial portion of their campaign treasury--albeit unintentionally, according to his latest campaign finance report.

Blumenthal lent his 2010 Senate campaign slightly more than $2.5 million, of some $8 million spent. He was forced to reclassify most of that as a contribution, however, by a federal law that requires repayment of candidate loans within 20 days of the election. Only $250,000 is exempt from the law, and is still on the campaign's books as a debt.

"Quite honestly, there were efforts to raise money during that [20-day] period but it wasn't enough to pay the loan off," said Michael Cacace, Blumenthal's campaign chairman in the 2010 contest.

Asked if Blumenthal realized that was a potential outcome, he said, "We knew what the law was and we were hopeful that we would raise the money to repay him." He said Blumenthal will try to raise donations to repay himself the rest of the loan--the $250,000 that he's allowed to carry over--in the next several months.

Blumenthal's staff said he was unavailable Thursday.

Connecticut's 2010 Senate campaign drew national attention over the self-funding issue, but not because of Blumenthal's loan. Republican candidate Linda McMahon, co-founder of the WWE wrestling entertainment empire, poured $50 million of her own cash into the race, making it the most expensive Senate contest in the nation last year.

Even as McMahon pumped her own millions into the race, Connecticut Republicans raised questions about Blumenthal's loans because the total amount he put up was more than his reported net worth. The total value of Blumenthal's assets, according to his financial disclosure form, was between $599,000 to $1.36 million.

Blumenthal's wife Cynthia, a member of the wealthy Malkin family, reported assets of between $55 million to $107 million. But she was limited, like any other individual donor, to giving her husband only $4,800 for the election.

Republicans raised questions about whether Blumenthal had lied on his financial disclosure forms or was somehow illegally funding his campaign--an assertion Blumenthal's aides sharply dismissed.

They noted that the financial disclosure forms don't take into account certain assets, such as a candidate's home. And Maura Downes, Blumenthal's campaign spokeswoman, later said he had borrowed against the value of his house.

Cacace elaborated on that for the first time Thursday, saying Blumenthal transferred his interest in the Greenwich house that he and Cynthia own to his wife. She then paid him the value of that share, which he pumped into the campaign.

"He transferred his interest in the marital home to his wife, who paid him his share of the house," Cacace said. That allowed him to make the loan.

"It in point of fact was very much the lion's share of his net worth," Cacace said.

Scott Brown campaigns for McMahon
Scott Brown comes to Milford as living proof that Senate hopes of longtime AG can be dashed
By Ted Mann, New London Day Staff Writer
Article published Oct 10, 2010

Milford - U.S. Sen. Scott Brown told several hundred supporters of Linda McMahon at a midday rally in front of City Hall Saturday that they have a "great chance" of replicating his feat: defeating a Democratic attorney general to gain a Republican seat in the Senate.

"She's right here," he said to a crowd of roughly 250 supporters, pointing back at McMahon, the Republican who is waging a tough campaign against Democrat Richard Blumenthal.

Brought to Connecticut to invigorate Republican voters and independents, Brown held rallies with both McMahon and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Foley on Saturday, and he did his best to amp up the crowd.

"I'm ready to get down and do 50 (pushups) right here," Brown exclaimed, after he and McMahon entered the rally as a disc jockey played the theme from the movie "The Natural." "I am pumped."

McMahon is attempting a reprise of the coup Brown pulled off in a special election in January: upsetting a once-favored, longtime Democratic attorney general for election to the Senate.

McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, is facing off with Blumenthal, while Brown knocked off Martha Coakley, the attorney general in Massachusetts, to win the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. McMahon told the crowd that she had been written off in the early going, after the popular Blumenthal jumped into the race when Sen. Chris Dodd announced he wouldn't seek re-election.

"He was a shoo-in, and nobody even gave the state of Connecticut a second thought," she said. "Well, look what's happened."

McMahon has closed Blumenthal's once wide lead into a dead heat in some public polling, though a series of recent polls released in the last several weeks showed Blumenthal maintaining a nearly double-digit advantage.

McMahon's campaign staff, however, was brimming with confidence before the rally began, and have said they expect a tough fight to the finish on Nov. 2. McMahon emphasized her background in a brief speech, declaring, as Brown did in winning his election in Massachusetts, common cause with average voters.

"I connect with the people of Connecticut," McMahon said. "I've walked in your shoes."

Her backers must not be "complacent," she added, urging those at the rally to vote for her, and to tell 10 friends each to do the same.

"We need to take control of our country and our government again," she said.

Cheers and chants

The crowd was spirited as they listened to an array of warm-up speakers, capped by a plea for participation from David Cappiello, a former state senator who is McMahon's campaign manager.

When McMahon and Brown emerged from the City Hall doors and approached the podium, there were loud cheers and chants of her first name, while a smaller group of Blumenthal supporters in the back of the crowd booed.

The rally was remarkably brief. While supporters were already beginning to gather two hours before the candidate appeared, Brown spoke for just five minutes, and McMahon for only seven.

The crowd also heard from Jim Beringer, a Vietnam veteran who said he was motivated to volunteer for McMahon after reports that Blumenthal has at least several times stated that he served in Vietnam during the war. Blumenthal was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve; he did not serve overseas. Blumenthal has apologized for those remarks, which he characterized as rare and isolated misstatements.

"There is no confusion in my mind about where I was in that tour," Beringer said of his experience in Vietnam. "And I have never misspoken about my military service."

There were counter-protesters, too, including union carpenters holding a "Carpenters for Blumenthal" sign, and others who held signs denouncing McMahon's record as an employer and the tea party movement.
"Tea Party = racism," one sign said, while another alluded to the steroid scandals that have plagued the WWE. "Steroids ain't vitamins," it read.

But the vast majority of the crowd was made up of McMahon supporters such as Benigno Deju, who stood with a blue "Linda" sign held high over his head. Deju is a native of Cuba, he said, who returned to the country as a believer in Fidel Castro's revolution, but fled two years later, dispirited by life under Communism. Like others at the rally, he said he believed that the Obama administration's efforts to reform health care and the financial sector represented a move in the direction of socialism.

"I vote for freedom, and anything to stop the destruction of this country that's happening now," he said. "I would be for anyone who is against what this president is trying to do."

Tom Scott, a former state senator and radio host, took aim at Obama, but also at Blumenthal. He compared the attorney general to the small plastic man atop a wedding cake. Blumenthal is like "a plastic figurine, a phony," Scott said. To re-elect him, he declared, would bring on "six long years of Chris Dodd II."

The crowd booed.

Sen. Scott Brown to campaign for McMahon
Ted Mann, New London DAY
Article published Oct 1, 2010

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., will campaign for Republican Linda McMahon later this month as she seeks to duplicate his feat: knocking off a formidable Democratic attorney general in a race for the Senate.

The McMahon campaign announced Friday that Brown would campaign with McMahon in Milford on Oct. 9. Brown had already announced plans to campaign in the state for Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Foley. McMahon is facing off in a tight Senate contest with Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Brown defeated Massachusetts A.G. Martha Coakley in January in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of longtime Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Climate change: Candidates differ on causes, vague on cures
Deirdre Shesgreen, CT MIRROR
September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON--Linda McMahon and Richard Blumenthal differ sharply on a range of environmental issues, starting with the big one: climate change. But neither of the U.S. Senate candidates has a strong position on what should be done about it.

Their differences begin with the basic question of what causes global warming, a phenomenon that many scientists say is linked in large part to the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Such pollution is caused by, for example, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal.

McMahon, the Republican nominee and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, says the "science is mixed" on what has caused global warming, although she does not dispute that the climate is indeed changing.

"I just don't think we have the answers as to why it changes," she said. "I'm not a scientist, so I couldn't pretend to understand all the reasons. But the bottom line is we really don't know."

Blumenthal's take? "The science is irrefutable," said the state's Democratic attorney general. "And we would be irresponsible to ignore it."

When it comes to possible solutions, things get murkier. Congress tried, unsuccessfully, to tackle this issue last year with a broad climate and energy bill that included a controversial cap-and trade system. The House-passed legislation aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting caps on emissions and outlining a regulatory framework that would allow companies to buy and sell pollution "allowances."

The goal of the bill, which included many other energy-related provisions, was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent (using 2005 levels) by 2050.

Soon after the House passed that legislation, Blumenthal joined with other attorneys general in signing a letter that called the House bill a "strong foundation" for legislative action and calling on the Senate pass its own climate bill. The letter mostly urged the Senate not to pre-empt stronger state laws limiting greenhouse gas emissions and addressed other state implications, but it also generally calls for an aggressive approach to the issue.

The cap-and-trade legislation, and other scaled-back versions with weaker approaches to reducing greenhouse gases, has completely stalled in the Senate.

McMahon said she strongly opposes any cap-and-trade bill and argues that Blumenthal's expressed support is tantamount to backing a national "energy tax." That's shorthand for the GOP's contention that the proposal would result in increased utility bills and other energy expenses, as companies seek to cover the costs of a new regulatory system, such as purchasing pollution permits or implementing new technologies to reduce their emissions.

The Congressional Budget Office concluded the House bill would cost the average household $175 a year by 2020, but some critics have suggested that is a low-ball estimate that doesn't take into account more aggressive caps in the legislation's later years.

"I don't believe at this time, given where we are with our economy, that cap-and-trade is the right thing," McMahon said. But she was vague about what steps she would favor, suggesting only that she might support offering government incentives, such as tax deductions, for companies that voluntarily purchase and install the technology to reduce emissions.

Blumenthal sharply rejected McMahon's suggestion that he supported an energy tax. "She is using phony numbers concocted by right-wing think tanks designed to scare people and protect the special interests," he said, referring to the conservative Heritage Foundation's analysis of the House-passed bill.

But when asked whether he still supports the climate change bill, Blumenthal said: "We should avoid a false debate about legislation that is dead."

He said he would support "reasonable and sensible measures to stop the pollution that causes climate disruption" but declined to say what kind of control on carbon emissions he would support.

Blumenthal instead said he would push for a comprehensive energy policy that promotes "green energy jobs and technology, as well as making polluters pay." He said in particular he would promote a legislative approach that rewards Connecticut for its reliance on cleaner energy sources, such as nuclear power and natural gas.

Ambiguities notwithstanding, the two candidates' positions on climate change reflects a broader split in their outlook on the environment.

As attorney general, Blumenthal has a track record of suing corporations and government agencies to win strict enforcement of environmental laws. He clearly supports an aggressive federal and state regulatory system.

McMahon, by contrast, recently identified the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy as two agencies that might be bloated and in need of scaling back. And in her economic platform, she calls for the "review and repeal" of all federal regulations that "inhibit growth," although she doesn't identify any specific rule she'd like to see repealed.

These big-picture differences play out on a host of environmental policy questions.

Blumenthal and McMahon, for example, sharply diverge on the question of offshore drilling. Blumenthal said he supports the current moratorium on deepwater drilling, put in place by the Obama Administration in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He noted that it's not a permanent ban, just a temporary halt until "we determine what caused the BP disaster, so we can learn from it and avoid making the same mistake again."

McMahon said she opposed the moratorium, arguing that it's "stopping any and all production and taking jobs."

Recent news reports have suggested the economic impact of the moratorium has been limited so far, but Gulf Coast officials fear continuing it until its scheduled Nov. 30 expiration could increase the toll.

Asked what steps might be taken to avoid a similar mishap, McMahon said the drilling rigs should be "re-inspected and re-certified to make sure they're not cutting corners on safety issues" and then allowed to get back to work.

Furthermore, McMahon said, the government should allow a significant expansion of offshore drilling and energy exploration in other parts of the U.S. "I believe that as part of a national energy policy, as well as energy independence, we should as a country explore our natural resources in an environmentally responsible way," she said.

That includes, for example, drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which foes argue would destroy a pristine wildlife habitat and supporters say would provide an immense oil boon without environmental damage.

Blumenthal said the idea of opening ANWR for oil exploration "reflects a looking-backward approach" to energy policy. "There are no jobs for Connecticut in ANWR," he said. "There are jobs for Connecticut" in new technologies, such as fuel cells and renewable energy sources, like wind and solar.

More generally, Blumenthal said his support for offshore drilling would depend on "where, how, and what would be done." He called for better federal oversight of any such drilling efforts, noting that the Interior Department's failings helped in part to pave the way for the BP disaster.

There are at least two environmental issues where Blumenthal and McMahon's positions converge: nuclear power and renewable energy. Both say the federal government should foster an expansion of these two energy sources, favoring, for example, loan guarantees to help the nuclear energy industry construct new plants.

On the politically and logistically difficult question of how to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste, McMahon said she is "not an expert" and isn't sure of the best solution. Blumenthal said he would support sending nuclear waste to the federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, although that project has been long stalled and may well be dead. (The current Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is from Nevada and opposes it, as do many other lawmakers who would see nuclear waste being transported through their states on the way to the Nevada site.)

If the federal government finds a more suitable site, "so much the better," said Blumenthal. "But right now, Connecticut is bearing the cost and ... the risk of storing casks of waste at Millstone."

On renewable energy, McMahon said the federal tax code should be "aggressively supporting" innovation in this field. Similarly, Blumenthal says he would push for "clean energy business zones," that provide tax credits, grants and other assistance to clean-energy companies.

No matter who wins in November, these issues are likely to be at the top of the 112th Congress's agenda, since lawmakers have punted and stalled on everything from a climate change bill to renewable energy proposals to a BP oil spill response in this Congress.

Blumenthal as outsider: Running away from Obama, congressional Democrats
Mark Pazniokas, CT MIRROR
August 17, 2010

Richard Blumenthal distanced himself Monday from the Obama administration and the state's Democratic congressional delegation with a forceful denunciation of Washington in a speech to the Connecticut AFL-CIO in Hartford. The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate was cheered as he arrived, but his anti-Washington theme drew little applause from a labor audience that had warmly greeted the man Blumenthal hopes to succeed, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd.

"People just think Washington isn't working for them," Blumenthal said. "It's preoccupied with the special interests. It's gridlocked by partisan acrimony. Washington isn't listening, and Washington isn't working for ordinary people."

In January, Blumenthal entered the Senate race hours after Dodd's retirement announcement by offering a testimonial to the five-term senator. But on Monday he did not mention Dodd, who spoke to the AFL-CIO delegates earlier in the day.

"If there were awards for being duplicitous, Dick Blumenthal would be a gold medalist," said Chris Healy, the GOP state chairman, who says Dodd has "afforded Blumenthal every courtesy and political consideration."

Blumenthal's remarks were a continuation of a theme he's been sounding in recent days. Dodd said he wasn't bothered by Blumenthal's criticism of Washington and, by implication, of him as the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a key player in helping pass President Obama's legislative agenda.

"No, I understand politics," Dodd said. "I just think there is a danger in all of that, because you've got to get a vote out. You've got to get your base out."

Dodd said Obama gets too little credit for the passage of landmark legislation, such as the health-care and financial-services reform bills, or helping stabilize the economy with stimulus spending that helped Connecticut balance its budget.

"An awful of worthwhile things have happened in the past 20 months, and I'm not sure anybody knows about it," Dodd said. "And if you don't talk about it, don't count of the other side talking about it."

Dodd said that Democrats in this year's mid-term election cannot count on anything close to the turnout that Obama generated in 2008, when Democrats won all five U.S. House seats in Connecticut.

Blumenthal did not soften his rhetoric when told of Dodd's cautionary remarks.

"Sen. Dodd and I agree on many things, but we also disagree on many things," Blumenthal told reporters. "I'm not reluctant to say that I've never been a part of Washington. I've never been an insider. And I'm happy to be running to stand up for ordinary people."

Blumenthal is trying to follow Joseph I. Lieberman's example of using a record as an activist attorney general as a springboard to the U.S. Senate. Lieberman served six years as the state's first full-time attorney general before ousting Lowell P. Weicker Jr. from the Senate in 1988. Blumenthal was elected as attorney general in 1990, ramping up the profile of the office with an aggressive approach to class-action lawsuits and public relations.

"Connecticut is a small state, but we've led national battles, because I've boxed above my weight by reaching out to members of other parties and to independents, as well as to Democrats," Blumenthal said. "That is my persona. That's in my DNA. And I m going to remain a fighter for the people of Connecticut, first, last and always."

He is opposed by Republican Linda McMahon, whose $22 million budget to win the GOP nomination was more than Dodd has spent on campaigns in his Senate career. McMahon did not speak to the AFL-CIO, whose leaders say they invited her by letter and email. McMahon's staff say they could not find an invitation.

Ed Patru, the communication director for McMahon, said even before Blumenthal's AFL-CIO speech that he was pandering by casting himself as a political outsider.

"Ever get the sense that Dick Blumenthal is willing to say just about anything to get elected - no matter how absurd and unbelievable?" Patru said in an email to reporters, calling him a "big-government liberal" suddenly trying to sound like a conservative Republican.

Healy was sharper in his criticism after reading of Blumenthal's remarks.

"Dick Blumenthal believes if he just counts to three and says, 'I am not a career politician, I am not a career politician, I am not a career politician,' he will be delivered as a freshly scrubbed populist who is fed up with the partisan politics and grid-lock of Washington, D.C.," Healy said.

Blumenthal says he would have opposed the Trouble Asset Relief Program that bailed out Wall Street. He also objects to the stimulus package as doing too little to help the middle-class.

"I believe that the stimulus was wrongly structured, because it failed to provide jobs and paychecks to ordinary Americans. It unfortunately was inadequately designed to invest in infrastructure, in roads and bridges and schools," Blumenthal said.

Asked how the state could have balanced its budget given the influx of stimulus money for Medicaid, education and other programs, Blumenthal said, "That's an entirely separate question. I would have opposed the stimulus as it was structured."

Connecticut is ready to rumble
NYPOST
By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Last Updated: 5:10 AM, August 15, 2010
Posted: 1:10 AM, August 15, 2010

Of this season’s crazy, contentious, wide-open Senate races — in Ohio, Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada — none is as wild as what’s going on in Connecticut. In one corner: Democrat Richard Blumenthal, 64, state attorney general since 1991 and favored to win, up by over 40 points in the polls until this spring, when he was caught lying about having served in Vietnam. In the opposing corner: Republican Linda McMahon, 61, until last fall the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), billionaire and political neophyte.

Since spending $22 million of her fortune, McMahon beat out GOP contenders Peter Schiff (campaign slogan: “Schiff Happens” — seriously) and former congressman and decorated Vietnam vet Rob Simmons, who’d been drafted by the party to run. Ultimately, he lost the party’s backing — to McMahon — for the primary. Simmons suspended his cash-poor campaign in May, then re-entered a few weeks ago, showing up at Connecticut commuter hubs and passing out potholders, a sadly literal example that, for him, there was no issue “too hot to handle.”

McMahon won Tuesday’s primary with 49% of the vote and has since shrunk Blumenthal’s formerly capacious lead to 7 points. She spent three hours on Wednesday morning, beginning at 6 a.m., sitting in front of a camera, doing interviews via satellite with outlets nationwide. She has suddenly become a political supernova, one to watch, and she has done it by positioning herself as the quintessential outsider, sick of politics as usual, quid-pro-quos, the ever-expanding reach of the federal government.

And mailers. Lots of mailers.

“I got interested after getting 20 or 30 of them,” says Rick Wagner, a middle-aged independent. He and his wife Carole, a Republican, have come to hear McMahon address a small group of voters and businesspeople at the Chamber of Commerce in Simsbury, a suburb of West Hartford in which everything — from law offices to Starbucks — is housed in gut-renovated, centuries-old white clapboard houses. Except for a vagrant by the side of the road asking drivers to “pull over to impeach Obama!” everything is eerily orderly. The men are well-moisturized, the women well-manicured, the 50-something hostess in a headband and “Mad Men”-style sundress. Yet the 12 or so people in this basement office — stuffy despite two softly whirring fans on the floor — are very concerned.

What does Linda think about health-care reform? “I’d like to repeal it,” she says.

Illegal immigration? “I don’t believe in amnesty, but you can’t deport everyone,” she says. She’d like to see stricter fines and penalties for employers, maybe make illegals carry electronic key cards with them everywhere.

What’s the key difference between her and Blumenthal? “He’s clearly liberal big-government,” she says. “I’m clearly conservative small-government. It’s a real clear choice in that regard.”

On what committees would she like to serve? “Health, education,” she says. But what she’d really like is “to be involved with defense.”

She stands in the center of the room for nearly 40 minutes, in her sleeveless green watercolor-print dress, gold metallic flats, chunky stone necklace and expensively highlighted hair. She does not perspire, politely declines repeated offers of a glass of water. She is on-message.

“I hate the old, ‘I’ll do you a favor, you do me a favor,’ ” she tells the rapt group. “It should really be about: What’s the right thing to do?”

Linda McMahon and her husband, WWE founder Vince McMahon, live in Greenwich. Born and raised in North Carolina (she still speaks with a southern drawl), she met Vince when she was just 13; he was 16. By the time she was 18, they were married. Vince went to work with his father, a wrestling promoter, in Maryland, and Linda worked as a receptionist in a law firm. They had a son, Shane, in 1970. In 1976, when Linda was pregnant with daughter Stephanie, the McMahons filed for bankruptcy.

“We were just starting our wrestling promotion business,” she says today. “Our house was auctioned off. I used food stamps for one week. I said, ‘I’ll find some other work.’ We rented a house and had a couple of friends who loaned us their credit cards. We just sucked it up. It built character. It taught us lessons that we never forgot.”

More than 30 years later, she is said to be buying herself a Senate seat.

“When I’m being outspent 9 to 1, it’s out of control,” says her former challenger Rob Simmons, a few days after the primary. “We’re only 3 million people in Connecticut. Spending $24 million to get to the primary — nobody has ever spent that amount of money on any race here.”

Simmons raised $3 million in all, and says he was told by party bosses that they were backing “self-funders” such as McMahon because “they didn’t want to overtax their voters” for contributions. Connecticut hasn’t had a Republican in the Senate since 1988, and Chris Dodd’s announcement that he was retiring, coupled with Blumenthal’s Vietnam blunder, suddenly put the seat in play. “I’ve always felt the primary qualification for the Senate,” Simmons says of his ex-opponent’s abilities, “is to get elected.”

There is much in common between McMahon and Blumenthal: personal wealth, political connections, the attempt to come across as a renegade operating outside the system, ready to make entrenched pols on the Hill hear the American people and heed their demands.

Yet Blumenthal began working in DC in 1969 for the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He later clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. His wife comes from wealth that rivals McMahon’s, her family has real estate holdings that include the Empire State Building. As of this week, however, he said that he would not be using personal money to fund his campaign.

Nor is McMahon the outsider she proclaims to be. Along with her husband, she has donated to candidates of both parties, but their biggest donation, for $15,000, was to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Such donations, she says, were born “primarily of relationships you have with — for instance, part of my Democratic donations were to [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel, whose brother Ari is the president of William Morris Endeavor Agency in California. He has represented the WWE for years and years and years. So Ari would call and say, ‘My brother’s running for office. Would you mind making a contribution?’ Fine. Or, ‘My brother’s going to be in town, would you sit down with him?’ So it was a personal, business relationship there.”

The McMahons’ closeness to various lawmakers came under scrutiny when the WWE was the subject of a congressional investigation after wrestler Chris Benoit killed his family, then himself, in 2007. The investigation focused on the use of steroids, drugs and on general safety practices within the organization, which is unregulated. Two years later, the committee said that the WWE hadn’t taken proper measures regarding steroid use, but there was no substantial fallout.

“Linda pats herself on the back for having deregulated the industry,” Mike Benoit, Chris’ father, told The Post. “The thing is, Linda’s the CEO of a company that’s got the worst health-care record in North America.”

“The relationships they built with Congress saved them,” says Chris Nowinski, a former WWE wrestler and friend of Benoit’s. It was Nowinski who convinced Mike Benoit to have his son’s brain tissue tested. The coroner found that Benoit had suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy — also common in boxers and football players, in which repeated head trauma results in progressive degeneration of the area of the brain that governs impulse control.

“Many other athletes who have been diagnosed with this disease have committed suicide or become violent,” Nowinski says. Those in the WWE, he says, are further jeopardized by the company’s employment practices: Every single wrestler, from the $500-a-week cub to a WrestleMania superstar, is hired as an independent contractor. That means no health insurance, no eligibility for unemployment or Medicaid or worker’s comp. The McMahons pay for in-the-ring injuries — they covered Nowinksi’s $20,000 operation to put his nose back together — but sick wrestlers often find themselves dropped from the organization.

“When I sat down with Linda — she’s a nice person,” Nowinski says. “But given the decisions they’ve made with workplace safety, it’s hard to believe that they care.”

As for culture-war stuff — the opposition going after the WWE for its admittedly salacious, sometimes offensive content — McMahon has the ultimate rejoinder: Even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned on televised WWE events.

Campaign-wise, McMahon has learned from both Clinton and Obama. Just as Clinton did during her initial run for Senate, McMahon has embarked on what she calls her “listening tour,” popping into local shops and speaking at intimate events, soliciting the concerns and feedback of the electorate. Her website and its operations are nearly identical to Obama’s in 2008: she even has a URL, MyLinda2010.com, that echoes Obama’s MyBarackObama.com.

As Obama was, she is fond of saying her tour will allow voters to “kick the tires a little bit,” see what she’s about, and that this campaign will be won as a “grass-roots effort” with “boots on the ground” and volunteers going online, downloading scripts and voter phone numbers, making campaign calls from their homes.

Perhaps most like Obama, she is seen as a candidate whose ambitions outstrip her experience, who is buoyed by charisma and confidence, who is vague on the issues and needs to study up. She supported Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, she says, “but I don’t get the briefings. I’m still not sure.” She thinks the health-care bill should be repealed but also that “there is a group of people who don’t have access to health care, and we should look at how to provide that without totally recreating our health-care system.” McMahon remains a staunch supporter of off-shore drilling, but we should “make sure that safety measures are in place, make sure that companies are not going to be cutting any corners.”

McMahon says that she and Blumenthal have so far agreed to three debates, but that he has not yet responded to an invitation to appear with her on “Meet the Press.” The Connecticut Senate race is one of a handful that the venerable Sunday show would like to highlight, given its weird, tumultuous course. There is also the very real chance that the Connecticut race — like those in Nevada, California, Ohio, Florida and several others — turn control of the Senate back to the Republicans. (More likely, however, is the Republicans gaining control of the House — though loss of such key Senate seats and the ouster of majority leader Harry Reid would be a direct rebuke to the president and the Democratic Party.)

Though McMahon very likely could become the junior senator from Connecticut, it’s hard to discern what’s animating her decision to enter politics now. She doesn’t speak of political heroes, or moments of change or unrest that altered her political consciousness, or thinkers that she agrees or disagrees with, or a specific policy or injustice that she feels compelled to try and change. Her children are grown; her husband absent the night she won the primary, “in California producing his TV show, where he is every week.” Perhaps she is bored after decades running the WWE; perhaps she is running because, based on name-recognition and finances, she just can.

When McMahon first thought about running, she says, she never considered a state seat. Why not run first for, say, the House of Representatives, which will likely go to the Republicans this year anyway? “Well . . . I think that . . .” She pauses. “The Senate is where I want to be,” she says. “I’ve done business all over the country and several parts of the world. The Senate is the place I would prefer to be.”

U.S. CONGRESS, 4TH DISTRICT: Dan Debicella v. Jim Himes

4th Congressional District Debate Oct. 24, 4-5:30pm at Wilton High School - issues
In this contest, Jim Himes is the incumbent - however, his opponent, Dan Debicella got to the Lunch Box first! Remember the independent thinker former Congressman Chris Shays? Mr. Shays was defeated last time by Mr. Himes. At left, Chris Shays.

Himes, Debicella square off again in Fourth District
Posted on 10/24/2010
By TOM EVANS, Hour Staff Writer

WILTON

Domestic issues were on the table on Sunday afternoon in a candidates' debate at Wilton High School as Republican Dan Debicella continues to challenge Rep. Jim Himes, the Democratic incumbent, for his seat in the 4th Congressional District.

Sunday's debate, held at the Clune Performing Arts Center, was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wilton, Norwalk, Stamford, Weston, Westport, Bridgeport Area, Darien, Fairfield, Greenwich, New Canaan, Redding and Ridgefield.

Kay Maxwell, currently the executive director of the World Affairs Forum in Stamford, served as moderator Sunday. Maxwell, who served as the 16th president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, read questions from the LWV as well from the roughly 200 people who gathered Sunday.

A couple of dozen sign-carrying supporters from both camps engaged in verbal jousting outside the building before the debate. Democrats chanted "keep Jim Himes" while Republicans shouted over the "keep" with "heave."

Social Security was the first topic on the agenda, and Himes said there is "tough work to do," especially when dealing with $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Social Security, and another $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities in the Medicare system.

"Seniors rely on this money, and we rely on the promise of a Social Security system that will have money when we retire," Himes said. "Personally I will look at the retirement age because we live longer. People who are wealthy and live on a high income may be asked to scale back their Social Security payments. One . . .
of the things Dan and I agree on is that there should be no privatization of Social Security."

Debicella said one of the benefits of Democracy is making a choice every two years "and I think I've got better solutions."

"Two things I would rule out when dealing with Social Security are privatization and raising taxes," Debicella said. "We don't need to slash Social Security benefits. In 1983, both parties came together for moderate changes. We can't divert Social Security money. We have to make the promise of Social Security one that continues to be kept."

Debicella took the first crack at a question about cap and trade as a means to reduce pollution.

"The cap and trade act is an energy tax," Debicella said. "Companies will sell the energy at higher prices to you. We have to get off foreign oil. The government is not good at picking winners or predicting the future. Solar (energy), fuel cells can all help us get off foreign oil and help the environment."

Himes was quick to point out that "nowhere is the gap between Chris Shays (whom Himes defeated for the 4th seat in 2008) and Dan Debicella wider than on the environment.

"Dan Debicella has the single worst record of any congressman the last 10 years," Himes said. "I believe our reliance on foreign oil is one of the most significant threats to our security. (Debicella) is someone who says climate change is irrelevant."

Despite distinct differences, the two candidates have some common ground, including a woman's right to choose.

"I grew up with a single mom, and I've seen up close the challenges women face," Himes said. "I've watched friends and family struggle with the (abortion) decision, and that's a decision that should be made by a woman facing that crisis, not by white men in suits."

Debicella clarified his position on rape contraception, saying he would not require any Catholic hospital to carry the kits, nor would he force any Catholic doctor to go against his faith in performing an abortion.

"I believe every woman has the right to do with her body what she will," Debicella said. "I believe everyone has the right to emergency contraception. I don't want the government telling women what to do with their bodies."

While Debicella does not support a military draft, and he is in favor of troop draw-downs in Afghanistan to follow those in Iraq, he wants to be sure Al-Qaeda camps have been dismantled and the Taliban cannot again rise to power.

"I want no nation building in Afghanistan," Debicella said. "But we must make sure Al-Qaeda is not re-forming in failed states like Yemen and Somalia and Pakistan."

Himes also does not favor a draft, but said he is "intrigued by the idea" of his congressional colleagues having to make military deployment decisions when their sons or daughters are among the troops.

"What if we all had a stake in going to war?" Himes mused. "Maybe all those decision-makers would not have been so quick to go to war in Iraq if their children (were drafted). Afghanistan is a complicated and antiquated society, and we need just enough presence there to go after Al-Qaeda. We can use the money to Afghanistan for nation-building right here."

On the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of sexual orientation in the military, both candidates said the lifestyles of these heroic men and women should not be an issue and the discriminatory policy should be removed.

Debicella was first up to handle a question about "WikiLeaks," where possibly sensitive military information, including troop movements, has been released to the public.

"This kind of leaking is abhorrent," Debicella said. "A responsible press corps that has information that puts troops at risk doesn't release it. If they do release this information, they can and should be prosecuted."

Himes' response was "ditto."

Himes-Debicella: Much to agree on, but lots of room for debate
Uma Ramiah, CT MIRROR
October 24, 2010

It wasn't so much the issues that divided Jim Himes and Dan Debicella at their Sunday night debate. Instead, the two 4th District Congressional candidates took shots at each others' voting history, campaigns and even integrity.

"Let's mark 15 minutes as the first time Jim Himes has lied to you today," said Debicella, in response to the claim that the League of Conservation Voters had rated his environmental record the worst of any state senator in Connecticut in past ten years.

"Our national energy policy should be the same as our national environmental policy, which is we need to get off of foreign oil," said Debicella, a state senator and the Republican nominee. Instead, he would encourage government incentives for research into alternative energy, whether natural gas, fuel cells, solar.

"Dan is trying to wear the coat of Chris Shays," said Democratic incumbent Himes, referring to his moderate Republican predecessor. "Shays was an environmental hero," he said, and Debicella is the opposite end of the spectrum.

But Himes also supported government investment in solar and alternative energies as a method of job creation. As the campaign has unfolded, Himes and Debicella have disagreed strongly on issues including health care and the stimulus. Himes defends the health care bill, though with reservations, while Debicella calls for its repeal. Debicella calls the stimulus, which Himes supported, ineffective and "pork-filled."

But on Sunday night, the candidates actually agreed on a variety of issues. Both candidates called for transparency in political advertising. Funding sources should be disclosed, they said.

"We are now seeing hundreds of millions being spent by shadowy groups," said Himes, who said recent Supreme Court rulings on campaign finance were a step back for the country.

Debicella agreed. "We shouldn't have anonymous ads attacking him or me or anyone else."

But then it was back to the ring.

"Jim doesn't need it, he does a great job of attacking me all on his own. He doesn't need a third party coming in and doing it." Debicella continued, saying Himes had received donations from both Wall Street and what he called "Big Labor."

"Dan, if you're going to climb into the mud pit, and we both agree that it's a mud pit, don't try to stand up and say you're a little bit cleaner," said Himes in response. "Is it true that you got thousands of dollars from Exxon Mobil?"

"Yes it is," said Debicella.

"Thank you," came the swift reply.

Though League of Women Voters moderator Kay Maxwell was strict with the "hold your applause" rule, cheers broke out on this and other occasions - typically after a direct attack. The candidates generally agreed on abortion, each one supporting a woman's right to choose.

"The decision should be made by the woman in question and not by white guys in suits on Capitol Hill," said Himes, to another unsanctioned burst of applause.

"I don't want government telling women what to do with their bodies, and I don't want government telling faiths what they should do either," said Debicella.

"Don't ask, don't tell," the U.S. policy towards gays serving in the military, was up next. It, too, was a non-issue.

"It is utterly inconsistent with what this country is," said Himes.

"Fully agree. Anybody who wants to serve in our military; gay, straight, black, white man or woman, you are a hero, period," said Debicella. "'Don't ask, don't tell' is discriminatory and it should be removed."

This wholehearted agreement, without caveat, was met with roaring applause and a friendly handshake between the two candidates. Even Maxwell was impressed.

"Equal applause on that one, I'll let that slide," she said.

And on the issue of Wikileaks, the candidates were again in complete agreement.

"This kind of leaking is absolutely abhorrent," said Debicella. "Anything that puts our troops at risk should not be leaked to the general public. Wikileaks, which is now completely unaccountable, is now leaking this info," he said.

"We live in an open society but that society has limits when you put people in danger," he finished.

The response from Himes was short: "Ditto."

The candidates also agreed on the basics of how to fix education and immigration. Both touted the example of charter schools and praised "Race to the Top," the most recent attempt at public school reform which rewards achievement with funding. Throughout the night, Himes agreed that government doesn't always get it right, but pointed out ways in which it has spurred economic growth and helped stem the recession - from the development of the Internet to the recent finance regulation bill.

But Debicella disagreed. "The government can't pick winners," he said.

"The government is not good at predicting the future," he continued, referring to investment in energy, technology and even job creation. This was a common refrain and a point of disagreement throughout the night.

"The difference between us," said Debicella, "is that you think the government creates jobs, and I think private sector does."

After otherwise unremarkable closing statements, a personal note:

"I want to break a couple of rules here, " said Himes. "Tonight is Dan Debicella's birthday and I'd like to ask for a round of applause for him."

The audience cheered. Debicella turned 35 on Sunday.

"What a way to spend your birthday," said Himes, shaking Debicella's hand.

Security issues dominate debate
Elizabeth Kim, Greenwich TIME Staff Writer
Published: 10:20 p.m., Thursday, October 21, 2010

STAMFORD -- Though the debate centered on foreign policy, the real sparring between two candidates for the Fourth Congressional District was on the economy, stimulus and personal character. On questions related to Mexican drug cartels and China, Republican challenger state Sen. Dan Debicella, R-21, managed to squeeze in his criticism of Democratic incumbent Jim Himes for his support of the administration's stimulus program, while Himes sought to stress signs of recovery and associate his opponent with the failed policies of Republican President George W. Bush.

"If you believe we are getting it right, then Jim Himes is your man," Debicella told the Holiday Inn audience of several hundred spectators Thursday night.

Sponsored by the World Affairs Forum, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, the debate between Himes and Debicella lasted roughly 90 minutes and featured a relatively loose format intended to foster a debate on global issues. The questions came from forum and audience members. But beginning with the opening question, it became clear that both contestants were more focused on articulating their domestic agendas.

Asked about the recent clash along the Mexican border that resulted in the death of an American, Himes began by noting consecutive growth in jobs as well as GDP. Similarly, given his first chance to rebut Himes, Debicella returned to his refrain of calling Himes a "rubber stamp" politician and saying the stimulus had not worked. Debicella has instead proposed lowering spending as well as cutting the payroll tax in half.

Himes said the stimulus had not solved the recession but had been "part of turning the economy around," adding, "You don't fix that in 20 months." He also warned that the magnitude of spending cuts suggested by Debicella would affect the funding of Medicare.

On matters of foreign policy, the candidates were generally in agreement with some minor differences in approach. Both agreed the United States should start to renew its relations with Cuba and continue to engage China as well as tap into its market. One topic where the two differed was the war in Afghanistan, with Debicella arguing for a "slow and measured drawdown" along with the defeat of Al Qaeda.

In a break from President Barack Obama, Himes, who traveled to Afghanistan last year, said, "Our mission there is wrong. The Taliban are not the enemy. The enemy is Al Qaeda and they are in Pakistan."

On the issue of immigration, Debicella broke ranks with members of his own party.

"My party gets this wrong a lot," he said.

Citing the experience of his in-laws from Argentina, he said, "It is too hard to come to this country."

He added: "You need to make legal immigration easy for the people who want to come here and live the American dream. Toward the end, the attacks seem to turn personal, with Himes taking issue with Debicella's alleged misuse of facts. He took strong offense at the suggestion by Debicella that he was not a strong supporter of Israel.

"Frankly it says something about your character," Himes said.

For the most part, the audience seemed to enjoy the barbs. During the course of the evening, the moderator several times reprimanded them for clapping and cheering.

In 4th CD, a two-sided debate over health care reform
CT MIRROR
Deirdre Shesgreen and Uma Ramiah
October 1, 2010

With the public still deeply divided over health care reform and some pundits saying it's politically toxic, it's hard to find any Democrat in a competitive re-election race who is talking up the new law. Except, that is, in Connecticut's 4th Congressional District.

Rep. Jim Himes, the Democratic incumbent facing state Sen. Dan Debicella, R-Shelton, has not shied away from his vote in favor of health care reform. Himes mentioned it, albeit obliquely, in one of his early TV ads, and last week the freshman congressman sought to draw attention to Debicella's call for repeal of the health care overhaul.

Debicella, too, seems to be taking a slightly different tack on the health reform than some his Republican counterparts. While he has embraced the GOP's vow to repeal the law, Debicella has a few caveats that go with that campaign pledge.

To be clear, neither candidate is making health care reform the No. 1 issue of the campaign. Both say they talk about jobs and the economy far more often. But health care is still playing a significant role, as voters sort out the impact of the law and as Himes and Debicella seek to define each other in the final weeks of the campaign.

In other contested House and Senate campaigns around the country, the only Democrats talking about the health reform law are those who voted "No," proudly touting their opposition to a key Democratic accomplishment. Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to make the health overhaul symbol of Democrats' "Big Government" agenda, labeling the law "Obamacare."

"Few Democrats are talking about health care reform proactively, even in the muted way that Congressman Himes is doing," said Frederick Yang, a Democratic pollster who is working for congressional candidates across the Midwest and the South this election. "I think especially this year, Democrats are trying to run localized campaigns, and this is clearly a national issue."

But across the 4th District's politically and economically diverse terrain, voters are still talking and thinking about the overhaul.

Katherine Homberger, of Norwalk, says she'll vote Republican this midterm election because the health care bill seems unreasonable to her. "I think it's too expensive," she said. "How are they going to pay for it?"

Another Norwalk resident, Edward Olius, said he backs the law unequivocally. "I have insurance, but [other] people don't. How can we not help these people, who can't even get in to see doctors?"

Debicella said it's usually the second or third issue to come up in his conversations on the campaign trail. For his part, Himes said he has raised it in part because many voters are still so uncertain of what was in the health care bill, and how it will affect them.

Even so, both candidates seem to be treading carefully on health care, while accusing each other of distorting the real impact of the law.

Himes, for example, does not offer a full-throated endorsement. While the law's provisions to expand coverage to the uninsured and to crack down on insurance industry abuses are very strong, Himes said, he's not sure how well the cost-containment measures will work.

"I have always been very upfront with my critiques of the plan, and there's lots of uncertainty," Himes said. "It's going to be up to us to implement the cost-savings measures over time."

But whatever the law's flaws, Himes said, he thinks his constituents would rather see Congress improve the law than repeal it.

And his campaign clearly saw a political advantage in focusing on the more immediate elements of health care law last week, when several of the insurance industry reforms went into effect. Those included a ban on insurance companies' ability to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults to stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26, and a prohibition on life-time caps on insurance coverage.

"Dan Debicella wants to REPEAL those reforms," blared an email from the Himes campaign.

Debicella says that's not true. Yes, he supports scrapping much of the health care law, but not all of it. He specifically supports keeping those new protections, which he said Democrats timed to go on the books just before the election.

The elements Debicella opposes would not come into play, for the most part, until 2014. Those include the mandate that individuals purchase insurance, the federal subsidies to help cover the cost, and the new health exchanges where people will be able to shop for their insurance plans.

Debicella argues that the subsidies and other measures will hurt the vast majority of Americans who already have private insurance, just to help the few who do not--an argument Himes' sharply rejects.

"The biggest thing I hear [from voters] is that they don't like the law because they don't think it's going to help them, and these are middle class folks," Debicella said. "There's a better way to focus on cost reduction."

Debicella said he would fully back Republican efforts to de-fund implementation of the law and block regulations that he sees as harmful. But, he added, "I prefer the word replace," not repeal, when explaining his position. His substitute proposals include a tax credit to individuals to encourage the use of preventive medicine; tort reform to rein in the cost of medical malpractice insurance for doctors; and more use of low-cost programs like Connecticut's Charter Oak Plan.

How voters sort out these differences, and how much weight they give health care in this election, remains to be seen. Polls show an intensely partisan and deep split on law, along with a significant dose of confusion.

Yang, the pollster, said Himes's strategy of proactively raising the issue could help gin up the Democratic base in his district. But, he added, given the strong association between health reform and President Barack Obama, along with Obama's sinking popularity, it's not without risk.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
Will Rep. Himes appear at the Lunch Box Tuesday September 7? How many at "Brown Bag" lunch?

Rep. Jim Himes joins Weston first selectman for brown bag lunch tomorrow
Weston FORUM
Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Monday, 06 September 2010 00:00

Rep. Jim Himes (D-4th) will join weston First Selectman Gayle Weinstein for a brown bag lunch at Weston Town tomorrow, following a "tour" of businesses at Weston Center.

Brown bag lunches with the first selectman are usually held at noon on the first Monday of each month. But because of the Labor Day holiday on Monday, Sept. 6, Ms. Weinstein has scheduled the September brown bag lunch for Tuesday, Sept. 7, at noon in the Weston Town Hall Meeting Room.

The lunch is open to any Westonite who has a comment, question, or issue they would like to discuss with the first selectman, or with Mr. Himes. It is an opportunity to share ideas and thoughts in an informal setting.

Participants are encouraged to bring lunch.

Himes tries to use Shays' old playbook
Deirdre Shesgreen, CT MIRROR
August 25, 2010

WASHINGTON -- Chris Shays is not on the ballot in Connecticut's 4th Congressional District this year, but one of the candidates in the race is channeling the former Republican congressman's persona.

It's the Democrat who ousted Shays two years ago, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes. He is adopting his vanquished predecessor's sales pitch, proclaiming himself as New England's new maverick in Congress.

Himes' campaign has released a TV ad that portrays him as a moderate and the winner of the Aug. 10 Republican primary, state Sen. Dan Debicella of Shelton, as an extremist.

"After just two years, Jim Himes is New England's most independent Congressman," the ad's narrator says, touting Himes' support for budget cuts and health care reform before launching into a sharp critique of Debicella's voting record in the state legislature.

Political observers say Himes' strategy is no surprise -- though Shays finds it a stretch.

"This election will come down to Chris Shays' old voters," said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report. And a key question, Wasserman said, is whether those voters "like the course Democrats are taking or whether they are wary of one party-control" in Washington.

Gary Rose, chairman of the government and politics department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, noted that nearly 40 percent of the 4th District's voters are unaffiliated, the largest bloc.

"This election cannot be won by emphasizing one's partisanship," Rose said. The political middle "is where all the action is."

So it's no wonder that Debicella ran an ad in the primary, juxtaposing a photo of Himes next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and saying he votes with "party insiders" too much. Or that Himes responded in the dog days of August with the current spot that tries to starkly define both himself and Debicella. The battle lines have been drawn.

"The sweet spot of the 4th District is socially progressive, business-oriented, and fiscally responsible, and I think that describes me," Himes said. "It's an interesting question, if you put Chris Shays between me and Dan Debicella, who he would be closer to."

Indeed, just as Himes is eager to tout his record bucking the House leadership on federal spending and ethics issues, Debicella is also vying for a centrist label.

"I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-stem cell research, I'm pro-civil unions," Debicella said in an interview Wednesday, as he sought to counter Himes' ad calling him "reckless, radical and wrong for Connecticut."

The Himes ad cites Debicella's vote in the state Senate against extending certain health benefits, such as hearing aids for deaf children, but Debicella said he voted no because he opposed mandating insurance coverage, not because he was against those particular benefits.

"The whole question in this race is, are people happy with what's going on in Washington, D.C.?" Debicella said. "And if the answer is yes, then Jim Himes is your guy. On every single vote, he has been in lock-step with the Democratic leadership."

Himes says this is no replay of the 2008 race, where he narrowly beat a well-respected incumbent with a clear moderate voting record.

In the 2008 race, Himes said he found himself wooing Democrats who said they supported Shays because of his strong environmental record, his support for universal health care, and other such issues. This time, he doesn't expect to have that problem.

"Having run against Chris Shays ... I am gratified the Republicans have nominated an extremist," Himes said.

Clearly, "extremist" is not a moniker that Himes ever could have used against Shays. But Shays, for his part, said he doesn't think Himes can credibly claim his old maverick mantra.

"This doesn't even meet the laugh test," Shays said.

The source for Himes' ad is a Washington Post votes database, which shows that Himes voted with his party 94 percent of the time during the current Congress. That is indeed lower than other lawmakers in New England. (The next closest New England lawmaker is Rep. Paul Hodes, of New Hampshire, who has voted with his party 94.7 percent of the time in the 111th Congress.)

But, as Shays noted, every other House member from New England is now a Democrat, and 94 percent is still pretty high.

"That is not independence," Shays said, pointing to his own record of voting with his party about 70 percent of the time or less. (See this story for more on the Washington Post vote tally.)

Shays said he had been trying to stay mum about Himes' record, but now that he is using the New England moderate label, he plans to weigh in more forcefully in the contest. He is supporting Debicella.

Whatever Shays' role, the race is intensifying and will be closely watched.

Rose notes that in 2010, Himes won with considerable help from the coattails of Barack Obama, who drew thousands of extra voters to the polls, especially in the district's largest city, Bridgeport. Without him on the ticket, Himes is expected to be more vulnerable.

The Cook Report currently has the seat listed as likely to stay in Democratic hands, but the report's Wasserman said it will probably move into a more competitive category in the coming weeks.

"The noise level in this race has increased," generating more buzz at the national party committees, he said. "I still give Himes the edge, but I do think it's closer than a lot of people realize ... This is one of those next-tier races that could turn a big Republican year into a gigantic Republican year."

CT TOP OF THE TICKET, THE GUBERNATORIAL RACE:
Tom Marsh, Independent Party v. Dan Malloy, Democrat v. Tom Foley, Republican

Click on Gubernatorial Candidate to read CT MIRROR interview. In 2010 contest there is no incumbent. Underticket news here.

All over now! In case you missed it, play-by-play below, courtesy of the Hartford Courant
Dannel Malloy And Tom Foley Clash In Third Televised Debate; Final TV Debate Is Next Tuesday Night
By Christopher Keating on October 19, 2010 3:27 PM

In their third televised debate, Democrat Dannel Malloy and Republican Tom Foley clashed Tuesday in their race for governor over the state budget, binding arbitration and who was telling the truth about Foley's health care plan. With only two weeks left in the race, Malloy and Foley have been battling bitterly in negative television commercials and in debates around the state. In the first question, Channel 3 television anchor Dennis House asked how the candidates would close the state's projected deficit of $3.4 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, which will be facing the new governor as soon as he takes over on January 5 at the state Capitol.

"We're going to change direction by, first of all, changing the rules,'' Malloy said. "We're going to play it straight on the budget. ... We're going to have a plan to get out of and overcome the difficult times we're in.''

Foley, a longtime business executive, said he will solve the budget deficit by reducing spending, not increasing state taxes. He said he constantly hears "tales of woe'' from employers who complain about how long it takes the state Department of Environmental Protection to grant approval for various projects, which he said slows down economic development.

"We're considered one of the most business-unfriendly states in the nation,'' Foley said. "We need to solve our looming budget deficit.''

Foley responded that the state-employee unions "have had too much influence over policy'' in Hartford, and he pledged that that would change that influence if he wins on November 2.

Malloy, the Stamford mayor for 14 years, countered by saying that Republican governors have overseen Connecticut's policies for the past 16 years. Foley, though, placed the blame on the Democratic-controlled legislature for the state's policies over the same period. Regarding the debate's second question on health care, Foley said the new federal healthcare plan that was passed this year by the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama "will put tremendous burdens on states, including Connecticut.''

Healthcare spending in Connecticut is about $30 billion annually, including about $7 billion of the state budget for everything from prescriptions for prison inmates to nursing home costs, according to Foley.

Malloy countered that premiums for health care have gone up consistently over the past four years, adding that profits should be limited for the private-sector companies that handle various contracts for the state government. "This is a big difference between my opponent and myself. I think you need to root out excess profits,'' Malloy said. As he has said in the past, Malloy said he would never push for the removal of any mandates regarding health care, such as prostate screening. He attacked Foley's "core-needs'' health plan that has been featured recently in negative commercials by Malloy.

"Dan, as you know, I have not proposed anything that would remove health care coverage from anybody who has it in Connecticut,'' Foley responded. "You need to stick to the truth here.''

"You may have forgotten your healthcare plan, but I haven't,'' Malloy responded regarding Foley's plan that would be exempt from various mandates.

On the third question, Malloy offered a spirited defense of the state's binding arbitration system, saying that it has avoided strikes by police and firefighters.

"Dan's starting to sound like a union representative,'' Foley said, adding that he has not met any union leaders this year who want changes in the current arbitration system. "The people who are suffering from mandatory binding arbitration are the citizens of Connecticut.''

"Tom doesn't like mandates in health care and he doesn't like mandates'' in binding arbitration, Malloy said.

Foley then asked Malloy if he could prove that he had been untruthful about Foley's health plan "Would you apologize to the people of Connecticut for your untruthfulness?''

After Malloy started answering, Foley interrupted and said, "Dan, I asked you a simple question.''

The exchange eventually ended without a resolution, and the co-moderators moved on to the next question. The debate was held in a theatre at the Regina Quick Center For the Arts on the campus of Fairfield University.

The first two televised debates were major battles - dubbed by Foley as "the brawl at The Bushnell'' in Hartford and "the grapple at The Garde'' in New London. In between those two TV debates, the candidates clashed during a tourism forum in Hartford over which candidate had changed a bedpan more recently. Foley had criticized Malloy for walking a picket line with the District 1199 union members on primary day in August, and Malloy responded that he was trying to help women who change bedpans for $12 per hour.

Concerning privatization of state services, Malloy said, "I'm not a guy who runs to privatization.''

Foley said the state could save $25 million through the privatization of services at the much-criticized Riverview Hospital, which is run by state employees and costs more than $900,000 per student per year. Senate Republican leader John McKinney of Fairfield and Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein have both said publicly that Riverview costs too much.

"Dan has no significant proposals to reduce spending. He is going to raise your taxes,'' Foley said.

But Malloy said that many services are already privatized across state government.

"You know what Tom's plan is - to raise your property taxes,'' Malloy said.

During exchanges on education, the candidates outlined their views. Malloy touted his record in Stamford for pushing for universal pre-K education.

"Dan's leaving out an important fact and that is that Stamford has the largest achievement gap of any city in the state,'' Foley said.

"In 30 seconds, Tom made more misstatements about my record in Stamford than I care to count,'' Malloy said. "We need to make real changes, and I'm prepared to do it.''

Concerning high salaries at the University of Connecticut and the Connecticut State University system, Malloy said, "I think leadership begins at the governor's office. ... The idea that we would pay two presidents at the same time at the same university makes no sense. ... I support UConn. I support the four universities - Eastern, Western, Southern, and Central.''

Regarding excessive salaries and pensions of public employees, Foley charged that the Stamford fire chief retired with a pension of $264,000 per year.

"Actually, I'm dumbfounded. I don't know what fire chief he's talking about,'' Malloy said. "The fire chief I appointed is still on the job.''

Concerning massive traffic congestion that has clogged lower Fairfield County for decades, both candidates said that the state needs a better transportation plan.

"We've been kicking it around for years and doing precious little,'' said Malloy, whose city's office towers loom over the congested Interstate 95. After Grand Central Station in Manhattan, the main Stamford station is the second busiest in the Metro-North Commuter Railroad system.

"We need to clear accidents much more rapidly,'' Malloy said. "We need to develop more stations and more parking along those stations. .. We need to invest in the New Haven to Hartford to Vermont line. ... We absolutely need more parking spaces for those who would opt off I-95.''

He added that the equivalent of 1 million truck trips are avoided on Interstate 95 through the use of state ports.

Regarding three specific cuts, Malloy said the state should switch to generic drugs, cut electricity costs by $60, streamline school building projects to save hundreds of millions of dollars, and combine state departments and agencies. The state should also cut 15 percent of the estimated 600 positions that the governor controls. He also complained about the privatization of work at the Department of Transportation, which has been a huge bone of contention for years for union employees in CSEA/SEIU Local 2001.

"What I've said is I'll cut everything except the safety net,'' Malloy said.

"I'll put on a hiring freeze,'' Foley said, adding that it could save $100 million. "We will eliminate waste and duplication. ... We will use outside contractors wherever it is less expensive'' and quality is maintained.

The state could save as much as $600 million by moving patients from nursing homes to lower-cost, community-based services, Foley said.

The final question covered the Notre Dame football team's refusal to play in the 40,000-seat Rentschler Field in East Hartford against the UConn Huskies. UConn agreed to play in larger venues, such as the new Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey and the Patriots stadium in Massachusetts.

"I actually wasn't familiar with that decision,'' Foley said. "I think Connecticut is a great state. I don't know why they'd rather be in New Jersey than in Connecticut.''

But Malloy said he would have pulled the plug on the Notre Dame - UConn series if Notre Dame continued to refuse to play at UConn's relatively small stadium. Notre Dame consistently sells out its home field in South Bend, Indiana with 80,000 fans and a national television audience for every game.

"If I had been governor at the time, I would have pulled the UConn folks aside and said, let's find somebody else to play,'' Malloy said.

In his closing statement, Foley said, "Connecticut should be doing well, but we aren't. ... I'm an outsider. I'm a problem solver. ... I believe I can get employers to start hiring again. ... I will not raise your taxes. My opponent has no plan to reduce spending, and he will raise your taxes. ... I will come to Harvard, Hartford, excuse me, with no commitments. ... I am someone you can trust. I am not a career politician who will say anything to get elected.''

Malloy, in his closing, said, "I do fear that Tom wants to raise your property taxes, and that's his plan. ... I stayed at Boston College, where I met my wife, Cathy, who runs a rape crisis center. ... My mom was a nurse, and my dad sold insurance. ... I'm asking you for your vote. I'm asking you for your confidence.''

Conn. gov hopefuls spar over death penalty, TV ads
By SUSAN HAIGH (AP)
5 October 2010

HARTFORD, Conn. — The two major-party nominees for governor took aim at each other's resumes in a televised debate Tuesday and sparred over issues ranging from the state's death penalty to the looming budget deficit.

The live debate was held the day a man was convicted of the 2007 home invasion killings of a woman and her two daughters. The first question of the debate was about where Republican Tom Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy stood on the state's death penalty, which some lawmakers have been pushing to repeal.

Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford, said he supports abolishing executions in Connecticut only for future crimes. He said that wouldn't benefit Steven Hayes, who faces possible execution for the July 2007 slayings in Cheshire.

Foley, a Greenwich businessman and former ambassador to Ireland, said Hayes and his co-defendant, who's awaiting trial, likely would be successful in appealing death sentences if the state's death penalty law were scrapped because they could use it in their appeals.

"It's almost certain that Steven Hayes and his accomplice in this crime will not be put to death (if Malloy is elected governor)," Foley said.

Malloy said the longest-serving death row inmate in Connecticut has been facing his possible execution for 22 years. He said the state doesn't have "a workable" death penalty, and he told Foley "you can't assure anything is going to happen."

Hayes' attorneys have said they'll argue for a life sentence.

Tuesday's debate came as a recent Quinnipiac University poll gave Malloy a slight lead in the race to replace Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who isn't seeking re-election. An independent candidate, Chester First Selectman Tom Marsh, wasn't invited to participate in the debate, which was held at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and was sponsored by FoxCT and the Hartford Courant.

As with Monday's Senate debate, both major-party candidates were shown each other's recent critical TV ads. Malloy's spot accuses Foley of laying off workers and bankrupting a Georgia textile mill he once owned while receiving $20 million — accusations also made during the Republican primary.

Foley again vehemently denied the charges. He said his management company and its employees received compensation but he didn't know how much.

"You're misrepresenting what is happening," Foley said to Malloy in one of their many spirited exchanges. "Why don't you be truthful with the voters?"

"Tom, release the papers, that's all you have to do," Malloy shot back, adding how it was unfair of Foley "to walk away with $20 million when people lost their pensions."

Throughout the debate, Malloy tried to paint himself as an experienced, successful problem-solver who's well-versed in public policy. He accused Foley of being a rich CEO who's short on facts and unfamiliar with the problems middle-class families face.

Foley also tried to portray himself as a successful problem-solver with a proven record of turning around troubled companies. Given the difficult fiscal times, he said, Connecticut needs someone with his experience and skills. He frequently accused Malloy of being a career politician who has exaggerated his successes.

Foley accused Malloy of being too cozy with state employee unions, making it difficult for him to solve the state's budget deficit problems. Connecticut's projected $19.1 billion general fund budget for 2012 is predicted to be $3.4 billion short.

Foley said it's widely believed Malloy has made commitments to the unions not to lay off workers, a charge Malloy denied.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A glimpse of policies to come in Hartford?
Malloy proposes $50 million for development of ports. Candidate takes tour of harbors in New London, New Haven, Bridgeport
By Ted Mann New London Day Staff Writer
Article published Sep 22, 2010

New London - From the second-level cabin of the Cross Sound Ferry Co.'s high-speed SeaJet ferry, Democrat Dan Malloy looked out at the industrial banks of the Thames River.

The green petroleum tanks of the Hess Corp. The glittering office campus of Pfizer, soon to be occupied by workers for Electric Boat, the massive submarine manufacturer across the river. Past the bridge, the drydocks of the Thames River Shipyard, still protected on their upriver side by the wooden skeletons of old schooner hulls, there to break the momentum of ice floes that don't come rushing down the river anymore.
And right in the center of it all, the State Pier, the central infrastructure of the deepest of Connecticut's three commercial ports, which Malloy says he can help revitalize if voters make him the state's first Democratic governor in a generation.

Malloy, with running mate Nancy Wyman and local politicians and business owners in tow, bounced from Bridgeport to New Haven to New London Tuesday, brandishing a new proposed port development plan that would redirect $50 million in already authorized state borrowing to fund infrastructure improvements and partnerships with private enterprise to spur development in the port cities.

And the plan would do so without any new spending, Malloy claims, using unpaid appointees and existing staff in the Department of Transportation and Economic and Community Development. That was a nod to the political reality of his race with Republican Tom Foley, in which each campaign must emphasize its determination to cut a $3.4 billion state deficit while increasing economic activity and employment, and also cutting back on unnecessary state spending.

"It's time to stop talking about it," Malloy said, standing on a platform amid weekday recreational fisherman and union laborers on the Tomlinson Bridge, which spans the tank-lined harbor of New Haven. "It's time to get going."

Malloy's plan is not the first from a gubernatorial candidate pledging to achieve multiple goals by reviving commercial shipping in Connecticut, among them creating jobs for port workers, removing freight traffic from clogged highways with improved ship-to-rail connections, and supporting existing maritime industry.

Standing next to Malloy on the bridge in New Haven was the man who defeated him for the Democratic nomination for governor four years earlier, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., and who spoke repeatedly of port improvements in a losing electoral battle with Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Before Rell, former Gov. John G. Rowland's administration invested millions in redevelopment at State Pier in New London, including some upgrades to rail infrastructure and the pier itself.
"Listen, John Rowland hasn't been governor for a long time, and I want to rejuvenate this effort very substantially," Malloy said.

Malloy's plan would create a State Port Authority that would coordinate efforts of local port administrators but not usurp them. That division of responsibilities brought favorable comment from local leaders like John S. Johnson, who said local marine trade leaders feel they're "under the thumb of the DOT," and urged him to include industry representatives among the unpaid appointees to the new authority.
"I see government as a junior partner," Malloy told him.

"Connecticut doesn't need more government, we need more jobs," Foley said in a written response to Malloy's plan. "He says his new authority won't have any fiscal impact and then says he will allocate up to $50 million in previously authorized Special Tax Obligation bonds to pay for it. Did I hear that right? Does he mean that it isn't really spending if it has already been authorized or if we are borrowing the money? This is the same tricky accounting from Hartford that got us into this mess."

Malloy argues the bigger problem is not following through on proposals to find new industries to fill the pier in New London with goods, or dredge existing harbors like Bridgeport's, which was last dredged in 1964.
"The problem with Connecticut is we don't set priorities, things are momentarily a priority so we'll see a spate of work done on it, without the execution of a long-term vision and mission," Malloy said.

Marsh on health care: A personal view
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
September 27, 2010

Third in a series

Tom Marsh draws from personal experience when he talks about health care.

The Republican-turned-Independent Party candidate for governor speaks of having no health insurance just two months before his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, giving him an understanding of the pitfalls faced by people who can't afford insurance.

He recalls caring for his parents and mother-in-law at home at the end of their lives, experiences that fuel a goal of making it easier to keep seniors out of institutional care.

And he speaks of the challenges of finding health insurance when he started a small business and says that, despite his tendency to favor less government, he would consider funding a public health insurance option if state residents want it.

If Marsh's opponents, Republican Tom Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy, occupy two ends of a spectrum in their health care views, Marsh falls toward the side of his fellow Republican, if a bit closer to the center.

Marsh, the first selectman of Chester, supports incentives to get people on public insurance programs to make behavioral changes like quitting smoking and wants to make it easier for seniors remain at home. They're the right things to do, he says, and they can also save the state money.

But Marsh acknowledges that the savings won't come immediately, and the state's massive budget deficit will likely mean making choices in health and social service spending.

Marsh would not cite specific items to cut or consolidate, saying that, "in the realm of social services, everything seems important." But he said some state programs are "wants" more than needs, and said he would give lower priority to those that focus on workplace or societal rights and special interest advocacy.

He also has faith that some money-saving changes, like getting people to take a more proactive approach to their health, can pay off quickly. And he said the state must begin to make more long-term changes that pay off later.

"The other option of continuing what we're doing now and just doing it with less money, it doesn't work," Marsh said. "And we don't have any more money."

Crisis to Intervention

Marsh speaks frequently about changing the way government works, making it function better, not just on more or less money.

In health care, the country has a "sick care system, not a health care system," he says. Changing that means moving from crisis to intervention, treating problems before they become worse and more costly.

A big part of that shift, Marsh believes, is focusing on wellness.

Marsh wants to offer wellness training to people on state programs, and supports requiring people receiving state assistance to take classes - on topics that could include nutrition, lifestyle management, parenting skills or how to create a resume. He also favors financial incentives for people to make behavioral changes.

"Why not get people together and say, you know what, if you stop smoking, we're probably going to save a whole lot of money later on, so here's the program, and we're going to pay you $50, $100," he said. "And if you complete the cessation program, you're going to be rewarded for that."

Marsh acknowledged that wellness efforts are not likely to produce immediate savings, although he believes they will ultimately pay off.

Rigorous research on wellness programs has been limited, although the experiences of some employers have suggested that the programs could save money over time. Much of the research focuses on companies and voluntary programs, which could be difficult to generalize to a broader population or for required programs.

Marsh believes the state could test wellness approaches through focused pilot programs, which he calls "charter agencies." The idea would be to identify an outcome, pursue it with more leeway to avoid red tape than state agencies typically have, then expand or reduce the program based on how it turns out.

Marsh would also consider reimbursing preventive care at higher rates, giving providers incentives to accept patients with public insurance. Many providers do not accept Medicaid because of the relatively low rates it pays, although even people with higher-paying commercial insurance can struggle to find primary-care providers to treat them, part of a shortage of providers that is expected to get worse.

Prioritizing

When talking about making budget choices, Marsh points to Oregon, where the amount of services covered by Medicaid can fluctuate.

Oregon uses a prioritized list of health services to cover its Medicaid recipients, and the legislature can decide how much of the list to include in the budget, although changes must be approved by the federal government.

Even without a list, Connecticut will need to start prioritizing its services if money is limited, Marsh said.

"To me, you look at your children and your elderly first to make sure that they're well covered, and then in the middle, you start looking at how can we best spend the money," he said.

Marsh suggested flexibility with cuts - if the state can't cover all dental work for adults, for example, what about one annual check-up?

"All of that stuff has to be on the table," he said. "We have to have basic health care for our most needy and then have a discussion once we take care of that population, who comes next, and then what comes next for those services."

Aging at Home

One way to save money, Marsh believes, is to shift the way long-term care is provided from institutional care to care based at home or in the community. Marsh's motives are not just financial.

Over about a decade, Marsh's parents and his wife's mother lived at the Marshs' home before they died. Marsh observed changes in the long-term care industry, and said he was struck by the difficulty of arranging for home care, even though doing so cost less than a nursing home.

"I just thought, who wants to be sitting in the nursing home and why is it so difficult to have competent care, or at least assistance if you're trying to do what we thought was the right thing anyway and keep them at home?" he said.

Marsh wants to make it easier for people to choose to stay at home as they age, a concept called "aging in place."

Long-term care is a major piece of the state budget - the state is budgeted to spend $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds for nursing homes this fiscal year, although at least half gets reimbursed by the federal government.

Just over half of the state residents whose long-term care is covered by Medicaid receive care at home or through community-based services. The state's Long-Term Care Plan calls for increasing that to 75 percent by 2025, a move that one study suggests could save up to $900 million a year.

Marsh said he would begin tackling the issue during the first week of the next legislative session.

"What we as a state need to do is to say, 'the default should go to how can we keep you at home as long as possible, not how can we get you out of your house as soon as possible?'" he said.

Getting there would likely require other actions, such as making sure there are enough workers trained in the appropriate skills to keep up with the demand, Marsh said.

Researchers have noted other challenges. To receive Medicaid funding for home and community-based services, people must fit into one of the state's many waivers or pilot programs, which are narrowly defined. The governance structure for long-term care in the state is fractured between multiple state departments and agencies, and it can be difficult for consumers to learn even basic information about their options.

Saving on Coverage

To save money, Marsh would also seek to change the way state employees' health care coverage is managed, using a model from Chester. The town, which provides health insurance to 15 employees, uses a high-deductible health plan and pays the deductible for its workers. The model, referred to as a health reimbursement account, saves money because having a higher deductible comes with lower premiums, Marsh said.

Marsh believes it could be expanded to state employees as part of negotiations for the next labor agreement. The current one runs out in 2017.

But Matt O'Connor, a spokesman for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, said that model would not be better than what state employees have now. Unionized workers with similar plans have not found them to be better for their families, he said.

O'Connor said it could also be difficult to translate something that works for Chester's 15 employees to the state's health insurance plan, which covers about 200,000 workers, retirees and their dependents.

It would be a simplistic analysis, he said, "to say, 'well, if it works in Chester, it will work for the whole state's workforce."

Marsh sees virtue in the state offering a viable way for people to get health insurance, something that could take place through the SustiNet plan. SustiNet grew out of an effort to establish universal health care coverage in the state with a public option. The version that ultimately became law was scaled-back, and its future is not clear, although a board is developing a health plan that supporters hope will be offered to state workers, Medicaid recipients and the public.

"From a default level, I like less government," he said. "But good government comes from providing what constituency wants and doing it while providing them a good value. So if the state as a whole felt that it was a worthwhile investment to provide for the common good, that we were going to buy down the rates on things like that, I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with saying we have to subsidize it because we don't do it very well."

Malloy: 'Find the balance' between healthcare and the budget
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
September 20, 2010

Dan Malloy is fond of saying that he's not running for governor "to balance the budget on the backs of those who are most dependent on the government for their health and support."

Second in a series

He says the state must keep nursing homes from closing as the population ages and ensure that a comprehensive mental health system exists. And he considers many previously proposed cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid "penny wise, pound foolish."

"We may have to expend additional dollars in the short run to save far more dollars in the long run," the former Stamford mayor said during a recent interview.

But there is a budget to balance, one in which Medicaid and the health care costs of state employees and retirees account for one in four dollars spent. There's also a budget deficit that is effectively the largest in state history, raising questions about the feasibility of even maintaining existing levels of health care spending.

Malloy is vague on how he would balance the competing demands of health spending and budget cutting.

He would not identify specific health programs that he would consider cutting. He said he would look to savings and efficiencies in existing programs and seek federal money before cutting programs.

To find savings, Malloy said he would conduct a "top to bottom review" of all state programs, which he believes will identify programs that are not producing results. He believes the state can save money in existing programs - as an example, he cited a 2009 audit showing that the state could save nearly $50 million by paying lower rates to the managed care companies in the HUSKY program.

The state has failed to go after millions of dollars in federal money, he said, and he plans to pursue it aggressively. Other potential savings could come from the use of electronic medical records - something Connecticut providers have been slow to take up - and ensuring that patients have alternatives to emergency rooms to receive non-emergency care.

After that?

"Then we'll have to make other decisions," he said. "We're going to have to put our financial house in order. I'm committed to that."

Although he would not say what health care programs would be considered for cuts, Malloy was clear about what programs he does not plan to cut: Programs that serve people who most rely on the government for their health care.

"That's what you're electing a governor for is to find the right balance between the necessity of maintaining a program for a specific group of individuals and the necessity of bringing the state's financial house in order," he said, citing his record as Stamford mayor. "That's what I do. That's what leadership is."

Expanding Coverage

Malloy wants as many state residents covered by health insurance as possible, and he wants to do it in a way that accesses as much federal funding as possible. When people receive health care that they cannot pay for, the state ultimately sees some of the bill, he said.

"Getting to the point that we wring out as much of the unreimbursed expense is going to be terribly important," he said. "I do think that a universal system ultimately becomes less expensive, but there is probably a run-up in expense as you build it."

As mayor of Stamford, Malloy developed a program to use schools, which already collect medical information about pupils, to identify children who are uninsured but eligible for the state's HUSKY insurance program, then help their families access it. He wants to do the same statewide.

Malloy supported a proposal last year that would have established universal health coverage in the state with a public insurance option, called SustiNet. A scaled-back version became law, and a board is working to create a SustiNet plan, intended to be offered as an insurance option for state employees, Medicaid recipients and the public. Malloy said he expects SustiNet will play a lead role in extending health care coverage to the uninsured.

The state can also make health insurance more affordable by using its purchasing power to benefit municipalities, non-profits and other employers, Malloy believes. State legislators passed bills in 2008 and 2009 that would have opened the state employee health insurance pool to other groups, but Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed them, citing concerns that widening the pool to an unknown risk group could increase insurance rates.

Malloy believes expanding the state employees' pool would lower costs for "a substantial number of communities," and he wants to take the idea a step further: Offering multiple plans to make coverage available to employers that could not afford the standard state employee package.

"What you're doing is you're harnessing the purchasing power," he said. "Spreading that around doesn't bother me at all."

Rethinking the System

Having more people with health insurance also means more patients in a health care system already struggling with capacity issues. Malloy believes the state must "rethink" the health care system. And he wants to place particular emphasis on community health centers.

The state's 13 federally qualified health centers focus on delivering primary care and dental and behavioral health services. Their patient base consists largely of people with Medicaid or no insurance. Last year, 65 percent of the nearly 213,000 patients treated in community health centers fell below the poverty level.

Community health centers are expected to absorb many of the the millions of people who gain coverage as federal health reform rolls out. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes $11 billion for community health centers nationwide, intended to help them keep up with an increase in patient volume. Health centers in Connecticut have also upgraded and expanded their facilities using $25.8 million in bonding money Rell authorized for them.

Malloy said he would put substantially more emphasis on the community health center model. He also wants to see a closer relationship between them and hospitals.

"To the best of my knowledge, there's no one in the current administration who's sitting down with the CHC providers and the hospitals and saying how do we build a better system?" Malloy said. "There's competition, there's resentment from one to the other."

As a better model to pursue, Malloy cited an example from his hometown, where Stamford Hospital in 2007 turned over its four primary care clinics to Optimus Health Care, a Bridgeport-based community health center.

Demand at the clinics had been increasing, Stamford Hospital spokesman Scott Orstad said. It posed a financial challenge, since many of the clinics' patients were uninsured or covered by Medicaid, which typically pays less than the cost of care.

As a community health center, Optimus was eligible to receive more federal funding to treat the same patients, making it easier, financially, to run the clinics.

When the plan was first announced, Malloy remembered thinking, "Gee, this is a terrible thing, the hospital's going to get out of this business."

Now Malloy says it is a model worth pursuing.

"We've got to be brave enough and bold enough to rethink our system of care," he said. "We talk about continuum of care along disciplines, mental health, aging. What we need to think about continuum of care is along broader lines. How do we make sure that everybody gets the level of service that's most appropriate to them? Sometimes it's going to be in a hospital, sometimes it's going to be in a doctor's office, sometimes it's going to be with a public health nurse, sometimes it's going to be at a CHC facility. Ok, let's build that system."

"The Aging Tsunami"

Malloy is keenly interested in nursing homes. Stamford has a city-run nursing home, and Malloy speaks about learning from it as mayor. He won the endorsement of the Connecticut Association of Health Care Facilities, an industry group, and has walked picket lines with striking nursing home workers.

He worries about the financial conditions nursing homes face. The state will have a problem, Malloy said, if it loses nursing home beds as it approaches what he called "the aging tsunami." Over the next 15 years, the number of people over 65 is expected to rise by 40 percent, while the population under 65 declines.

Malloy believes the state needs to raise the Medicaid rates it pays nursing homes - not at full operational expense, but enough to guarantee that facilities can stay in business. Medicaid covered 69 percent of the patients in Connecticut nursing homes, but paid, on average, less than 65 percent of what private payers did per patient during the 2009 fiscal year, according to the Connecticut Commission on Aging.

"Right now we set Medicaid rates and we don't care whether the place stays open or not," Malloy said. "In fact, I would argue that we've been on a pretty active campaign to close nursing homes for a long period of time."

In some ways, Malloy is going against the tide on an issue with significant budgetary impact. This fiscal year, the state is expected to spend $1.3 billion in Medicaid costs for people in institutional care, although the federal government reimburses the state for at least half of its Medicaid costs.

Research commissioned by an alliance of public, private and institutional leaders has suggested that the state could save up to $900 million a year by changing how Medicaid long-term care is delivered. Currently, 53 percent of people covered by Medicaid receive home or community-based care. The state's Long-Term Care Plan calls for raising that to 75 percent by 2025. That could reduce the need for nursing home beds by close to 25 percent by 2030, according to projections by the University of Connecticut Center on Aging.

Home and community-based care tends to cost less than institutional care, and research suggests people would prefer it. With the state facing a massive budget deficit, lawmakers have started embracing the idea with greater urgency.

Malloy is skeptical.

"I just don't think that that's true," he said of the projected $600 million to $900 million savings. "And if we do that, what we end up with is a dramatic shortage of nursing home beds to fill the void."

He wants to make it easier for people to access hospice care. There will be a need for multiple types of care, he believes, as the population ages and lives longer, in more compromised health.

"I want to maintain this system, and then I want to invest wisely in alternatives to that system, understanding that those alternatives may cover a period of time of treatment," he said.

"Penny wise, Pound foolish"

Malloy believes the state can save money by eliminating duplicate services and bureaucracy, including in social service programs. He said he will use data to examine what programs are effective, and eliminate those that are not.

"I don't think all the moneys that we're spending are wisely spent and I have a very large suspicion that the management-level bureaucracy has grown too fast, too big too fast and is not justified," he said.

With a cost of nearly $5 billion, Medicaid has been targeted for cuts in recent years, although the legislature has resisted some that Rell proposed.

Connecticut covers services under Medicaid that are not required by the federal government, including dental care for adults, which Rell proposed cutting. Asked if he would consider such programs for budget cuts, Malloy said, "I hope not. I hope things aren't so bad that that has to be considered."

"That's one of those penny wise, pound foolish tradeoffs," he said. "You have short-term gain for a long-term greater expense. And it's my hope that I won't run the state that way."

Foley: Health care costs can be cut 15% with no benefit loss
Arielle Levin Becker, CT MIRROR
September 13, 2010

First in a series

Tom Foley doesn't like the federal health reform law--he'd rather see it repealed and replaced with something that cuts costs. He believes the state budget needs to shrink by at least 10 percent. And in health care, which accounts for nearly a third of state spending, he sees a plum source for savings.

"It wouldn't take that much to reduce health care costs in Connecticut by 15 percent," the Republican nominee for governor said during a recent interview.

Foley believes the savings - up to $1 billion - could be achieved through wellness programs, electronic record keeping, changes to the medical malpractice system, reducing unnecessary emergency room visits, allowing less-expensive out-of-state health plans into Connecticut, and increasing the use of community-based care for elderly and disabled people.

Doing so wouldn't require reducing benefits, Foley said.

But it would represent a significant reversal in spending trends at a time when health care costs continue to rise and demand for state medical assistance grows.

While Foley believes much of the savings can come from wellness programs designed to impact behaviors, evidence of their effects on health care costs is limited, and some research suggests that clear-cut, short-term savings are hard to demonstrate. Programs aimed at preventing conditions like obesity might be cost-effective--producing health benefits that justify their costs--but not cost-saving, some experts say.

And Foley wants to increase one area of state health care spending: the rates paid to health care providers who treat Medicaid patients. He sees it as a way to lower health care costs for the private sector, ultimately making it less expensive to employ workers in Connecticut.

"Anything that drives down health care costs in Connecticut is something I'd be in favor of," Foley said.

Revising Reform

That's one of the reasons he opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Foley believes it will raise costs and drive private insurers out of the market, ultimately producing a single-payer system.

The law is "a bad deal for Connecticut," Foley said. Because the state has a relatively low rate of uninsured residents - 10 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau - people here won't see much expansion of coverage for the added cost, he said.

"Connecticut residents are going to be paying for this program, and there's no benefit to anyone in Connecticut because people are already covered," he said.

But as governor, Foley said, he would do what is required to implement the law.

"I'm not somebody who says 'hey, we're going to completely reject this,'" he said. "I think we need to be responsible and do what we are required to do, but I would be very diligent about making sure that Obamacare doesn't burden us with any more costs than are absolutely necessary."

Foley does support certain changes in the reform law, such as eliminating the ability of insurers to exclude people with pre-existing conditions. But he said he does not support any changes to the health care delivery system that reduce people's choice.

Finding $1 Billion

The idea of saving 15 percent on state health care costs stems from the federal health reform debate. Projections for an earlier reform plan suggested such savings were possible, Foley said.

"I would assume in Connecticut, because we have such a high-cost system, there may be more opportunities for reducing costs," he said.

Much of the savings can come from wellness programs aimed at reducing obesity, drug and alcohol use, and promoting healthier lifestyles, he said.

"If you can provide incentives and encourage people to take better care of themselves, we could do a lot to bring down health care costs," he said.

Wellness programs have gained popularity among employers in recent years, although research suggests that cost savings can be difficult to achieve in the first few years and experts have expressed skepticism about their usefulness as a quick way to save money. Behavioral changes like quitting smoking or losing weight can take time to achieve, while large-scale prevention efforts that involve screening large groups of people can cost more than the savings from preventing disease in the smaller number of people who would have gotten sick.

Some studies have found savings from wellness programs, although many of them use methods that researchers consider limited, such as comparing outcomes for people who choose to participate to people who did not without accounting for other differences between the two groups.

The bulk of state health care money goes to medical assistance programs like Medicaid. In his calculations for finding $1 billion in health care savings, Foley also includes health care costs for current and retired state workers, which are expected to run the state an estimated $1.13 billion this fiscal year.

But it's not clear how much additional savings are achievable there. State workers already receive wellness programs as part of their health plans, including a smoking cessation program and discounts for weight loss programs and gym memberships.

"That has been done," said Matt O'Connor, spokesman for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition. "It's an ongoing process that's been in place."

As for the prospect of cost-cutting in state employee health care, O'Connor noted that state workers agreed to changes last year including increased premiums, limits on eligibility for retiree health benefits for workers with less than 10 years of state service, and requiring workers with less than 5 years of state employment to contribute to a trust fund for retiree health care.

"Part of what we're looking for in this next administration is a different approach," O'Connor said. "We've been there, done that, so now it's a matter of looking at other ways in which savings can be achieved and are out there."

Foley sees another source of savings in shifting much of the state's long-term care from nursing homes to community or home-based care.

The state spends nearly $2.5 billion in Medicaid long-term care costs for about 40,000 people. Forty-seven percent of them live in nursing homes, which tend to cost more than receiving care at home.

Research has suggested that the state could save between $600 million to $900 million a year by "rebalancing" the way long-term care is delivered - that is, delivering 75 percent of the long-term care in home and community-based settings, with the remaining 25 percent in nursing homes, by 2025.

Some industry experts are skeptical about the prospects of making such a large shift. Foley acknowledged that the state does not yet have the capacity to make such a sizable move toward community-based care and must build it. He said one hitch in making changes has been the unions representing nursing home workers.

"The unions are very powerful in nursing homes and they don't want the Medicaid patients moving out of nursing homes," Foley said. "But it's far less expensive to care for the elderly in community-based care and it's better for them, they do better, they live longer. So that's a pretty easy one for me."

"Stealth Tax"

The state's other Medicaid programs have been growing steadily in recent years, with more than 500,000 state residents now receiving the public coverage. The federal government reimburses the states for at least 50 percent of Medicaid costs and has been providing a higher level of matching funds since the federal stimulus program began.

Increasing the rates paid to health care providers who treat Medicaid patients could reduce private-sector health care costs, Foley believes.

The existing Medicaid rates pay doctors and other health care providers less than the cost of delivering care. Providers typically make up the difference by charging commercial insurance plans more, a cost-shift that Foley said raises the price of private insurance.

Foley said the government should instead pay the full cost of care for Medicaid patients, "and let the taxpayers decide whether or not the expense of that is something they want to cover." He acknowledged that it would mean an increase in state spending, but said the alternative is a "stealth tax" on people with private insurance.

"I'm against the government imposing costs on citizens that they can't see," he said.

Changes to the medical malpractice system could also save money, Foley believes. Many physician groups believe malpractice issues account for considerable health care costs, although some studies suggest it has a more modest effect on expenses.

A few changes could cut costs without requiring comprehensive reform, Foley said. He supports a $250,000 cap on awards for non-economic damages, similar to what California has, and cited other options including using special courts to handle malpractice cases, employing a non-adversarial process, and providing guidelines for compensation for medical errors and malpractice.

Trimming Government

But even with $1 billion in health care savings, Foley said, the state would have a long way to go toward fiscal stability. He supports privatizing state institutions if the private sector can provide the same or better service for less money.

His philosophy for making cuts to health and social service programs?

Start with ones that have no negative impact. The $1 billion in savings he believes is possible would fall in that category, he says, providing the same benefits at a lower cost.

After that: "You look at things that have some adverse impact on people but they're not devastating," Foley said. "Where people can adjust and people are adjusting to the new reality in the private sector...in the public sector, though, people haven't really adjusted to the new reality. That's going to happen one way or the other."

One cut Foley would be happy to see: The SustiNet Health Partnership.

"I'd like to see it go away," he said.

SustiNet grew out of an effort to achieve universal health coverage in the state with a public health insurance plan. The plan that legislators ultimately passed - and later resurrected after a veto - was a scaled-down version, with no funding attached. More than 150 people are now developing a plan, which they hope will ultimately be offered as a coverage option for state employees, Medicaid enrollees and the public.

"It was created for a purpose that no longer is needed," Foley said. "The people involved are trying to find a role for it. We don't need new costly things looking for a purpose."

Foley also has reservations about using state money to fund stem cell research, although he said it is not something he has examined closely. Lawmakers in 2005 committed the state to funding $100 million in grants for stem cell research over 10 years. The money comes from a tobacco trust fund, but last year, Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed putting off the stem cell grants and using the money to help offset the budget deficit.

"That's what the private sector's for, if you're talking about coming up with new technologies and innovation. Governments aren't good at that," Foley said. "I'm not sure why Connecticut is subsidizing it, because I think the private sector would pay for it if they were left free to do it."

Independent Candidate Calls For Tax Changes: Marsh Says Those Who Pay No State Income Tax Need To Start Kicking In
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING, ckeating@courant.com
7:37 PM EDT, September 12, 2010

At least a third of all Connecticut tax filers pay no state income tax at all, and Tom Marsh says that needs to end.

Marsh, the Independent Party candidate on the ballot for governor, says "everybody who is receiving a paycheck'' should pay into the state coffers — even if it is only $100 per year — in order to close the state's projected budget deficit of $3.4 billion for the next fiscal year.

"Everybody needs to have a little skin in the game,'' said Marsh, now in his third term as the first selectman of Chester. "People need a reason to be engaged in the government.''

Marsh's two opponents — Republican Tom Foley of Greenwich and Democrat Dannel Malloy of Stamford —rejected his views on the state income tax.

"We shouldn't increase any taxes in Connecticut as a means of solving the looming budget deficit,'' Foley said in an interview. "I'm surprised. Tom Marsh has been traveling around the state a lot. I'm shocked.''

He said Marsh should realize that Connecticut voters are not in the mood — "and don't have the ability'' — to pay more taxes in Connecticut.

Roy Occhiogrosso, the chief strategist for Malloy, said the state needs to create more jobs, rather than collect more taxes from those with the lowest incomes.

"You're talking about people who are not making a lot of money,'' Occhiogrosso said. "A couple hundred bucks might not sound like a lot of money to some people, but it is to them. ... No way.''

Marsh rejected the views of those who say it is bad tax policy to impose a tax on the poorest residents. He pointed out that the state legislature has raised the cigarette tax multiple times — to the current level of $3 per pack — even though many poor people are smokers and are forced to pay the tax. The poor also pay gasoline taxes, Social Security taxes, sales taxes and other taxes.

"It's a false argument to say you're taking advantage of those who can least afford it,'' said Marsh, who represents an affluent, riverfront town of about 4,000 residents in Middlesex County.

Under the state tax law, married couples who file jointly with an adjusted gross income of $24,000 or less pay no state income tax. But with the maximum property tax credit of $500 for automobiles or real estate, couples earning as high as $43,600 do not owe any state income tax if they claim the credit.

With various exemptions and credits, thousands of Connecticut residents currently pay nothing at all. Even though Connecticut is a wealthy state, nearly 40 percent of all filers earned $35,000 or less in 2007, according to public tax records. Under the state's progressive income tax, which exempts those at low incomes, the filers below $35,000 paid a combined total of 1.3 percent of the income taxes. At the upper end, the top 20 percent of earners paid about 80 percent of the overall state income tax that was collected, and the top 1.3 percent paid 35 percent of the income tax.

In trying to determine tax policy, state legislators have offered various estimates through the years of the number of filers who pay no state income tax. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Revenue Services, however, said the state does not officially calculate that number.

Marsh, who turns 51 next week, started his campaign for governor as a Republican and later dropped out to run as an independent. He collected the necessary 7,500 signatures to receive a spot on the ballot under the Independent Party.

With large deficits on the horizon, Marsh says that examining the tax structure is necessary.

"I see the freight train that is coming down the tracks and the absolute dysfunction that the legislative and executive branches have shown in the last couple of sessions,'' Marsh said. "We've already maxed out our borrowing capability.''

Besides changes in the income tax, Marsh said, the state also needs to examine the numerous exemptions to the state's sales tax. The exemptions have been added at various times through the years at the behest of lobbyists and legislators, prompting some legislators to call for a comprehensive review of the various tax credits that have been inserted into the tax code over time.

Marsh is calling for an immediate end to the sales tax exemptions on carwashes and tax preparation services, which are currently tax free.

"Everybody in or out,'' Marsh said, adding that the list of exemptions needs to be simplified. "This is an excellent opportunity to revisit what we've done.''

In the same way that they rejected Marsh's views on the income tax, both Foley and Occhiogrosso disagreed with his views on the sales tax.

As a third-party candidate with less than $100,000 for his campaign, Marsh has been trying to spread the word about his race for governor. He is not broadcasting any television commercials because he lacks the millions of dollars that will be spent by his rivals, Foley and Malloy.

"We're not going to get into big media,'' Marsh said.

Foley looks to build up GOP in Conn. Legislature
New London DAY
By SUSAN HAIGH, AP Political Writer
Sep 5, 12:08 PM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- When Republican Tom Foley talks to voters about his candidacy for Connecticut governor, he often makes a pitch for his GOP colleagues running for the General Assembly.

Eliminating Democrats' veto-proof majority, Foley argues, is the key to turning around the state's financial condition.

"Voters feel that there should be more of a balance in Hartford," the Greenwich businessman said. "They've seen in Washington what happens with an overwhelming Democratic Congress and a Democratic executive."

Democrats control the state Senate by a 24-12 margin and the House of Representatives by a 114-37 spread - enough votes to overturn a gubernatorial veto. Democrats would lose their veto power if the GOP were to pick up 13 seats in the House or one seat in the Senate.

During her six years in office, Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has seen 17 of her vetoes overridden. Earlier this month, when lawmakers overrode her veto of a campaign financing bill, she tied independent former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. for the most vetoes annulled during the past 70 years in Connecticut.

Foley thinks Rell could have been more effective had there been more Republicans in the Legislature. He hopes the party can pick up 15 to 20 seats in the House and two or three in the Senate.

"That much of a change in the margin will force the Democrats to deal with the moderates in the Legislature and the Republicans," Foley said. "With such an overwhelming majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate, the president pro tem and the speaker, they can get the votes they need just dealing with the liberals in their caucus."

Dan Malloy, the Democratic candidate for governor, scoffs at Foley's claims that it would be detrimental to the state if Democrats controlled both the governor's office and held a veto-proof majority in the Legislature.

"It hasn't worked well," Malloy said of the years when a Republican held the governorship and Democrats controlled the Legislature. "It's been a disaster. What you need is leadership. Leadership comes from the governor's office."

Besides talking about the need for more Republicans in the General Assembly, Foley said he actively encouraged potential candidates to run, organized a candidate-training session and has accompanied candidates when they've knocked on voters' doors. He has assisted candidates by calling voters and urging them to come to the polls, and he has provided volunteers to help out the GOP hopefuls. He also helped GOP candidates raise campaign contributions, including the small donations they need to qualify for the state's public financing program - a system he opposes for gubernatorial candidates.

"It's the most coordinated effort we've had in a long time," said Chris Healy, chairman of the state Republicans. He acknowledged that the campaign in the 2006 statewide elections, when Rell was running and Democrats gained their veto-proof majority by winning some more House seats, "wasn't as coordinated as well as it could have been, obviously."

Healy said the GOP also is united on its message: fundamental change is needed to alter state spending trends and reduce the size of state government.

"We believe that a Republican team in the Legislature and in the governor's office really is the best hope we have in turning this state around," he said.

Malloy said it's important to note that there will be diversity of opinion among Democrats, even if the party retains its hold of the Legislature and gets control of the governor's office for the first time since the late William O'Neill left office in early 1991.

"It's not a monolithic party by any stretch of the imagination," Malloy said.

Malloy said he would support any fellow Democrats in this year's election who back the issues he's running on: establishing a transparent government, adopting standardized accounting rules to better control state budgets and ending "the game-playing" in Hartford.

"I'm going to run an election which is a referendum on who is going to be governor and let the House and Senate take care of itself," he said.

Mike Vitale, a Republican candidate for the House from Wallingford, recently knocked on doors with Foley. Democratic Rep. Mary Mushinsky has held the seat he's seeking since 1981. Vitale said Foley's message of changing the partisan makeup of the Legislature is resonating with voters.

"People view what's going on in Hartford simply as a mess," he said. "They're starting to hold the people they keep sending up there over and over accountable for this."

Foley, Boughton say integration ‘seamless’
Greenwich TIME, AP
Saturday, August 21, 2010

HARTFORD — After a primary race filled with negative advertising and disputes over campaign financing, the Republican nominees for governor and lieutenant governor believe they are on the same page heading into the general election.

Gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley and running mate Mark Boughton made their first joint appearance Friday on the campaign trail in Danbury. More than one week ago, they were on opposing tickets.

Foley and Boughton said their more than 10-year friendship has helped them begin work as a team. “It’s been pretty seamless,” Boughton said. “We’ve been able to integrate the campaigns pretty quickly, and I think it helps that Tom and I have known each other for so long.”

Boughton, who is mayor of Danbury, was originally one of Foley’s gubernatorial opponents before dropping out and focusing on the lieutenant governor’s race. Just before the GOP convention in May, Boughton chose to run with Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, who lost the GOP nomination for governor to Foley in the primary.

Foley, a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, chose not to name a running mate for the primary. In the Connecticut primary, voters can select lieutenant governor candidates independently of their running mates.

Leading up to the primary, Foley challenged Boughton and Fedele’s public campaign financing.

Foley, who is self-financing his campaign, claimed his opponents did not properly qualify for more than $2 million in public grants and filed several court injunctions to try and stop Boughton and Fedele from receiving funds. Foley was unsuccessful in his attempts.

“Candidates agree on a lot of things and don’t agree on a lot of things,” Foley said. “Mark and I took different routes there, but now that we are running together as a ticket, we’re not using public financing and we’re moving forward.”

Fedele ran television ads accusing Foley of running a large Georgia textile mill out of business in 1998 and challenged Foley’s credibility citing two prior arrests. Foley joked that he believed Boughton was in another room when those decisions were made.

The GOP candidates said they are ready to face Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy and his running mate, Nancy Wyman, in the Nov. 2 general election.

They said they are confident voters will elect another Republican governor despite the state’s budget deficit.

“The problem has not been a Republican governor, the problem has been the Democratic super-majority in the legislature,” said Boughton. “The reality is that the voters are going to want somebody who has the keys to the safe and has the checkbook in their pocket and keeps it away from the legislature, who will spend every nickel the state has into oblivion on every wacky program they possibly can come up with.”

Lessons From Primary Night: Of Polls, Prosperity, Political Attack Ads
By JON LENDER, jlender@courant.com
8:34 PM EDT, August 14, 2010

In the year 2060, older political junkies in Connecticut may look back half a century and say they never saw a wilder primary election than last week's. They may still talk of how Republican Tom Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy won bruising races for their parties' gubernatorial nominations — and maybe they'll even remember some of the lessons learned or reaffirmed on primary day, last Tuesday.

Among the lessons:

•Attempts to predict the future in politics lead again and again to glaring examples of how impossible it is. The avidly followed Quinnipiac University Poll showed Ned Lamont 3 percentage points ahead of Malloy. Malloy buried Lamont by 16 points a day later.

•Money can buy the advice of consultants and can import a staff of youthful campaign operatives who wield a Washington-schooled certitude beyond their experience, but it can't guarantee success. Lamont, a wealthy cable TV entrepreneur from Greenwich, still lost the primary, and perhaps his political future, after spending about $9 million of his own fortune — more than three times as much as Malloy spent out of what he received under the state's public campaign funding system.

•For all the controversy over political attack ads, issues still count. For example, Malloy will face campaign questions about his ties with state employee labor unions at a time when many cash-strapped citizens are angry about those employees' generous salaries and benefits. And Foley, a multimillionaire businessman from Greenwich who served as President George W. Bush's ambassador to Ireland, probably will need to confront issues that his intra-party primary opponents raised about arrests in his past and the loss of jobs at a company he once owned that went bankrupt.

Last week's Republican and Democratic primaries were remarkable not only for their large number of credible contenders, but also their contentiousness, as evidenced by some brutal TV attack ads. It happened largely because of an unusual combination of circumstances not seen in Connecticut in many decades: Both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd decided not to seek re-election, which means those seats are up for grabs in the same election year.

It's apparently the first time this has happened since the 1940s, the secretary of the state's office said early this year. Both the Senate and governor's seats were open in 1970, and neither party nominated an incumbent for either — but then-incumbent U.S. Sen. Thomas Dodd, who was denied the Democratic nomination, ran as an independent and lost a three-way race to Lowell P. Weicker Jr.

Candidates rushed this year for the rare opportunity of not having to unseat an incumbent. Three Republicans contended in the primary for U.S. Senate to oppose the Democrats' consensus nominee, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Five candidates — three Republicans and two Democrats — battled in Tuesday's primary for governor.

In the end, former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon emerged as the GOP's nominee to oppose Blumenthal, while Malloy and Foley were left standing for election as governor.

While there was drama in the Senate primary, the primaries for governor were much more hotly contested.

The 'Q-Poll'

Probably the most electrifying event last Tuesday was a come-from-behind victory by Malloy, the former 14-year mayor of Stamford. The Quinnipiac poll gave Lamont a lead of 17 percentage points in late May after the Democratic state convention. Lamont was helped by the visibility and good will he gained from many liberal Democrats in 2006, when he defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary but lost the November election.

But by the week before the primary Lamont's lead was down to 5 points, then 3 in an unusually late, primary-eve Quinnipiac poll released Monday. Poll Director Doug Schwartz called the race a dead heat at that point because the 3 points were within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 points. He noted that there were many undecided voters, that many voters who expressed a preference said they still might change their minds, and that the trend of support was running toward Malloy. In other words, he said, Malloy was coming on and could win.

But Malloy won on Tuesday by 58 percent to 42 — a blowout.

How could the poll have missed by so much?

Malloy's chief campaign adviser, Roy Occhiogrosso, said he thought it was partly because the voter turnout in the primary was so low — about 25 percent — hurting the poll's sample. Such a low turnout indicates that a number of registered voters stayed home Tuesday after having told Quinnipiac phone-callers that they planned to vote, Occhiogrosso said.

"It's very difficult to capture a snapshot of the actual universe of voters that comes out in a primary, especially when the turnout is so low," he said. "The people you're talking to on the phone are not representative of the electorate that will turn out. … Polling primaries is notoriously inaccurate — not because there's anything wrong with the poll. They had Dan down by 3 points just before the primary, and he won by 16. Was there a 19-point turnaround in a few days? Obviously not."

Schwartz, the poll director, agreed with Occhiogrosso and added this for himself: "People who said that they were going to vote for Lamont apparently didn't feel strongly enough to show up and vote, while Malloy's voters were more committed."

Schwartz pointed out that in the last poll just before the primary, "we did emphasize that there was a high level of voter uncertainty in there" — that about 12 percent were still undecided and about 30 percent "said they could still change their mind."

"A lot of the late-deciders apparently broke for Malloy. … We did catch the trend; we did say the movement was towards Malloy, and we did say there was a lot of room for movement. … We said it was too close to call.

"A lot of times we've nailed it right. … We nailed it with McMahon," Schwartz said. "We report the results, and we try to report them in a fair and balanced way, and we try to highlight it when we see a lot of uncertainty."

Malloy, by the way, had a quip to explain the shocking margin of victory that eluded the pollsters: "I'm the youngest of eight children, and all of my relatives voted for me."

Time For Issues

The primaries behind them, both freshly nominated gubernatorial contenders went out and campaigned in a manner much calmer than in the weeks preceding their showdowns with intra-party rivals. Foley and Malloy spent the second half of the week meeting with reporters and voters and talking much more quietly about what their messages will be for the November election.

At a 20-minute press conference in Hartford, Malloy hit one theme repeatedly: "The vast majority of voters are going to be making a decision about who do they trust to lead them, who has the experience and who has the values. I think that message resonates with independent voters."

He found a way to mention it no matter what the question. For example, Malloy was asked how he would respond to Foley's pitch to voters as an "outsider" — that is, a businessman skilled in management who never served in Connecticut government, and thus can't be blamed for the current fiscal mess, which, Foley says, he is better qualified to resolve.

"We're both outsiders," Malloy said. "We both come from a different perspective. I ran a half-billion-dollar corporation called the city of Stamford for 14 years. … I'm not a Hartford-based politician. I've never served in the legislature. … Ultimately, people are going to decide who they trust, who has the values, and who has the experience to lead them."

Asked if he would play hardball with the state employee unions who have supported him — buy considering layoffs, for example — Malloy said, "everything is on the table" and everyone, including the unions, are invited to bring cost-cutting ideas to that table.

"I've said that [with] the part of state government that I most directly control. on Day One it has to be shrunk by 15 percent. … I've said that we have 220 or so state agencies, [and] they have to be reduced by a third. … We know that we have to balance this budget."

Part of Foley's message during the week was that he's got more credibility in confronting such fiscal issues. "I can see why he's being vague," Foley said of Malloy in an interview. "He doesn't want to alienate the special interests that are backing him."

Foley talked more bluntly about how well-off he thinks government employees now are. He said things have shifted drastically from decades ago — when the pay for state work was low compared with the private sector, and when people went into state employment for the stability and good benefits, such as health insurance and pensions. Now, Foley said, not only are their benefits and pensions better than those of their counterparts in the private sector, but their pay is, too.

"Now they have the best of both worlds. That's great, but we can't afford it," Foley said. "We simply have to bring that back in line."

The state's contract with the employee unions for benefits doesn't expire until 2017, Foley said, adding: "We have to reopen that 2017 contract. If we can't reopen that contract and it becomes unaffordable, people are going to have to be laid off. I think we can get the state workforce down to acceptable levels with attrition," but the unions need to cooperate.

Foley said he would never agree to a "no-layoff" provision, even a temporary one such as Rell approved. "That has to remain an option," he said.

Malloy said, "Every time I hear people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars talk about Connecticut's middle class that way, it makes my day."

Foley says "the class warfare stuff" won't work. He said voters don't want politicians "pitting people against each other. They want somebody to lead them out of these problems."

UNDERTICKET CONTESTS

Merrill: Once An Attorney, Always An Attorney?
Hartford Courant
Jon Lender,
Government Watch
October 10, 2010

A campaign brochure for Denise Merrill, the Democrats' nominee for secretary of the state in the Nov. 2 election, says: "A mother, teacher, attorney and new grandmother, Denise brought her real-world experience to the Legislature, where she was eventually elected by her colleagues to serve as Majority Leader."

Her majority leader's biography on the state House Democrats' Internet website said she is "an attorney and a former high school teacher."

This might give the impression that Merrill, of Mansfield, carries a briefcase from Capitol to courthouse, flashing between legislating and lawyering while attending to her family roles as mother and grandmother. But that's not exactly the picture. The fact is that Merrill does not practice law, and has not done so since obtaining a California license 30 years ago that now is designated as "inactive." She obtained it via a procedure available in California, then her home state, in which you work as an apprentice in a law firm and take the state bar exam without needing to graduate from law school.

Merrill has never been licensed to practice law Connecticut, which has a law saying that if a person hasn't been admitted to the state's bar, he or she can't "assume, use, or advertise the title of lawyer, attorney and counselor-at-law ... or an equivalent term, in such a manner as to convey the impression that he is a legal practitioner of law."

When Merrill was asked about this last week, she said that calling herself a lawyer is a fair and accurate description, not resume puffery. "I am a lawyer. ... I have been a lawyer all these years," she said, even though she didn't use her California license to establish a practice and never got a law license here.

"It's just like a doctor is a doctor," no matter whether she is licensed in the state where she now lives, Merrill said.

Merrill said there's no requirement that a person be a lawyer to become secretary of the state, which is the top elected official in charge of running elections and registering corporations. Her Republican opponent, state consumer protection commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr., is an attorney licensed in Connecticut. Not everyone agrees with Merrill's interpretation that it's fine to call herself a lawyer.

First there's Mark DuBois, the state Judicial Branch's chief disciplinary counsel, who enforces the state law that says people can't act as lawyers without proper credentials. Without commenting specifically about Merrill, DuBois said you can't call yourself an attorney if you're not licensed in Connecticut — even on a website that doesn't offer legal services or solicit clients. "You can't hold yourself out to be an attorney if you don't have the licensure," he said.

What happens if somebody does that? "I send them an enforcement letter" telling them to "cease and desist," DuBois said.

If you aren't Connecticut-licensed as an attorney but have been admitted to the bar in another state, you need to clarify your listing, DuBois said, adding: "You can put in an asterisk that says something like 'admitted only in Vermont.'"

The Courant first talked to Merrill about this issue on Thursday. She did some checking on her own, and on Friday, she said she had an asterisk put into her biography on her campaign website. It now says: "Before I ran for the House of Representatives I worked as an attorney* and high school teacher." At the bottom it said: "(*Licensed to practice in California)."

Also on Friday, the biography on her House Democrats website was updated to say she is "an attorney (licensed in CA only) and a former high school teacher."

Merrill said that she clarified the listings after talking with people, including someone in DuBois' office; she said that person didn't make it all sound quite so strict. Still, Merrill said, she made the changes "in the interest of being absolutely sure" that no one gets the wrong impression.

"I certainly never intended to mislead anyone," she said, adding that she has been "very careful" when talking to people during this year's campaign to specify that she doesn't actively practice law, and was never licensed in Connecticut, but only in California. When a Courant reporter researched Merrill's background during the summer and asked about her status as a lawyer, she explained the California situation, and the newspaper published this accurate description: "Education: UConn, studied at San Francisco Law School, admitted to California bar."

There's an entry for Merrill on the State Bar of California website, where she is listed, with "Bar Number 85368' by her name, along with her current Connecticut address in Mansfield Center and an "inactive" status designation. The website says that Merrill was admitted to the California bar May 1, 1979, at age 30, and that her status went "inactive" on Jan. 1, 1980.

Merrill said she "moved back East" to Vermont "and never went back." She said, "I could have joined the bar in Vermont" — where she taught private school — "but then I started having kids." Merrill got her bachelor's degree from UConn in 1988. (Is this a typo?)

A California law licensee can return an "inactive" status to "active," although Merrill acknowledged that if she wanted to do that now — which she doesn't — she might have to "jump through some hoops," such as continuing education courses. It would take years for a person in such circumstances to qualify for a Connecticut law license, DuBois said. This all may sound technical to some, but it gets magnified by Merrill's un-asterisked use of the word attorney for months on websites, in campaign literature, although she said her current literature doesn't mention experience as an attorney.

It also is a political year to be careful not to overestimate your credentials: Democrat Susan Bysiewicz, the present secretary of the state, was ruled ineligible in May to run for attorney general after the state Supreme Court rejected her claim of sufficient experience in the "active practice" of law; and Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has been criticized in his U.S. Senate campaign over past statements — unintentional, he says — indicating that he served in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine.

Asked about Merrill's situation, Republican State Chairman Chris Healy said, "It amazes me that someone of such high public office would lie about her professional accomplishments, and continue to lie up until the time it was exposed as a lie" — that is, when The Courant brought it up to her. "It seems to fit the Democratic prototype this year, with Susan Bysiewicz saying she's been actively practicing law for more than 20 years, and Dick Blumenthal as Rambo fighting the Viet Cong."

Healy also said Merrill and the other majority Democrats who control the legislature haven't been truthful in their state budget solutions. "She's used to lying, so why not claim she's a lawyer? I'm surprised she doesn't claim she's an astronaut."

As to the asterisk in her biography, Healy said: "Who is she — Roger Maris?"

(Maris was the New York Yankee who in 1961 hit 61 home runs to break Babe Ruth's long-sacred single-season record of 60. An asterisk was placed in the record book because Maris accomplished the feat in a 162-game season; Ruth did it in a 154-game schedule in 1927.)

After hearing Healy's comments recited to her on the phone, Merrill remarked that the GOP chief is "always tempered" in his views. "I have one thing to say about that," she added. "I am a lawyer. How can he call me a liar, if I am a lawyer? That's crazy."

Jon Lender is a reporter on The Courant's investigative desk, with a focus on government and politics. Contact him at jlender@courant.com, 860-241-6524, or c/o The Hartford Courant, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115.

Jepsen, Dean spar over guns, schools -- and Blumenthal
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
September 23, 2010

Technically, Thursday's debate at the University of Connecticut Law School was between state attorney general candidates Martha Dean and George Jepsen.

But given Dean's relentless attacks on outgoing Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Jepsen's efforts to defend his fellow Democrat, the hour-long forum seemed at many times more like a three-way contest.

The two candidates also sparred over gun control, states' rights, education and the Connecticut economy.

"It's about ending the job-killing practices of the current attorney general," Dean, a Republican lawyer from Avon, said of this year's campaign. "There is no room for politics."

Dean charged that Blumenthal, a five-term attorney general who is now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, converted his job into a political self-promotion machine through frivolous lawsuits against businesses, unnecessary press conferences, and excessive involvement in state legislative affairs.

"I really think our legislature, which is supposed to be part-time, is really too active," she said, adding she expected to play a much smaller role than Blumenthal has when it comes to recommending new laws. Dean added she would "advise quietly when I think they are going to enact laws that are unconstitutional, or truly job-killing proposals."

But Jepsen, a former state Senate majority leader with 16 years of experience in the legislature, responded that Blumenthal effectively used the office to protect state government, businesses and consumers, and that in a slumping economy, an activist attorney general is essential.

"When times are tougher the odds grow longer," he said. "To make things right, the public needs not another voice. It needs a true legal advocate."

Jepsen noted the state Supreme Court arguments over the minimum educational standard that must be provided in Connecticut public schools likely will be played out over the next four to seven years. As attorney general, he said, he would take an active role in seeking a solution that closes the gap between urban and suburban schools, a problem, "that threatens our economic future."

But Dean said that while education "has to be one of the highest values of our free society," as attorney general she also would "vigorously defend the state taxpayers' pocket books."

The ongoing court battle over the quality of Connecticut's urban schools is a struggle over determining the minimum standards set in the state Constitution, she said, and not over equalizing educational opportunities in every public school. "We're not talking about the ideal schools," Dean added. "We're not talking about the best schools. We're talking about the constitutional standard, which is a minimum."

The Avon Republican also charged both Jepsen and Blumenthal with failing to adequately protect law-abiding citizens' rights under the U.S. Constitution to bear arms.

"I don't believe there has been a stronger anti-gun advocate in the legislature than my opponent," Dean said.

Jepsen, who oversaw passage of many of the state's current gun control laws while in the Senate, said only "guns that have no purpose other than to kill people" were banned, and that weapons used by hunters and other sportsmen remain available.

"None of these laws take guns away from law-abiding citizens, but they do keep our streets safer," Jepsen said, adding that he was proud of the "F-minus" rating he received as a legislator from the National Rifle Association.

At one point in the debate, when candidates were allowed to ask questions of each other, Dean asked Jepsen how "as a longtime career politician in Hartford," he could have participated in one of the largest budget and tax increases in state history -- a reference to the 2003 legislative session, which closed a nearly $1 billion budget gap with several measures, including a roughly 10 percent income tax hike.

Jepsen fired back that this solution to the state's fiscal crisis seven years ago was developed in consultation with several of Dean's fellow Republicans, including then-Gov. John G. Rowland.

"I've always had a strong working relationship with the other party," Jepsen said.

Jepsen began his legal career working as general counsel to a carpenter's union in Norwalk and continues to enjoy strong labor support, prompting Dean to charge her opponent would continue an anti-business trend in the attorney general's office.

But Jepsen noted that he continues to take heat from organized labor for his decision to cancel arbitrated pay raises for state prison guards while tackling a budget crisis in the Senate in 1996.

"I'm a proud Democrat," he said. "But when I think my party's wrong, I'm not afraid to say so."

The Ridgefield Democrat went on the offensive a few times himself during the debate, accusing Dean of hypocrisy when she said that, if elected, she would sue the federal government to challenge future requirements of national health care legislation that force some citizens to buy coverage. At the same time, Jepsen added, Dean has been criticizing Blumenthal for his own challenges of federal authority.

"I think some of Dick's best work has been in challenging the federal government," he said, citing efforts to gain more education funding for states complying with No Child Left Behind requirements. Dean "brings her own agenda," Jepsen added, "and it's an activist agenda like everybody else."

Dean and Jepsen did find some common ground during Thursday's debate.

Both agreed they would support Connecticut's existing death penalty statute.

And they also agreed that if Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez's corruption conviction is upheld after his appeal is heard, the attorney general should use authority granted under state law to seek revocation of Perez's publicly funded pension.

VICTORS IN THEIR PRIMARY CONTESTS
Dan Malloy (l) and Tom Foley (r) - what do they have in common, besides winning? Luck? The State of Connecticut needs some right now!!!

Director Of Citizens' Election Program On Way Out. Rotman To Resign For Family Reasons
By JON LENDER, jlender@courant.com
9:43 PM EDT, August 18, 2010

HARTFORD —

Beth Rotman, director of the Citizens' Election Program, which is at the center of a storm over public financing of campaigns in the state, will resign by early 2011.

But the resignation isn't over the ongoing public-financing controversy, but because she'll be moving to Israel early next year with her family.

It was the second announcement within a week about a top-level departure affecting the State Elections Enforcement Commission. Last Thursday, the agency's director of enforcement, Joan Andrews, was laid off. The agency's director, Albert P. Lenge, said the layoff was part of a consolidation to increase efficiency, but Andrews called it evidence of a trend toward softening the agency's enforcement of election laws.

That was a big public controversy, but Rotman's case was different. She said it's a matter of her home life: Her partner is taking "an amazing opportunity" to work in Israel, she said, and she is going also.

Rotman's profile at the 50-employee agency has risen lately as the four-year-old Citizens' Election Program has been playing a multimillion-dollar role in awarding taxpayer funds to candidates in this year's gubernatorial election and other statewide campaigns.

Rotman said Wednesday night: "I am very proud to have worked with state leaders on key legislative and fiscal changes that enabled the successful operation of the program for statewide and legislative elections.

"I am extremely proud to have played a role in encouraging program participation by creating the infrastructure necessary to oversee and encourage candidate participation in a voluntary program, while ensuring that the appropriate safeguards are in place to conduct the oversight necessary for a program that allocates public money.

"The fact that the majority of candidates are participating in the program and are thus free from the influence of special interest money during their election process should restore voters' faith that in Connecticut our elected officials will make decisions based on facts and figures and their assessment of what is best for the state and her citizens, not on the basis of who gave them the most money and to which special interest they feel indebted."

Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant

Final numbers show tepid August primary voter turnout
Ken Dixon, Greenwich TIMES
Published: 08:56 p.m., Monday, August 16, 2010

Predictions of a robust turnout for last week's primaries apparently melted in the heat, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz reported Monday.

Stamford had one of the highest percentages of voter participation, with both Democrats and Republicans supporting local candidates for governor, but even those totals were well below projections.

Heading into the Aug. 10 intraparty contests, Bysiewicz predicted that as many as half of the eligible 740,542 Democrats and 409,233 Republicans would cast ballots for the high-profile governor, Congress and U.S. Senate races.

But with town clerks reporting from the state's 169 towns and cities, only 24.76 percent of Democrats and 29.48 percent of Republicans bothered to vote. In terms of sheer numbers, 182,098 Democrats and 125,808 Republicans voted.

Bridgeport Democrats were among the lowest in turnout, with less than 15 percent participating. Democrats in Stratford and New Fairfield also had a paltry showing.

In Southwestern Connecticut, only two communities -- Stamford and Trumbull -- had turnouts above 30 percent from both Democrats and Republicans.

Stamford had two favorite sons -- Dannel Malloy, the Democratic former city mayor, and Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele -- seeking gubernatorial nominations against a duo of Greenwich residents, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Tom Foley.

Malloy defeated Lamont by 16 percentage points and Foley beat Fedele by three points.

Republicans had 30 percent-plus turnout in Shelton, Bethel, Brookfield, Danbury, Newtown, New Milford, Redding and Ridgefield. Woodbridge Democrats topped 30 percent as well.

Party leaders said the turnout was typically well below the 2006 Democratic primaries for governor and U.S. Senate, which drew 43 percent of eligible voters.

"The turnout for the Aug. 10 primary is less than what the secretary expected, but if you look at other years where there were mid-term primaries, such as the 1994 open seat for governor when there were primaries on both sides, the turnout was nearly identical," said Av Harris, spokesman for Bysiewicz, who was on vacation Monday.

This year was the second quadrennial statewide primary to be held in early August and not in September, when voters are supposedly more attuned to the coming fall political season than they are during summer vacation time.

Chris Healy, chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, noted Monday that GOP turnout was slightly higher than Democrats. "Interest in the election favored our party," Healy said, noting that the Republicans also had a U.S. Senate primary, won by Linda McMahon of Greenwich.

"Many Republicans vote, whether it's hot or if frogs are falling from the sky," Healy said, calling the turnout "fairly good." Nonetheless, he said, he favored a return to the traditional September primary that was abandoned by the General Assembly after a court decision.

Nancy DiNardo of Trumbull, chairwoman of the Democratic State Central Committee, said Monday she believes Republicans had a higher percentage of turnout because there was a big contrast between Fedele, a former legislator and incumbent lieutenant governor, and Foley, who is running for his first elective office.

House vote looms large for gubernatorial hopeful Malloy
Democrat's financial clout rests on fate of campaign finance law veto
By Ted Mann Day Staff Writer
Article published Aug 12, 2010

Hartford - Dan Malloy's victory in the gubernatorial primary was a critical first test for Connecticut's public campaign financing system.

It was the first time a candidate used the Citizens Election Program to run for a gubernatorial nomination, and also the first time it did what its boosters always hoped it would.

The guy who spent roughly $10 million to try to seal up the Democratic nomination, former U.S. Senate nominee Ned Lamont, was defeated by the candidate who stuck to spending limits and used $2.5 million in public grants to run his campaign.

But a new, perhaps larger test looms, and its first section isn't up to Malloy or the Citizens Election Program.

The House of Representatives will convene in special session Friday to consider overriding Gov. M. Jodi Rell's veto of the legislature's proposal to fix constitutional problems with the campaign finance law identified by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

If the override is successful, Malloy will get a $6 million campaign grant for his general election campaign against Republican Tom Foley, a multimillionaire who is not participating in the program and could spend freely on direct mail and television.

If the override fails, Malloy will be stuck to the existing base grant amount - $3 million - but will not get the supplemental grants that candidates under the original law receive if they are outspent by an opponent. Those supplemental payments were ruled unconstitutional by the Second Circuit.

In the afterglow of his primary win, however, Malloy deflected a question on the subject.

"I haven't even thought about it," he said.

Malloy wins in a landslide
Ken Dixon And Michael P. Mayko, CT POST Staff Writers
Published: 01:11 a.m., Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Dannel P. Malloy is Connecticut's newest comeback kid.

Four years after losing a primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and two months after falling behind Ned Lamont by 17 points, Malloy easily secured a place on the November ballot for the office he has long coveted. A landslide win over Lamont Tuesday night set Malloy up for a battle against another Greenwich multi-millionaire, as Tom Foley won the Republican nod with a victory over Malloy's fellow Stamford resident, Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.

With 81 percent of precinct's reporting, Malloy had captured 58 percent of the vote, compared with Lamont's 42 percent.

Malloy will be the party's standard-bearer this fall, as Democrats try to regain the governor's office for the first time since William A. O'Neill completed his term in January 1991. Malloy, 55, a former mayor of Stamford, will continue his campaign with his choice for lieutenant governor, Nancy Wyman. Though the campaigns of both Malloy and Lamont became increasingly bitter as the primary grew near, Malloy pledged they would work together to "make sure the next governor of the state of Connecticut is a Democrat."

"We have