CT Progressive

Notable in this month’s campaign finance filing: Kate Magsamen has joined the staff of the Connecticut Democrats. It appears that her job is to help boost the party’s fundraising efforts, which is good news given the traditional disparity between D and R fundraising in the state.

Also of note, the Dodd campaign is sharing rent costs for State Central’s Hartford office, which means that the Dodd campaign is now being run out of a physical location in the state.

It occurs to me in watching Chris Dodd re-integrate himself into the local political culture - coordinating op-eds with Love Makes a Family and their press operation, writing on local blogs, along with bringing local people down to DC and just generally being more readily available for sit-downs with local constituencies - that his current situation is such that he’s more susceptible to public pressure than your average Senator at the moment. Most especially from the left, as he has a somewhat urgent need to solidify his skeptical base.

And in a way, that’s a little bit of a shame, as he’s generally one of the best handful of Senators on any issue you might care to name: he’s fought anti-consumer bankruptcy policies, filibustered warrantless wiretapping, trimmed back the abusive practices of credit card companies, and so on. If he was the median Senator, we’d be in pretty good shape, all things considered. So he’s compelled to come over to MLN and toot his own horn on his support for the Public Option in the upcoming healthcare reform debate – when, in truth, he’s pretty far down on the list of people I think needs to be cajoled by progressives on healthcare.

Meanwhile, the other Senator is proudly touting his opposition to the public option, in a pretty brazen opposition to public opinion, and I can’t think of any meaningful opportunity for progressives to persuade him, nor (imagining his perspective) can I see any real incentive for him to open himself up for public input on the matter.

It really does seem like our two Senators are engaged in very different sorts of politics: Dodd is focusing on his (largely progressive) constituents who live in Connecticut, while Lieberman is focused on cultivating the support of conservative institutional players in Washington DC. His project to block the release of torture documents brought me more despair than most of Lieberman’s nonsense, because I realized that even if he casts the deciding vote to destroy Obama’s public plan in the Senate, we’re overwhelmingly likely to see our President’s smiling face in an endorsement commercial three years hence for what Joe is doing on these photos.

I have to wonder how we can apply pressure to Lieberman – can it be done through the institutions of the Senate and the Sunday talk shows, or is there a way to change the incentives on the ground in Connecticut so he has to engage in politics differently?

Shelly Sindland has mentioned the possibility of the largely unknown Scott Bates running in next year’s Democratic primary:

While Bates may not be a household name in Connecticut, he has an impressive resume. He has been to Iraq too many times to count—working on keeping weapons away from terrorists and working with local politicians there to promote democracy in Qatar and Bahrain.

He also has an impressive political background. Besides being the elected Police Commissioner for his hometown of Stonington, Bates was the youngest Secretary of State in the nation history when he held that office in Virginia at the age of 26.

He also has worked for Joe Lieberman, Doug Wilder–the first elected black Governor, a Congressman from Illinois and for a time, worked as a Democratic Caucus leader at the Virginia State Capitol.

I don’t know enough about him to have a sense of whether he’d be good or not, but from the way he describes himself, it sounds to me like a bit of bad news for Malloy — at least within whatever built-in constituency exists among Democratic primary voters for a youngish, white, male, just-right-of-liberal technocrat with a long resume of government service across state lines.

He’ll be on TV on Sunday morning — the full slate of Connecticut talking heads can be seen over at The Laurel.

So I’ve had a grand time prowling through campaign finance reports in the past, and while Cappiello and Sullivan are no longer with us, Shays is still delivering some pretty impressive dirt.

Shays campaign manager Michael Sohn has been alleged to have ripped the campaign off over the last couple of years, and news hit the wire last night of the amount that we’re talking about:

According to Shays’ campaign, Sohn made $70,492 in unauthorized ATM withdrawals, wrote 31 checks to himself totaling $99,080 and ran up $21,835 on a debit card. [...]

“It ultimately took having to go directly to the bank to get accurate financial statements to compare against and confirm the fact that there was something going on,” [Shays spokesman Michael] Fox said.

Shays is now seeking money from supporters to pay off about $207,000 in campaign debt, including some $190,000 in alleged fraudulent charges by the architect of his re-election bid, according to Fox.

Of course, there’s a lot of data to paw through in the 11 re-filed documents, and a lot more than just the unauthorized charges changed.

The most important question to my view is just how that much money disappears from somebody else’s bank account (i.e., the account managed by treasurer Ralph DePanfilis) over the span of two years without them noticing it. And even if that amount of money was in fact ripped off, what bearing does that have on the payment or non-payment of the campaign’s employees and vendors? (That is to say, how did Sohn’s alleged stealing make the earlier payments to vendors invalid?)

It makes me think that one of two things had to be going on: either there was a separate bank account that the treasurer never saw, or there are more people involved than just Michael Sohn.

The new filings have over 400 more records than the originals – and more than 1700 other changes, to records in almost every category. So there’s a lot more to discover about how these problems happened.

The boys over at Capitol Watch got an advance copy of Nancy Wyman’s letter on her interest or non-interest in running for Governor in 2010, and their impression was that Wyman was “stepping back” from a run.

Two day later, someone I know that received it wrote me an email that said that she was indeed exploring a run. So obviously, different people can read different things into the letter – so I’m attaching it below for the curious.

My sense is that she is exploring a run, but is making a mistake both politically and policy-wise by shunning the bully-pulpit that comes with even a potential candidacy. Column-inches and airtime don’t necessarily come easily, and if an elected official makes a proposal with nobody around to hear it…

In any case, the letter is below.

(more…)

There’s a lot to criticize in Connecticut’s political media, but when something is worthy of praise…

This week’s Fairfield County Weekly seems to have stepped up the pace on the political reporting front, with a handful of stories that are refreshingly informative and detailed.

First, Cut and Run by Andy Bromage:

Like most Gulf War vets, the federal Veterans Administration refuses to test Sterry for exposure to depleted uranium or other chemical toxins she was exposed to in the Middle East.

So Sterry turned to the state government, and in 2005 helped Connecticut become the first state in the nation to craft a law to test returning combat troops for exposure to battlefield health hazards, including depleted uranium. The law would also establish a veterans health registry to catalog mysterious symptoms crippling war vets, similar to the Connecticut Tumor Registry, which tracks cancer patterns in the state. The data could be used as leverage to pressure the federal government to accept disabilities as service-related, and therefore treat them.

But the state has turned its back on Sterry and the more than 30,000 Connecticut troops who have deployed to combat zones in the Middle East and the Balkans since 1990. The Weekly has learned that Gov. Jodi Rell, through her budget office, quietly killed funding for the veterans health registry without telling the lawmakers who sponsored the program, nor the veterans whom it would serve. [...]

Linda Schwartz, commissioner of Veterans Affairs for the state, broke the news last week to the legislature’s Select Committee on Veterans Affairs during a special meeting at the Connecticut veterans’ home in Rocky Hill. Her budget was being cut, she said, and $165,000 of it would come from the sick-soldiers registry.

What she didn’t mention, and what some lawmakers were not aware of until very recently, was that the funding was eliminated last June during Gov. Rell’s first round of state budget cuts.

In fact, after four years of hearings, debates and lobbying, the program was just days away from receiving the money it needed to hire staff and begin testing. Funding was set for release on July 1, 2008. The governor’s office announced the cut on June 24.

Decoding Rob Simmons by Andy Bromage:

“In reading through the recent speech given to the new legislature, did you see any specific recommendations for dealing with this problem?” Simmons asks me in a recent interview. “Since then, have you heard any specific recommendations for dealing with this problem, other than taking a free day?”

Well, there was the governor’s cost-cutting plan recently approved by the legislature, I say.

“In this environment — in an environment of permanent fiscal crisis — these ideas have to be out there,” Simmons says. “It’s not good enough to surprise everybody in February.”[...]

It’s rare to hear Democrats go after Rell these days for fear of retaliation, let alone a Republican. Let alone a Republican who worked for Rell just a few weeks ago.

Simmons left that job early last month after Rell and the legislature essentially dissolved the Office of the Business Advocate as a cost-saving measure.

Now Simmons is in the market again but he wouldn’t tell me whether he’s interested in running for governor in 2010, or for Chris Dodd’s U.S. Senate seat, as has also been rumored.

Fact and Factions by Nick Keppler, an article about Bridgeport NAACP President (and former Shays GOTV worker) Craig Kelly:

One dispute has been about money. A letter from Dorothy Smith — to Kelly, the Executive Committee and state and national NAACP officials, dated Nov. 10, 2007 — complains that, unbeknownst to her, Kelly arranged to have money raised at the 2007 Freedom Fund Banquet, the branch’s largest yearly fund-raiser, deposited in a new account to which she did not have access. National officials told Kelly to close the account and put its funds in the general account. (Kelly confirms this series of events.)

[...]

Last November, Kelly was challenged for the presidency by Wayne Winston. It was not pretty.

On Nov. 13, 114 people who claimed to be members of the Greater Bridgeport NAACP voted at Messiah Baptist Church. Only 82 of the ballots were counted, and Kelly won 42-40.

Among the 32 people whose membership was challenged were such Bridgeport politicos as City Councilman Andre Baker, State Rep. Don Clemons and State Sen. Ed Gomes. Wayne Winston’s standing as a member was also challenged. All of them were denied by then-Secretary Carolyn Vermont, who was voted first vice president that evening under the slate headed by Kelly. She says those voters simply didn’t have their membership in order.[...]

Spearheaded by Winston and Cash — who lost the presidency and first vice presidency to Kelly and Vermont, respectively — 25 people signed a complaint to the national and state NAACP. Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut State Conference, and Rev. Gill Ford, regional director of the national NAACP, told the Connecticut Post the matter is resolved and Kelly is the victor. When the Weekly attempted to contact state and national officials about the issue, we were referred back to the Greater Bridgeport office.

Fabrizi Unleashed by Rob Sullivan:

Fabrizi also takes exception to Finch’s contention that one of the main reasons for the current budget mess is the former mayor’s excessive reliability on one-time revenue streams to balance the budget.

“When he came into office, there were two outstanding projects for which we were relying on revenue,” he says. “One was the $4.5 million payment from the Steel Point Developers and the other was $3 million from American Fabrics on Connecticut Avenue. Now, his administration wound up receiving $2 million for the American Fabrics location, which I never would have done. And for all his pointing and wagging his finger, he turned around and put the expected $4.5 million right back in the budget.”

That $4.5 million expected payment was included in the city’s budget, which was passed May 13. That payment was lost when Bridgeport and then–lead developer Midtown Properties of Manhattan missed a deadline for a land disposition agreement in late August. RCI Marine of Miami has since become the Steel Point project’s lead developer, and plans are underway for a smaller-scale version of the massive lead development project planned for the city’s East End.

In talking about Steel Point and other stalled development projects in the Park City, Fabrizi observes, “You have to be in constant contact with these developers. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

I don’t know what led the Weekly to eat their Wheaties for this week’s edition, but these stories are a couple cuts above what we normally see on newsprint in the state. They get facts that can’t be found in any press releases, ask (and follow up on) detailed questions to people who are in a position to know the uncomfortable history of a situation, report on who wouldn’t answer which questions, and importantly, lay out compelling facts for people who are generally informed, and offer context for people who aren’t.

None of that should be remarkable, but all of it is. Let’s hope they keep it up.

Posting has been slow the last couple of days due to work on an political data research project I’ve been doing. One of the questions that came up in this project was how to weight votes cast for cross-endorsed candidates in determining a party’s “base” in a particular voting district.

Fortunately, a bit of research came my way, an essay by Scott Susin from 2004 that answers that question:

That the WFP had a larger effect on the race than the other minor parties is not surprising, since the WFP expended much more effort in the race than the other minor parties. [...] Less expected was the result that the WFP displaced so few Democratic votes, with each 100 WFP votes representing between 65 and 103 new votes for the candidate.

Short answer: don’t count ‘em.

The this interesting article about the new State GOP headquarters that just opened up: they discuss a little about what they’re planning to do with the space, and it’s always good to keep abreast of what the opposition is up to. Healy suggests an emphasis on training, and I’d love to compare notes with someone across the aisle about what our respective parties are up to on the training front.

A couple things jumped out to me, though:

“We got through the election,” Healy said. “Now we’re going back to the voters and telling them we understand their unhappiness with too much government spending and our not sticking to the principles of the party.”

That’s some pretty intense willful ignorance there: if the Republicans “understood” what voters were unhappy about, then the GOP wouldn’t have received such a shellacking this fall. Hint: they’re unhappy with the actual principles of your party. This seems to me like a not-too-coded suggestion that last year’s loss came from John McCain’s deviation from the GOP’s core values, when the shambles of our economy and our foreign policy served as a fierce reminder of their party’s principles.

Also, this gem was picked up in the original post:

“New Britain is really the heart of the state,” Healy said. “Not just geographically. It’s emblematic of the kind of hard-working, family-oriented, community-involved city where we want to be.”

John McNamara added:

Nonetheless New Britain seems an unlikely place for the state GOP to locate an office. There are 18,072 Democrats here compared to about 3,699 Republicans — part of the surge that favored Democrats everywhere in 2008. When unaffiliateds (11,749) are counted, Republicans account for little more than 11 percent of the electorate.

Yep, New Britain – deep in the heart of hard-working, family-oriented, community-involved, Democratic Connecticut.

Dick Blumenthal has decided not to run for Governor. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but I figured if any year was the year, this was it. I guess I haven’t been involved in CT politics for long enough.

While Blumenthal would have made a fine Governor, I have to say I’m glad he’s out of the running – he would have cleared the field (even against you, Mr. Amann), and I relish the potential for a great debate between the candidates in the next 19 months. It’s unfortunately rare for the incentives to line up for political people such that showing leadership aligns with their own career interests, but in a Gubernatorial primary, there’s really no caucus or party line to hide behind.

Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic shares this note from a Republican National Committee source that offers a peek at the larger issues at stake in this week’s RNC Chairman’s race:

Republican rules for the first time give the members of the Republican National Committee, by a 2/3 vote, the option of adopting a mandatory 2012 state primary election calendar.

States whose legislatures, which may be controlled by Democrats, refuse to schedule a primary that complies with RNC rules face a draconian choice.

Either their party gives up its presidential primary and instead holds (and pays for) a presidential preference caucus — or the state suffers a loss of 1/2 of its delegates to the 2012 Convention.

Many party leaders, who, for ideological or personal reasons, prefer a low-participation caucus rather than a higher-participation primary, see this Rule as a great opportunity to transform the party. (It would become more conservative.) [...]

So — the key factor in the RNC race is that the Rule must be presented to the RNC by a drafting committee largely appointed by the RNC Chairman and cannot be amended by the RNC membership.

Thus the new RNC Chairman could wield enormous power over the shape of the 2012 Presidential race and the composition of the 2012 convention which could adopt additional rules that would have even more impact on the future of the party.

This rule, incidentally, has already been passed, so all that’s left for the RNC members to decide is whose ox gets gored in 2012.

But the most fascinating part of this to me is how it drafts State legislatures into national-level politics: those States with a Democratic legislature are likely to either have fewer votes at the 2012 GOP convention, or the Republican parties in those states will see their bank accounts drained (and time wasted) by having to administer an election themselves. In this way, the national GOP is incentivizing success at the State legislative level, and scaling back the influence of more liberal States.

Of course, it creates a situation where the local parties are forced to dig a deeper hole for themselves financially where they have no control over the primary dates, but all of this seems to be a conscious decision that was laid out before the 2008 convention to change their process.

(The Democrats do something similar: additional delegates are awarded to those States with a strong percentage of voters going for the prior Democratic presidential candidate, and automatic bonuses are given to those states that schedule their primary at the end of the calendar.)

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UPDATE: The actual election is on Friday, but check out this great, hands-on workshop that they’re offering tomorrow:

Awesome.