Editor's Choice

Jumping ship: Both candidates for U.S. Senate are highlighting support from members of the opposing party, Heart's Brian Lockhart reports. Democrat Richard Blumenthal's campaign issued an open letter from six Republicans who are "putting aside partisanship" to back the attorney general. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Republican Linda McMahon says she is approached daily by "disaffected Democrats" who plan to vote for her.

 

From tax breaks to preferential parking, Connecticut should offer an array of incentives to encourage the use of electric vehicles on the state, a new report says. The goal is 25,000 electric vehicles by 2020-a number that represents less than 1 percent of some 3 million vehicles now registered. The Hartford Business Journal summarizes the findings of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Council; the full report is here.

 

Sarah Palin might still be unknown south of Ketchican if John McCain had listened to his daughter. In her new book, "Dirty Sexy Politics," Meghan McCain says she felt "shaken and troubled" after meeting Palin, her father's pick for vice president, reviewer Steven Livingston says in the Washington Post. Her preference: Joe Lieberman, "a brilliant politician . . . one of the kindest, friendliest, and funniest people I have ever met."

 

 

The first Crocodile Club luncheon since 2002 was held at Lake Compounce in Bristol Tuesday, and Hearst's Ken Dixon was among the reporters covering what was once an annual rite of Connecticut politics. Clearly none of the pols in attendance spent the eight-year hiatus improving their jokes.

After sitting through some 75 Congressional campaign ads, veteran political reporter Walter Shapiro concludes that this year's crop is as hackneyed and clichéd as ever. A few candidates stand out, he notes at Politics Daily, including Richard Blumenthal, "one of the few candidates brave enough to wear a white shirt and tie."

 

In the run-up to Barack Obama's address on the end of combat operations in Iraq, Republicans insisted that credit for the war's successes should go to George W. Bush and the 2007 "surge" strategy, Meredith Shiner notes at Politico. Joining in was Joe Lieberman, who lost the Democratic Senate nomination in 2006 largely over his support for Bush and the war. Unlike the Republicans, Lieberman also credited Obama for sticking with the Bush policies.

 

Republicans lead Democrats by 10 percentage points in Gallup's latest "generic ballot" Congressional tracking poll, the GOP's largest mid-term margin in the 70-year history of the survey. Bloggers have seized on the survey as another sign of impending doom for Democrats, but Gallup itself includes a caveat: Democrats led the poll by 6 points as recently as mid-July. (Telephone survey of  1,540 registered voters; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

 

When veteran education reporter Laura Pappano set out to write a book about turning around failing schools, one of the places she looked at was Hartford-particularly Hartford Public High School, which has been reinvented as four themed academies. It's not yet clear if the school has actually been turned around, Pappano write in the Harvard Education Letter, but early test results "suggest Hartford may be on to something."

 

Like most communities, New Haven bans the posting of signs and flyers on utility poles and other public property, and as in most communities, the ban is ignored. Now Alderman Darnell Goldson wants anyone who intends to put up signs pay a fee to the city, and take them down after two weeks, Thomas MacMillan reports at the New Haven Independent. It's part of Goldson's sign crackdown, inspired by the proliferation of illegally-posted Ned Lamont campaign signs. Goldson, by the way, worked for Dan Malloy.

 

Democrats in the U.S. Senate are rallying around their beleaguered leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, J. Taylor Rushing reports in The Hill, and the most generous backer is the one who's given Reid the most trouble-Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, who was re-elected in 2006 as an independent but who is registered as a Democrat and caucuses with the party, has contributed $14,000 from his two PACs. Reid backed Lieberman earlier this year when angry Democratic colleagues wanted to strip him of his committee chairmanship over Lieberman's opposition to elements of the health care reform bill and other issues.

 

It appears that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont was more interested in rival Dan Malloy's use of a Stamford city car in 2009 than Republican Mayor Michael Pavia, Hearst's Brian Lockhart reports. Lamont tried to use the car question against Malloy in the days before the party primary, which Lamont lost. Pavia, Malloy's successor as Stamford's mayor, told Lockhart he'll look into the question of whether Malloy's campaign properly reimbursed the city for using the vehicle, but added, ""There are a lot of things that happen during a campaign."

 

What's the difference between sexually-suggestive ads on Craigslist and similar ads in Connecticut's alternative media? For one thing, Don Pesci notes at Connecticut Political Reporter, Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal has launched a well-publicized campaign against the former business, which happens to be an out-of-state enterprise with limited influence in Connecticut.

 

Linda McMahon could prove something of a bright spot in what otherwise looks like a tough election year for women in Congress, Lisa Mascaro says in the Los Angeles Times. Sixty-nine of the 90 women in the House and Senate are Democrats, and projected Republican victories could reduce the total by as many as 10. McMahon, a Republican who has been closing in on Democratic Senate nominee Richard Blumenthal in recent polls, could counter those losses in terms of gender if not ideology.

 

The use of on-line social media such as Facebook is growing faster among older Internet users than younger age groups, Pew Research says. Social networking among internet users age 50 and older has nearly doubled in the past year, to 42 percent. Still, that's less than half the 86 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds who stay in touch through social media.

Ken Mehlman's isn't getting a lot of support from the LGBT community. He is out of the closet, but the former RNC chair is still remembered for how the GOP on his watch used gay marriage as a wedge issue.

 

GOProud is more welcoming. The conservative gay organization is still buzzing over getting Ann Coulter to headline its Homocon 2010 event in New York next month, calling her the "right wing Judy Garland." Can a conservative gay trend story be far behind?

 

Tune in to "Face the State" on Sunday, and you'll hear John Droney, the Democratic chair under Bill O'Neill, say that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi aren't welcome in Connecticut this year. Does that mean that Jim Himes won't be poll standing in Bridgeport this year next to a life-size poster of Obama, as he did in 2008?

 

At least Droney isn't suggesting that Pelosi die. An Alabama congressman, Bobby Bright, is under fire for joking about the possibility of the speaker's demise. And he's a Democrat.

 

Chris Healy, the GOP state chair, can brag about getting a deal. He landed a former RNC chair, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, as the keynote speaker at the party's fundraiser earlier this year. Politico says Barbour is now getting between $50,000 and $75,000 a speech. Had we known, we would have paid closer attention to what he said.

 

Joe Marie, who was forced out at DOT, has a new gig.

 

House Democrats are privately worried about losing their majority in Congress. This "private" concern is expressed to the national online journal, Politico.

 

Senate Democrats don't have to share their private fears. A new analysis by FiveThirtyEight is taking care of that.

 

The Gray Lady's Peter Applebome asks some hard questions about accountability, Linda McMahon, WWE and wrestlers who die young.

 

A dead wrestler's father spoke out to Ted Mann of The Day, saying that McMahon and her husband are well aware of the physical toll that wrestling takes on their performers, some of whom turn to pain killers

 

FactCheck says the stimulus is working better than Republicans say, but not quite as well as Joe Biden is telling audiences.

 

PolitiFact's verdict on House Minority Leader John Boehner's speech on the economy: "Half-true."

 

Mickey Mouse's old boss is in talks with creditors to take over the bankrupt Tribune Co., a media company that no one has confused lately with "the happiest place on earth." In Connecticut, the Trib owns The Courant and Fox61.

Explaining Richard Blumenthal should be easy for Ty Matsdorf, a recent addition to the press staff of the Democrat's campaign for U.S. Senate. In his last gig, Matsdorf had to explain why his married boss, Max Baucus, was seriously considering recommending a girlfriend as U.S. attorney for Montana.

 

Ok, maybe not easy. Blumenthal is casting himself as someone who never has been a Washington insider, but Kevin Rennie has dredged up an inconvenient slogan from Blumenthal's first campaign for the legislature in 1984: "He has worked for governors, senators and presidents. Now let him work for you."

 

Never a good sign when your former campaign manager is fearing your doom in the next election. in his blog, Only in Bridgeport, Lennie Grimaldi is openly fretting about Bill Finch's chances for another term as mayor of Bridgeport. As Lennie woulld say, only in Bridgeport...

 

Talking points that need to die. Here are six nominations from Salon, not that you'll ever hear anything like this in Connecticut.

 

A dead wrestler continues to make Connecticut political news. The Hill has a story about the WWE pushing back at Chris Nowinski, the Harvard-educated former wrestler who criticized Linda McMahon after she seemed to distance herself from the death of Lance McNaught, aka Lance Cade. Colin McEnroe explores McNaught's death with Irvin Muchnick on his WNPR show Wednesday.

 

Every legislator should be locked up just for a little while. Norm Pattis, the defense lawyer, makes that suggestion in a Connecticut Law Tribune column about lawmakers' thirst for mandatory minimum sentences.  "Too often lawmakers dole out mandatory sentences as though they are candy," writes Pattis, who used to pen newspaper editorials in a previous life. "I say make them eat a pound or two of the garbage they call justice. Let them see how it tastes."

 

The previous item undoubtedly has you wondering if Barack Obama ever kept his campaign promise to review the wisdom of mandatory minimum sentences of non-violent drug offenders. PolitiFact has the answer.

 

The faces of eight women killed by Connecticut serial killer Michael Ross are on TV in Nevada in a commercial urging Harry Reid to vote against the confirmation of U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Chatigny briefly delayed the execution of Ross.

How's this for an endorsement of Linda McMahon's campaign for U.S. Senate: "She's not running because she's bored." That's the view of her son-in-law, the wrestler Triple H, who says McMahon sees the country running the wrong way, so she is willing to sacrifice time with the grandkids, not to mention $50 million, to make things right.

 

Too much, too soon. That's Colin McEnroe's view of the dizzying return of negative ads to the Connecticut airwaves in the U.S. Senate race. If McEnroe is stunned by by McMahon's ads, he is mystified by Richard Blumenthal's insistence he is not a political insider. Admirably, Colin covers the ground without using the exhausted phrase "smack down."

 

We'll see. The Courant's Kevin Rennie and The Bulletin's Ray Hackett make the case that Dan Malloy could have reaped tons of good press for his gubernatorial campaign if he had objected to the legislature's recent decision to double the public financing grant for his campaign to $6 million. Now, the question is whether the grief Malloy will get from Republican Tom Foley add up to more than $3 million in negatives?

 

Can a Harvard man from Greenwich find happiness with a populist running mate? Tom Foley and Mark Boughton are giving it a try, even though Boughton insulted Foley's pickup truck as an affectation when he announced his candidacy for governor in February. Foley visited Boughton's turf in Danbury.

Off limits: For the second time, WNPR has objected to the use of their photo in ads attacking Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal. First it was the national GOP; this week Linda McMahon released an ad using the picture, taken by WNPR's Chion Wolf. New Director John Dankosky says McMahon's staff promised to remove the image; as of late Thursday it was still on the campaign's YouTube channel.

 

Purloined photo or no, ads like that pose a threat to Democrats' ability to hold on to the Senate seat, the respected Cook Political Report says. But the real danger Linda McMahon poses "is her bank account." Cook still rates the race "lean Democrat," but says that may well change.

 

New federal data showing the recession was more severe than previously thought mean Connecticut's economy probably was weaker than previously recognized, a new UConn report says, and could stall job recovery. The report does include some good news, AP says: What jobs have been added in the state have tended to be higher-paying positions.

After helping launch the new Citizens Election Program, Connecticut's public campaign financing system, executive director Beth Rotman is leaving at the end of the year. The announcement was made at Wednesday's meeting of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, which oversees the CEP. CTNewsJunkie's Christine Stuart says Rotman is moving to Israel with her family in December because her partner got a job at Hebrew University.

 

Also Wednesday, the SEEC rejected its first grant application of the 2010 election season, Stuart reports. SEEC investigator Charles Urso said at least 18 supposed contributions to Newtown Republican Christopher LaRocque's campaign for the state House were falsified. LaRocque, who is challenging Rep. Chris Lyddy for the seat, said a campaign worker made the mistake.

 

At 1,900 acres, Lake Lillinonah is one of the largest lakes in the state, but it also has a big pollution problem, Nancy Cohen reports at WNPR. State and federal environmental officials have been working for years to address the phosphorus levels in the lake, which promotes algae growth, but Lillinonah still turns thick and green as pea soup in the summer.

 

A week after his bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination ended in a third-place finish in the Aug. 10 primary, Oz Griebel was back at work as CEO of MetroHartford Alliance, the Hartford Business Journal's Greg Bordonaro reports. Griebel, who took an unpaid leave to make the run, says he'll continue to focus on improving the state's business climate.

 

 

U.S. Senate candidates Richard Blumenthal and Linda McMahon took markedly different stands on plans to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan, Neil Vigdor reports at the Greenwich Time. Republican McMahon said the proposal "rubs salt in the wound of the 9/11 tragedy." Democrat Blumenthal's campaign released a statement saying he recognizes the sensitivity of the issue and believes it "should be decided at the local level."

 

Barack Obama broke new ground in the use of social networking platforms to build support in 2008, Nisha Chitta says at AlterNet, but two years later, Congressional Republicans have the edge over their Democratic counterparts. Not only are House Republicans more likely to use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but they also "have more followers, they're more active, and they are more in sync with each other," Chitta says.

 

Dick Blumenthal's decision to distance himself from TARP and federal stimulus spending suggests that the Obama Administration's policies aren't playing well even in a blue state like Connecticut, Josh Kraushaar says at HotlineOnCall. That also could mean trouble for Democratic Congressional incumbents Jim Himes and Chris Murphy, he says. But so far, Politico's Alex Isenstadt says, the national Republican organization isn't putting television money against them.

 

Whatever Mark Boughton brings to the Republican ticket as Tom Foley's running mate, money isn't it, Ken Dixon reports for the Connecticut Post. Boughton was GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Fedele's choice for lieutenant governor; Fedele lost the primary to Foley, but Boughton won. He has experience as mayor of Danbury and as a state legislator, but he also has about $40 in his campaign treasury. Foley, on the other hand, has no elective experience but lots of money.

An organization that grades colleges on the basis of how rigorously they focus on core subjects areas has updated its rankings, and some highly-regarded, high-priced schools don't do very well. The non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni says requiring students to take courses in key subjects such as literature and economics prepares them for success. In Connecticut, Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity and Connecticut College all get Fs; Fairfield and Southern Connecticut get Bs.

 

The death of a professional wrestler over the weekend could be a setback for Linda McMahon, Joshua Green says in The Atlantic. Lance McNaught performed for World Wrestling Entertainment, the company McMahon and her husband founded and ran, and his death from heart failure at age 29 reopens the issue of steroid use in WWE, Green says.

 

A group that supports veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are seeking political office is backing a civilian-Tom Foley, the Republican candidate for governor and former director of private-sector development in Iraq during the Bush administration. The founder of Iraq Veterans for Congress praised Foley's willingness "to serve in a ferocious combat zone," Sean Miller reports at The Hill. Just how dangerous Foley's time in Iraq was--and whether his campaign website overplays the risk--has been the subject of some debate, however.

OK, she was head of World Wrestling Entertainment, TheAtlanticWire's Ray Gustini, says, "but does every article written about [Linda] McMahon have to include a wrestling pun in the headline?" Apparently, yes, he concludes, based on several examples  from last week alone. But give some credit to The Day for this headline on a story about Rob Simmons winning the primary vote in one shoreline town: "Simmons (insert wrestling-themed verb here) McMahon in Waterford."

 

Not only did Dan Malloy beat Ned Lamont by 16 percentage points, Chris Bigelow notes at CTNewsJunkie, but he also won in just about every town. Most of the cities and generally liberal suburbs that propelled Lamont over Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Senate primary backed Malloy this time around.

 

A new book by Mitch Pearlman, longtime head of the state Freedom of Information Commission, is well worth reading, Jim Smith says in the Bristol Press. "Piercing the Veil of Secrecy: Lessons in the Fight for Freedom of Information" is more than a history of FOI in Connecticut, one of the first states to adopt a "sunshine" law; it also chronicles government secrecy from ancient Egypt to the Nixon White House.

What did it all mean? Given the low turnout in Tuesday's primary, that's hard to say, New Haven Independent editor Paul Bass writes for The New York Times. "At most, Democratic and Republican voters showed evidence of disdain for the political process, particularly when it came to big spending by wealthy, self-financed candidates."

 

At The Fix, The Washington Post's political blog, Chris Cillizza says Dan Malloy's win in the Democratic primary moves the governor's race from "Toss Up" to "Lean Democratic." "Malloy is a far less target-rich candidate for Republicans than 2006 Senate nominee Ned Lamont would have been," Cillizza says.

 

In a year of rich candidates, who would you pick, Michael Wolff asks at Vanity Fair: Meg Whitman or Linda McMahon? Or, as he puts it, "The white-shoe MBA or the vulgarian and rapscallion entrepreneur?" As tawdry as World Wrestling Entertainment might be, Wolff says, at least McMahon got her money by creating something.

The chances for Democrats in November have gotten better "thanks to Republican voters choosing flawed or erratic candidates" like McMahon, says Richard Adams at the Guardian. The GOP has assembled "a deeply unusual pool of candidates," Politico's Alexander Burns agrees.

 

Primary Day is over, and guess who the national media are most interested in: The longtime Democratic mayor who wants to be governor? His GOP rival, the businessman and former Bush appointee? Or the pro wrestling impresario who promises to "lay the smackdown" on Connecticut's attorney general and pay her own way to the U.S. Senate?

 

Will the World Wrestling Entertainment connection help or hurt Linda McMahon? That was the question of the day at The Fix, the Washington Post political blog. The completely unscientific results: Maybe.

 

"Bizarre, cheap-looking, boring, or all three..." That's how Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner describes the campaign ads of wealthy self-funded candidates like McMahon-and, for that matter, the now-vanquished Ned Lamont. She wonders, "Is there an inverse correlation" between massive self-funding and the quality of commercials?

 

McMahon's win sets up "a high-decibel race likely to be fought over dueling -- and conspicuously flawed - biographies," veteran political writer Walter Shapiro says at Politics Daily. Both sides will spend millions to promote its view of the opponent: McMahon as boss of an enterprise that exploited performers, degraded women and condoned drug use, and Democrat Richard Blumenthal as a fabricator of his military record. Expect "a steel-cage match in November."

Forget negative TV ads and scurrilous mailings-nothing seems to bring out raw emotion like a campaign lawn sign. One of the most viewed political ads on YouTube this year depicts an Alabama candidate driving off a would-be sign thief at gunpoint. In Florida, a state House candidate is under investigation after he and his wife were caught by a hidden camera ripping down an opponent's placards. And now in Connecticut, the husband and campaign manager for Republican attorney general candidate Martha Dean has been charged with breach of peace after an altercation over lawn signs.

 

Retiring Sen. Chris Dodd has been chastised by liberal bloggers and commentators for his opposition to elimination of the filibuster and other cumbersome Senate rules, but he's unapologetic, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne says.  And he takes exception to those who complain that Congress is too partisan. "There's nothing wrong with partisanship," Dodd says. "A little more civility would be a good thing, but it was partisanship that created this place."

 

Connecticut's other senator, Joe Lieberman, continues to be coy about whom he supports in this year's elections, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. He does say that he's disheartened by all the negative advertising going on. "I think it may turn a lot of people off," Lieberman says. You may recall that the recent exchange of negative ads by the Democratic gubernatorial candidate began with a spot in which Dan Malloy questioned Ned Lamont's business acumen and integrity--a recycled version of an attack Lieberman lobbed at Lamont during their Senate battle four years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

"Nobody's man but yours," Lowell Weicker's slogan during his 1990 campaign for governor, may have been one of the best in Connecticut political history, Day editorial editor Paul Choiniere says. Compare that to some of the catchphrases being used by this year's candidates, from the succinct if not especially original--"Let's get Connecticut working again"-- to the hopelessly literal--"The Democratic endorsed candidate for comptroller."

 

A primary election in August? Since the legislature made Primary Day a month earlier, starting in 2004, politicians and editorial writers have lamented holding the contest at the height of vacation time, and this year is no different, The Courant's Chris Keating says. But Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz predicts a healthy turnout, given the number of high-profile races on the ballot. And Michael Gannon reports in the Norwich Bulletin that Eastern Connecticut registrars are seeing a lot of unaffiliated voters enroll in a party so they can participate.

 

Georgia has its own primary Tuesday-a Republican gubernatorial runoff-but a Connecticut campaign is getting some attention there as well. Following The Mirror's story about Republican Senate candidate Michael Fedele's ads attacking Tom Foley over his onetime ownership of a Columbus, Ga. textile mill, a local television station followed up with interviews of two residents who appeared in the ads.

Remember the positive, upbeat primary race for Secretary of the State? The one where Democrats Denise Merrill and Gerry Garcia talked about their own qualifications rather than attack each other? That's over, Paul Bass reports at the New Haven Independent, as Garcia tried to tag Merrill, the House majority leader and former co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, with responsibility for the state's massive budget problems. Merrill says she has no plan to hit back.

 

What's the difference between a railroad and a political campaign? There's probably a joke there, with "train wreck" in the punch line. But in this case, the Day's Ted Mann wonders if Gov. M. Jodi Rell is applying different standards to spending money budgeted for rail cars and spending money budgeted for clean elections.

 

Did Chris Dodd retire too soon? Eric Kleefeld at TPM looks at the state of Connecticut's U.S. Senate race and speculates about whether Dodd has any regrets. If so, a look at Peter Schiff's recent anti-Linda McMahon ad should restore his equanimity.

Retiring Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, fresh from an appearance in a New Yorker piece arguing that the body where he has spent the last 30 years is dysfunctional, urged 10 freshman senators not to be in too much of a hurry to fix it, Ryan Grim reports at the Huffington Post. Dodd said he told the freshmen to be careful about changing rules on such things as filibusters, noting that they haven't spent any time in the minority-yet. (Dodd also calls the New Yorker story "ridiculous," HuffPo reports.)

 

 

Tuesday's final debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidates Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont got the best ratings of the political season so far, moderator Dennis House of WFSB, Channel 3, reports on his blog-perhaps because of the unconventional air time of 3 p.m. It came in second, behind General Hospital, with a 2.1 rating and a 6 share-that is, 2.1 percent of the households with televisions in the market, and 6 percent of the households actually watching at the time.

 

 

Almost every state in the country-including Connecticut-has had to cut spending on such things as health care, education and services to the elderly and disabled because of budget problems, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says in a new report. The cuts, forced by reduced tax revenues, have been mitigated by federal stimulus spending, the center says, but that money is running out and revenues have yet to recover.

 

It wasn't an endorsement-she says she's not endorsing anyone in the GOP primaries-but Gov. M. Jodi Rell came pretty close when she introduced Linda McMahon at an event this week, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewJunkie. "I call her a friend," Rell said. "She's a normal person." Of course, she's a normal person who can afford to spend $50 million on her own Senate campaign. That brings to mind something else Rell said a few months ago: "If you have to use your own money, you shouldn't be running."

 

You think attack ads are the worst of campaign nastiness? Citing "multiple people with knowledge of the practice," Hearst's Neil Vigdor says "clandestine campaign operatives" are clicking on rival candidates' Internet ads to drive up the opposition's costs. Given the minuscule cost-per-click of Internet ads, the operatives can't be all that clandestine: They're the ones with their mouse arms in slings because of RSI.

 

World Wrestling Entertainment may turn some Connecticut voters away from Linda McMahon, the Senate candidate and former WWE executive who faces criticism for the company's televised sex-and-violence excesses, but Rock the Vote thinks it will turn young voters on. The nonpartisan organization is hoping to register 200,000 young people across the country through a campaign that features the WWE along with popular bands Green Day and N*E*R*D, SFGate reports.

 

 

 

How do you take multi-millionaire businessmen running for their first elective office in the midst of a recession and make them likeable to the electorate? That's the subject of the first story in a New York Times series on political advertising, and it features Connecticut's Ned Lamont and Tom Foley. The answer? For starters, David W. Chen reports, think barn jackets and rolled-up shirtsleeves.

 

Both sides in another primary campaign have launched TV ads--and they're actually civil, the New Haven Independent's Paul Bass reports. "No mentions of long-ago arrests. No zombie-like photos. No litanies of non-existent 'lies' or songs filled with grade-school taunts." The Democratic candidates for secretary of the state, Denise Merrill and Gerry Garcia, take the approach of telling viewers why they should vote for them rather than demonizing their opponent.

 

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Or, as a new book puts it, "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception." Author Charles Seife recounts the ways in which numbers, "which are supposed to be the arbiters of truth, are routinely used to advance lies and undermine democracy," Eleanor Clift says at Politics Daily. From the McCarthy era to the Bush-Gore recount, Seife says, the nation's history has been shaped by numbers that don't exactly mean what they seem to.

 

The state primary is a week away, and Linda McMahon already is No. 4 on the all-time Congressional self-funding list, Steve Peoples report at CQPolitics. She's contributed $22 million to her campaign so far, and has said she's willing to put up as much as $50 million to win a U.S. Senate seat. That would boost her to No. 2, behind former New Jersey Sen. Jon Corzine, a Democrat contributed more than $60.2 million to his successful 2000 Senate campaign. (In fifth place on the list is Ned Lamont, who put $17 million of his own money into his unsuccessful attempt to beat Joe Lieberman four years ago.)

 

As if we really needed more: Politicians in Windham County say candidates for statewide office aren't distributing enough lawn signs in that rural corner of the state, Allison Shea of the Norwich Bulletin reports. "I think Eastern Connecticut doesn't really matter to them," one town committee member said.

 

Creating jobs is a hot topic in certain primary races, including the gubernatorial contest between Democrats Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont. Blogger Denis Horgan wonders just where the Lamont campaign is doing its job creation.

 

The deficit in Connecticut's teacher pension fund is second-highest in the country on a per-capita basis, a new study says. Education Sector, a non-profit think tank, says the fund is nearly $16 billion in the hole, more than $4,500 per state resident. Worst off is Alaska, where the deficit is more than $5,100 per person.

 

 

 

 

With less than two weeks to go before primary day, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff is in the midst of an on-line drive--a "money bomb," he calls it--to raise cash to air his first televised attack ad aimed at front-runner Linda McMahon. Right now, the ad is only available online. Earlier this week, Schiff said he's not inclined to put any more of his own money into the race.

 

"Money is coming in." Reincarnated GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rob Simmons tells Politico he's getting financial support, although he's not actively raising funds. He's also running a private poll and considering another "public service announcement" (NOT a campaign ad) letting folks know he's on the ballot. Some supporters are ambivalent, like former U.S, Rep. Nancy Johnson: "I'm not optimistic, I'm not pessimistic. I'm kind of neutral. It's hard to predict."

 

For nearly 30 years, residents of a neighborhood in Haddam have been waiting for state action to clean up contamination in the groundwater that supply the wells they rely on, Nancy Eve Cohen reports on WNPR. The Department of Environmental Protection has yet to identify the source of the pollution that affects about 19 homes.

 

How much of an issue is Richard Blumenthal's Vietnam problem, Brian Lockhart wonders in his Hearst blog. Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon seems to think it's a winner, judging from the fact that her first mailing against her Democratic rival focuses on his misstatements about his military record. But voters of both parties at a recent Blumenthal stop in Litchfield had other things on their mind, Lockhart says.

 

"Q: To be clear, are you formally running again? A: Formally, informally. I'm letting people know I'm on the ballot." A day after he declared, "I am running for the U.S. Senate," that's how Rob Simmons described his status to the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire Wednesday. "Q: But do you consider yourself an active candidate for the office? A: Yeah, but without a staff." "Q: Who's staffing your campaign? A: My wife's driving the car right now..."

 

After back-to-back blasts from the Journal Inquirer's editorial page editor Keith Burris and managing editor Chris Powell, GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon gets space in the JI for a 680-word rebuttal. Like Burris and Powell, McMahon pulls no punches, accusing the two of  "a smug disdain for my non-government background and career."

Rob Simmons continued to baffle the pundits Tuesday with his semi-re-entry into the GOP Senate primary campaign. This time it was Roll Call's Steve Peoples trying to sort it out. Does he want to win? Peoples asked Tuesday. "Of course. Everybody wants to win," Simmons said. So is he actively campaigning? "I am engaging in a discussion of the issues." But by the time he got to a candidate forum Tuesday night, he seemed to have made up his mind: "I am running for the U.S. Senate."

 

Another story about Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's quick trigger-finger when it comes to lawsuits, this one from The Day's Ted Mann. Mann reports on a 2005 lawsuit against a Stamford doctor whom Blumenthal, now running for U.S. Senate, accused of improperly billing patients; his office withdrew the suit this year after adverse court rulings. Mann never says how he learned of the case, but one interesting name does come up: In the 14^th paragraph, he notes that Ross Garber, a GOP candidate to replace Blumenthal, was the doctor's defense lawyer.

 

GE won a round in its fight for a piece of the F-35 military fighter engine contract, The Hill reports. GE and Pratt & Whitney, both Connecticut-based companies, have been battling over the fighter engine issue for years; Pratt has the contract, but GE says it should get $450 million to develop a secondary engine. The military opposes the GE engine plan, and President Obama has threatened to veto funding for it.

 

 

Calling out The Daily Caller: The conservative online website has been wallowing in e-mails showing liberal journalists' solicitude for Barack Obama in 2008, Ted Mann reports at The Day-proof that the left-wing media is bereft of ethics. But a frequent contributor to the site, Jerry Maldonado, has written two pieces out of the 2^nd Congressional District, one praising Republican candidate Janet Peckinpaugh and one criticizing Democratic incumbent Joe Courtney-without revealing a pertinent fact: He's Peckinpaugh's communications director.

 

Who is Vince McMahon? That's what Hearst's Brian Lockhart set out to discover in a lengthy profile. He pulls together extensive public record material on McMahon, husband of GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon and head of the WWE, and scores a hard-to-get interview. But in the end, McMahon defines himself, as he has as a performer and businessman for years. In his blog, Lockhart talks about the difficulty in pinning McMahon down.

 

Another legacy bill? First there was health care reform, where he stepped in for his friend Ted Kennedy. Then came financial regulation reform. Now, Chris Dodd "says he wants to wrap up his final months in Washington with a focus on the work he's found most rewarding: helping children and families," WNPR's Diane Orson reports. At a hearing in New Haven, Dodd said he wants to National Council on Children, a "permanent body...  whose only priority are children and their families."

Six years after he resigned in disgrace from the governor's office, John Rowland is offering advice-and a few bucks-to some of this year's political candidates, the Hartford Courant's Jon Lender reports. Rowland says he's been consulted by all three Republican gubernatorial campaigns, although he's not endorsing anyone publicly. He and his family also have contributed $500 to Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura, who backed Rowland's appointment to a $90,000 economic development job and who is running for the Democratic nomination for comptroller.  Is Rowland trying to re-emerge on the political scene? "I'm not emerging in any way, shape or form," he says.

 

The top of the ticket can't agree on debates, but the Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor are scheduled to face off this morning on WNPR. Nancy Wyman and Mary Glassman, who are running with Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont respectively, will talk with John Dankosky on his "Where We Live" program at 9 a.m. Meanwhile, Malloy is still castigating Lamont for refusing to debate before the Aug. 10 primary.

 

For the first time in 20 years, there will be a new occupant of the attorney general's office come January, and The Day's Ted Mann looks at what changes that might bring. Although the candidates-Republicans Martha Dean and Ross Garber and Democrat George Jepsen-have different philosophies about how the office should operate, all say they expect there will be less emphasis on litigation than there has been under the incumbent, Richard Blumenthal.

 

The nastiest primary race in the state right now could be one for an office few people know anything about: state comptroller. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura has gone to court to challenge Democratic rival Kevin Lembo's qualifications to receive public campaign financing, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewJunkie; meanwhile, Jarjura is using his own public funding to send out a mailer accusing Lembo of a series of lies. Lembo tells the New Haven Register's Mary O'Leary that the mailing, as well as a related Jarjura website, are themselves "distortions and lies." And the Courant's Colin McEnroe calls the mailer "poli-porn."

 

No escape: The debate debate is dogging Ned Lamont, and the Democratic gubernatorial front-runner will face the issue again this morning on WNPR's "Where We Live," host John Dankosky promises. Lamont, who has said he won't debate rival Dan Malloy again before the Aug. 10 primary, most recently turned down an invitation for a faceoff Aug. 3 sponsored by WNPR, CPTV and WFSB, Channel 3. Dankosky will ask him about it in a live interview starting at 9 a.m.

 

They disagree on lots of things, but U.S. Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal and Journal Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell used the same term to describe a new attack ad against Blumenthal: "stalking." The ad posted on Republican Linda McMahon's YouTube site shows clandestine video of Blumenthal walking around Vancouver, where he recently attended a fund-raiser at a lawyers' convention. Blumenthal shrugged the incident off: "If I was stalked, so be it, but I can't complain about what seems to be a feature of modern political life," he told the New Haven Independent's Melinda Tuhus. Not Powell: "Is there anything beyond decency that McMahon won't do...?" he demanded.

Sen. Joe Lieberman put a positive spin on the decision not to take up a broad energy bill before the August Congressional break, saying it "keeps the process open for negotiating a broader utilities-only energy bill, hopefully for September." But other top Democrats tell Politico that pressures of the November election make it unlikely that a measure to cut utility emissions will come up at all this year. At The Hill, cartoonist Chris Weyant has his own take on the decision to put off climate-change legislation.

 

The suicide of Phoebe Prince after repeated episodes of bullying at her South Hadley, Mass. high school reverberated in Connecticut, just 20 miles down I-91, and across the country. It was a straightforward if harrowing storyline: Mean kids, a troubled girl, tragedy. But after covering story for months, Slate's Emily Bazelon says there's much more to it than initial accounts suggested-and serious questions to be asked about how such cases are handled.

More bad news for Dick Blumenthal. First there were the polls saying that his principal U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Linda McMahon, is narrowing the gap. Now comes word that he's dropped down in another poll: the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute's ranking of the nation's worst attorneys general. He's been at the top of the list since 2007, a position he relished. "I regard it as a huge distinction," he told The Mirror's Mark Pazniokas a month ago. But in a new report, CEI's Hans Bader puts Blumenthal at No. 3. As for the new leader, Jerry Brown of California: SFGate says he might just find the distinction helpful in his own run for governor.

 

As negotiations continue over the climate bill, Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman, a principal backer of the measure, acknowledges that the getting it passed before the August break is iffy at best, The Hill reports. And whatever legislation does pass, Tim Dickinson says in Rolling Stone, may not be worth the effort: A comprehensive climate bill "is officially dead."

 

The case of Shirley Sherrod is a study in the perils of partisan pseudo-journalism, instant damage-control and the non-stop news cycle. It's now the subject of myriad blogs and commentaries; two of the best are by William Saletan at Slate and Stephen Engelberg at ProPublica.

 

 

Tackling a sensitive issue, Greg Hladky explores the "nearly colorless landscape" of Connecticut politics at the Fairfield County Weekly. "The only person of color in a high-level elective office is Denise Nappier, an African-American from Hartford. She is serving her third term as state treasurer, a low-key post that's become a sort of electoral ghetto for black Connecticut politicians," he writes.

 

In the "no good deed goes unpunished" department, Boy Scouts in southeastern Connecticut again found themselves at loggerheads with the state Department of Transportation over the scouts' annual Labor Day weekend coffee stop in Waterford. Two years ago, the DOT barred nighttime operation of the I-95 coffee operation, citing safety concerns; it took an act of the legislature to overturn that decision. This year, the department ordered the scouts to acquire reflective safety vests-a demand that would cut into the revenues the scouts donate to charity. After The Day made some inquiries about the new rule, it was quickly rescinded, Lee Howard reports.

 

The Curse of the Veep could stymie Sarah Palen's ill-concealed ambitions to run for president in 2012, Robert Schmuhl writes at Politics Daily. Vice-presidential nominees, especially unsuccessful ones, haven't done well in the last 50 years or so. A few have won their party's presidential nomination, only to get trounced. More have strived and lost, including Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman.

 

The benefit Connecticut receives from its four-year-old film-production tax credit program is still subject to debate, but there are some clear winners: brokers who help out-of-state producers sell the credits to in-state corporations. Hearst reporter Brian Lockhart says there's no way to know how much of the state's money goes to brokers, and that frustrates some lawmakers.

 

Public financing is an issue in yet another race: Michael Jarjura's campaign is complaining that Kevin Lembo has failed to meet the requirements for public campaign funding of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for comptroller, CTNewsJunkie's Christine Stuart reports. Jarjura says Lembo improperly counted $15,000 raised before he declared his candidacy for comptroller toward the $75,000 he needed to qualify for public money; Lembo says the charge is a "distraction."

 

They may have the same interest, but Connecticut's two Indian casinos say they have no connection to a new group formed to oppose federal recognition of the Shinnecock tribe, which wants to build a competing casino in New York State. James Mosher of the Norwich Bulletin says Matthew Hennessy, onetime aide to recently-convicted ex-Hartford mayor Eddie Perez, is spokesman for the Connecticut Coalition for Gaming Jobs; Hennessy refuses to say who's behind the group.

 

Fifteen weeks before Election Day, and the pundits and pollsters are spinning an aura of inevitability about their predictions for the outcome. Forget the generic Congressional polls and the editorial prognostications, Walter Shapiro says at Politics Daily. "One hundred days was long enough for Napoleon to escape Elba, assemble an army, reclaim his title as emperor of France and endure his final defeat at Waterloo," he says. "One hundred days is a lifetime in politics."

A YouTube video titled "Reefer Rob" is stirring up the Republican fight for the 4^th District Congressional nomination, Rob Varnon reports at the Greenwich Time. Candidate Rob Merkle complains that the spoof of his 2001 marijuana arrest in Florida is out of bounds, and accuses opponent Rick Torres of disseminating the video.  For his part Torres-who admits smoking marijuana in college-calls Merkle a "hypocrite" for opposing decriminalization of the drug.

 

 

GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon frequently refers to her mid-1970s bankruptcy as proof that even though she and her husband are worth millions today, she can relate to the problems of the average voter. The Day's Dave Collins wondered just how much debt the McMahons wiped out through bankruptcy, and who didn't get paid. A clerk for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford said the detailed records of that case are long gone, Collins said, and the McMahon campaign says they can't find any records either.

 

 

Three more candidates for statewide office joined the queue for public campaign funding right at the deadline Friday, CTNewJunkie's Christine Stuart reports. Among them were Democrats Jerry Garcia, Mary Glassman and Kevin Lembo,  candidates for secretary of the state, lieutenant governor and comptroller, respectively.

 

 

The two Democrats vying for their party's nomination for lieutenant governor are at odds over a campaign ad, Ted Mann reports at The Day. Nancy Wyman's campaign has filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission over a Ned Lamont ad in which Mary Glassman, his running-mate, makes an appearance. Glassman's campaign should help pay for the spot, Wyman says. Lamont's campaign disputes that, arguing that Glassman's role was minor-she appears in the background, and her name isn't mentioned.

 

To serve you better-and, incidentally, to save $400,000-the Department of Motor Vehicles will stop issuing windshield registration stickers next month. "Technological changes now make stickers unnecessary because registration enforcement can be done through computer checks," the DMV said in a press release. "That's crazy," Fairfield police Lt. James Perez told the Connecticut Post's Noelle Frampton. "It's a visual aid that we depend on. You do run the risk of seeing a lot more cars unregistered on the road."

 

Among 40 states projecting budget deficits for the next fiscal year, Connecticut's is among the worst in terms of the size of the gap in relation to the overall budget, a new analysis says. The most recent deficit projection of $3.4 billion for the 2011-2012 fiscal year amounts to some 18 percent of the current year budget, one of the 10 highest ratios in the country, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Table 2; the $3.8 billion Connecticut estimate used by the center has since been revised).

 

The year of maybe: First there was former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, dropping hints he might seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination before squelching the notion in February. Then there's Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is still telling anyone who asks that he might endorse Republican Linda McMahon for U.S. Senate over fellow Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Now Rob Simmons, who suspended his own campaign for the GOP Senate nomination after losing the party endorsement to McMahon, floats the idea of getting back in the race to the Hartford Courant's Rick Green. Can't anyone here make a decision?

 

The Crocodile Club is back after an eight-year hiatus-but will the crocodiles return? The club outing was an annual event at Lake Compounce in Bristol dating back to 1875, and through much of the 20^th Century it was a must stop for politicians, especially in election years. It came to be seen as a bit of an anachronism by some pols of later generations, who were unmoved by the allure of roast mutton, cigars and bad jokes, the staples of the gathering. The outing is being reincarnated as a fund-raiser for the New England Carousel Museum, scheduled for Aug. 31.

 

Four years later, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy is still battling John DeStefano, Paul Bass reports at the New Haven Independent. Never mind that his primary opponent this time is Ned Lamont: As New Haven's mayor, DeStefano--who beat Malloy in a 2006 inter-party contest--controls a lot of votes, and he's not in Malloy's corner. So the opening of Malloy's headquarters this week was a gathering of the city's anti-DeStefano Democrats, Bass says. "Right now everybody in this city [political establishment] is going in one direction," New Haven state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield said as he introduced Malloy. "You put a lot on the line when you go in the other direction."

 

Last month, it was Oz Griebel and Michael Fedele ganging up on Tom Foley over some motor vehicle arrests in his past. This week, Griebel and Foley joined forces to challenge Fedele's receipt of public financing. It may not be WWE-caliber tag-team brawling, but it should enliven tonight's television viewing when the three Republican gubernatorial candidates meet for a one-hour debate on WVIT, TV-30, starting at 7 p.m.

 

As campaign finance dominates the political news, Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent reports that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy is optimistic about his chances in a race where he's likely to be outspent two-to-one. Malloy, who is using public financing, has about $2.7 to spend on his primary against Ned Lamont; he expects Lamont to spend about $6 million. The $2.7 million is "enough to get the message out," Malloy says.

 

 

Sen. Chris Dodd is part of a select group of 28 members of Congress who have hauled in more than $100,000 in campaign contributions in this election cycle, the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org reports.  His tally of $132,679 puts him in the middle third of the pack. But within that group, he's part of an even more exclusive subset: the four who aren't seeking re-election this year, voluntarily or otherwise.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff took his turn with WNPR's John Dankosky Monday (you can download the audio here), and The Day's Ted Mann took Schiff to task for some "revisionist history." In his blog, The Trough, Mann challenges Schiff's statement that exploitation of child labor was eliminated by capitalism, not government regulation. "That's a version of the history of child labor laws that's neither libertarian nor socialist. It's simply incorrect," Mann says.

 

We love green energy, but not wind turbines in Long Island Sound. That's where three top Democratic candidates for state and federal office have come down in recent days, Marcia Chambers reports at the Branford Eagle. Gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy, U.S. Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro all give different reasons, but all say putting turbines off Connecticut's shoreline is a bad idea.

 

Gingrich vs. Palin for the GOP presidential nomination? This week's 2012 speculation starts with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Her PAC raised and spent more money in the second quarter of this year than it has in any three-month span since it was formed a year and a half ago-enough to launch a "sophisticated" and "top-tier" political operation, Kenneth Vogel says at Politico. And in first-caucus state Iowa, Gingrich tell AP's Mike Glover he'll make a decision on a 2012 run early next year. "I've never been this serious," Gingrich said.

 

 

"Donning bulletproof vests, dodging rockets and mortars, and avoiding IEDs became regular parts of the routine." That's how GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley's campaign website describes his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But Hearst's Ken Dixon says that description is at odds with Foley's own statements, in which he "downplayed the danger, said he often traveled around Baghdad without an escort and 'never once ran into a situation that I considered hostile.'"

 

GOP Senate candidate Peter Schiff will talk with WNPR's John Dankosky today from 9 to 10 a.m. Dankosky says Schiff is "a guy who is very able and willing to explain his ideas about the financial collapse and government overreach, but less eager to talk about some of the other issues at hand for a U.S. Senator;" he'll try to change that.

 

Campaign attack ads are widely seen as evidence of the degradation of modern politics. But veteran political reporter Walter Shapiro notes that they've been around since the dawn of television, offering as evidence a 1956-vintage ad against then-vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon. What amazes him, Shapiro says in Politics Daily, is that candidates still spend more and more money chasing an increasingly fragmented television audience. Soon, he predicts, candidates will abandon TV for the Internet, and 30-second spots will become "as much of an endangered species as newspapers tossed onto the front porch by paperboys."

 

Twenty-somethings who share tons of personal information on-line will continue to do so as they grow older, a majority of tech experts agree. In a survey by the Pew Research Center and Elon University, 67 percent of the experts responding said the group identified by Pew as "Millennials"-18- to 28-year-olds-will maintain "their enthusiasm for widespread information sharing" even as they begin careers and families. But 29 percent disagree, including many who say they'll be too busy for all that social networking.

It's not a four-way, but there will be another debate. Today, John Dankosky of WNPR says the two Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor, Nancy S. Wyman and Mary Glassman, will debate on his show, Where We Live, at 9 a.m. on July 26. Glassman caused a minor stir the other day by suggesting a four-way, Lamont-Glassman vs. Malloy-Wyman. Alas, Ned Lamont nixed the coed, tag-team format -- or any other further debate with Dan Malloy. The Courant chides Lamont today.

 

We're number 9 on a scale of economically distressed states, according to statehealthfacts.org, a project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The study is based on housing foreclosures and changes in unemployment and food stamp participation. In Connecticut, food stamp participation is up by one-third, when comparing April 2009 to April 2010.

 

Whose poverty stats do you believe? The Washington Independent says the government's been deliberately understating poverty for years, though the method was recently updated. Globally, 80 percent of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.

 

But don't fret, ESPN is moving its magazine from NYC to Bristol, bringing 125 jobs. The Courant has this account of a story broken by Deadspin (with few details) a week ago, when ESPN starting telling its staff about the move. By next year, the sports network will have nearly 4,000 employees in Connecticut.

 

A federal judge in Massachusetts has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, potentially giving married gay couples in Connecticut and elsewhere new benefits. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy was quick with a statement applauding the ruling: “This is a great victory for equality. There is absolutely no reason that legally married gay couples and their families should be denied the same federal benefits as all other married couples. When individual states like Connecticut choose to recognize same sex marriages, the Federal Government simply should not be allowed to undermine that decision."

 

Paul  Bass of the New Haven Independent turned the tables on a campaign tracker, recording him as he was about to record Paul's interview with Dan Malloy in Bru, the cafe used by the Independent as its conference room. The Lamont campaign, which is located nearby, sent the tracker, who politely backed off when shooed away. The video is amusing, though Bass reacts more calmly than some other reporters we know have been in similar circumstances. He must drink decaf.

 

The Truth-O-Meter is ticking off some politicians. NPR's David Folkenflik takes a look at the spreading franchise of PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer-winning effort to hold politicians to account.

To Jodi Rell, one backhanded compliment, courtesy of Politics Daily. Jill Lawrence offers up our soon-to-be unemployed governor as a successor to Michael Steele, the ever-quotable chairman of the Republican National Committee. Her rationale? In a presidential election cycle, the focus will be on the candidates, and party need not find a chair with charisma. Lawrence says, "She's very popular in a region where the GOP desperately wants and needs to make a comeback." True, if the region is defined as the borders of Connecticut. Colin McEnroe has his own reservations.

 

Joe Marie rang up Brian Lockhart of the Advocate of Stamford to complain after The Mirror broke the news yesterday that he was pushed out at the Department of Transportation. He says that the Rell administration pressured him to quit over a vague allegation of "inappropriate behavior" toward an employee, then promised him privacy if he went quietly. Marie says he did nothing wrong.

 

Should Susan Bysiewicz be holding hands with Democratic and Republican leaders today to encourage unaffiliated voters to sign up with one of the two major parties in time to participate in the Aug. 10 mother of all primaries? Over at My Left Nutmeg, Jon Kantrowitz finds this to be an unseemly gesture by the secretary of the state. Bysiewicz will be joined by Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo. Republican State Chairman Chris Healy, who played a key role in getting Bysiewicz disqualified from a run for attorney general, will be represented by his vice chair, Catherine Marx. Healy's presence would have boosted attendance.

 

Ned Lamont gets praised by Ken Dixon of the Connecticut Post for taking a pass on appearing on the radio yesterday with John G. Rowland, the former governor and federal prison inmate. The Day of New London offered a less charitable view of Lamont's sudden reticence, at least as it applies to debates. The Day is not amused by Lamont's ducking a televised debate with Dan Malloy on July 27 in New London. Malloy agreed to the debate, which was to be co-sponsored by The Day. He also did a telephone appearance with Rowland, who finished a three-day gig as a substitute host on WTIC AM.

Ned Lamont gets only a mild spanking on My Left Nutmeg over his decision to debate Dan Malloy only once since the Democratic State Convention. Lamont told The Day of New London yesterday that he'll skip their televised July 27 debate at The Garde Art Center, on whose stage he debated Joe Lieberman in 2006. We'll see if he faces any editorial blowback for ducking Malloy. By the way, Lamont's ad man from '06 was Bill Hillsman, who did a brilliant ad for the late Paul Wellstone over his opponent's refusal to debate.

 

Ducking debates is not uncommon. Google the phrase, and you'll get 73.7 million hits. Hillary Clinton leveled the accusation against Barack Obama in 2008. William Thompson (you remember him, right?) was furious at being ignored by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who thought he could get by with just running TV ads. Lamont's campaign manager, Joe Abbey, got caught up in a mild flap over whether to debate in a previous campaign. And, in a piece that Abbey might have seen, CNN reported back in 2007 that ducking debates just isn't as risky as it used to be.

 

John Rowland got a little newsier on his second day as the substitute host for Jim Vicevich on WTIC AM, zinging his successor, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, over some economic aid that is going to help a company move from East Hartford to Windsor. The Courant's Dan Haar called it necessary "greenmail." Rowland insisted he never stooped to such tactics, but Haar inconveniently recalls one such deal, "when the state paid DiageoNorth America Inc., the liquor distiller and marketer, $40 million in tax credits to saunter up the Merritt Parkway from Stamford to Norwalk with 700 high-paying jobs, averaging $70,000 in salary."

 

On the Tom Foley Watch, Hearst's Brian Lockhart tries to find the lighter side of the GOP gubernatorial front runner's divorce, noting that Foley's ex-wife's name is Lisa, while Lisa Wilson-Foley is the name of one of the two Republicans on the primary ballot for lieutenant governor. With Oz Griebel and Michael Fedele hammering at Foley over two long-ago arrests, including one involving his ex-wife, think there's going to be audience for the Republican debate?

 

The three amigos are back on the road. The Hill has the latest on Joe Lieberman's trip to the Middle East with John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Summer reading for a hot day? It's scary and infuriating, but you might go back and read an interview with Eric Klinenberg, who dissected the failure of officials in Chicago to care for the vulnerable during a killing heat wave in 1995. His book is called, "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago." Meanwhile, in Toronto on Monday they were trying to explain to the visiting queen of England why the power was out, leaving 250,000 visitors and residents of Canada's largest city without air conditioning. Today, it's going to hit 40 degrees Celsius north of the border. That's about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Closer to home, Rocky Neck State Park hit capacity by 11:45 a.m. Monday. It was one of five closed by the DEP for overcrowding. Most of Connecticut is under a heat advisory.

 

Just when he really needs one, Tom Foley finds a sympathetic voice in the media: Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer of Manchester. Powell suggests there is much ado about nothing in Foley's long ago arrests. "Meanwhile he has been engaging the big issues of state government more than some of the candidates who have been in politics much longer than he has been but who have avoided nasty divorces," writes Powell. But another east-of-the-river commentator, former Republican state Sen. Kevin Rennie of South Windsor, tartly observes that Foley is not exactly being besieged with public expressions of support.

 

WTIC's choice of John Rowland to sub for Jim Vicevich is generating some buzz. Mark Davis dropped by to do a piece for WTNH. Colin McEnroe actually gives the former governor a good review, along with a swipe at Vicevich: "In one day, the show achieved a breeziness usually out of reach for its regular host." But Duby McDowell wonders why Rowland, who recently made something of a triumphant return to the GOP's annual fundraiser, didn't really chat much about politics. He's back on the air at 1080 on the AM dial today and tomorrow in the mid-morning slot. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy is among the scheduled guests. On WNPR's Where We Live, John Dankosky has former Rowland opponent Bill Curry on after 9 this morning to chat about Rowland's radio turn.

 

PolitiFact gets some flak from Arianna Huffington for giving her a "Half True" rating on their Truth-o-Meter for her comments about Haliburton in a sharp exchange with Liz Cheney on ABC's This Week. "Our ratings of Half True seldom please readers," PolitiFact says. "That was the case with our rating of Half True for Arianna Huffington's statement, that Halliburton defrauded American taxpayers of 'hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq.' " Other topics put on the meter include immigration and Elena Kagan.

 

Heard the news today, oh boy. It's true, Ringo Starr turns 70 tomorrow on the seventh day of the seventh month. He wants everybody to wish everyone else peace and love at noon. No word yet on plans by Oz Griebel, Michael Fedele and Tom Foley. Or Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy. Let's see their trackers get that footage.

 

 

 

Senate pals Joe Lieberman and John McCain, both spending the July 4^th holiday in Afghanistan, took time to skewer GOP National Chairman  Michael Steele for his recent comments at a Republican fundraiser in Noank. (A Democratic "tracker" got video of Steele calling the conflict "a war of Obama's choosing" and questioning the country's ability to win it.) On ABC's "This Week," Republican McCain, who is struggling in his bid for re-election from Arizona, called Steele's remarks "wildly inaccurate" and questioned his continued ability to lead the party.  Meanwhile, Lieberman, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said Steele's remarks had a "boomerang effect," drawing "heartening" criticism from across the GOP spectrum, The Hill reports.

 

Continued coverage of his 1994 divorce from his first wife, Lisa, and subsequent contentions led GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley to issue an extensive statement Thursday, the Hartford Courant's Jon Lender reports. In it, he denies any abusive behavior toward Lisa. "I call on the media and my opponents to leave this private matter alone," Foley concluded. Given the eagerness with which Republican rivals Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel have seized on Foley's past marital acrimony, that seems unlikely.

 

Knocking Democrat Susan Bysiewicz out of the race for attorney general cost the state Republican Party $140,000, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. The GOP went to the state Supreme Court to argue, successfully, that Bysiewicz doesn't meet the statutory requirements for the job. "Well worth the investment," party chairman Chris Healy said.

 

The same old names top Siena College Research Institute's latest ranking of U.S. presidents, but there's a fresh face at the bottom. Based on a survey of 238 presidential scholars, the 2010 ranking once again puts Franklin Delano Roosevelt in first place, followed by Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. New this year: George W. Bush joins perennial losers Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce in the bottom five.

Emma Lazarus takes a beating from two estimable but not always lyrical political writers, Ted Mann of The Day and Hearst's Ken Dixon. Both bastardize "The New Colossus," Lazarus's Statue of Liberty poem with the famous lines beginning, "Give me your tired, your poor..." to poke fun at Gov. M. Jodi Rell's invitation to hedge fund firms to move to Connecticut. It seems New York wants to increase taxes on those huddled masses of arbitrageurs.

 

For at least a month now, GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Fedele's campaign has insisted he was just days away from qualifying for public financing of his campaign for governor. It's finally going to happen, Ken Dixon says: Fedele will announce today that he's raised the $250,000 in small contributions he needs to get at least $1.25 million in public money-and probably more-for the Republican primary.

 

More than 20 years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil spill offered a perfect opportunity for scientists to determine what, if any, long-term health dangers faced the thousands of workers needed to clean up the mess, Kyle Hopkins of McClatchy Newspapers reports. And that information would have been invaluable in reducing health risks to workers cleaning up today in the Gulf of Mexico. But the study urged by union and health care advocates in Alaska never happened, so efforts to protect Gulf workers in many ways are starting from scratch.

Another candidate has qualified for public funds, Paul Bass reports in the New Haven Independent. State Rep. Denise Merrill, the endorsed Democratic challenger for secretary of the state, says she's raised the $75,000 in donations of $100 or less to qualify for up to $1.25 million in public funding for the primary and general election campaigns. Her challenger, Jerry Garcia of New Haven, says he's raised about half the money he needs to qualify.

 

Charges that a national survey firm may have fabricated its results shook up the wonky world of political polling Tuesday, and caused a few ripples in Southeast Connecticut as well. The liberal blog DailyKos posted a report questioning numbers produced by the site's pollster, Research 2000. The same firm did polling in the 2004 Congressional race between then-Rep. Rob Simmons and Democratic challenger Jim Sullivan, and declared the race a "virtual dead heat" just before Election Day, The Day's Ted Mann reports; nine days later, Simmons won by 8 percentage points.

 

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform bill got a last-minute makeover Tuesday in an effort to win enough Republican support to get it through the Senate. Moderate Republicans who had previously supported the bill objected to a provision charging large banks $19 billion to cover the cost of oversight, which was added to the bill in a House-Senate conference committee last week. Reopening the conference "was slightly embarrassing for Democrats and represented a price they paid for rushing to complete the legislation," David M. Herszenhorn said in the New York Times.

 

States should balance their own budgets by cutting services or raising taxes rather than rely on more federal aid, a large majority of Americans say. But few have much enthusiasm for paying higher taxes to their own states, or for cuts in items that consume a large chunk of state budgets, including education and health care, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

Connecticut's ban on assault-style weapons could be vulnerable to legal attack following Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting states' ability to control gun ownership, Ken Dixon says in The Connecticut Post. Or maybe not. Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, D-Stamford, co-chairman of the legislative Judiciary Committee said the legislature should review the law in light of the ruling, which he described as "a broad attack on states' rights." But the other Judiciary co-chairman, Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, said the current state law probably will pass muster under the new ruling.

 

The Supreme Court ruling comes at a time when Americans are evenly divided on which is more important: controlling gun ownership or protecting the right to own guns, according to a recent Pew Survey. After nearly 15 years during which support for gun control far outweighed support for gun ownership, the gap began to close in 2008.  (Telephone  survey of 1,500 adults; MOE +/- 3 percentage points.)

 

No sooner did Dan Malloy get his first television ad on the air than Democratic gubernatorial rival Ned Lamont's campaign demanded he take it down, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. Citing an article in the Hartford Courant, Lamont said Malloy is exaggerating when he claims to have created 5,000 new jobs as Stamford's mayor. The 5,000 jobs is "an indisputable fact," Malloy retorted.

The two top U.S. Senate candidates are using the state's Freedom of Information Act to keep tabs on each other, Paul Hughes reports in the Republican-American. Republican Linda McMahon routinely uses FOIA to get the official schedule of the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Hughes says. Meanwhile, Blumenthal's campaign has filed FOIA requests with his office seeking copies of any request for information from McMahon, reporters or anyone else. Betraying his familiarity with MAD Magazine, Hughes calls it "Spy vs. Spy: On the Campaign Trail."

 

Americans are increasingly likely to describe their political leanings as conservative, Gallup reports.  The proportion of people describing their views as conservative rose from 37 percent in 2008 to 42 percent in the first half of this year. Those describing themselves as moderate or liberal have decline slightly in the same period, to 35 percent and 20 percent respectively. The increase in self-described conservatives is due largely to a shift among independents, from 30 percent to 36 percent from 2008 to 2010. (Eight telephone survey totaling 8,027 adults; MOE +/- 1 percentage point.)

 

The most educated women still are among the most likely never to have had a child, Pew Research says in a new report. But while childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups and most education levels since the 1970s, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees. In 2008, according to the study based on Census data, 24% of women ages 40-44 with a master's, doctoral or professional degree had not had children, a decline from 31% in 1994.

Connecticut is a net exporter of governors: While 21 of the state's post-colonial governors were born elsewhere, 46 Connecticut natives have moved on to become chief elected officials of other states, according to Smart Politics, the blog of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. That's just one fewer than the number of Nutmeggers who have risen to the top at home. What are the odds of evening the score? Of the five major-party gubernatorial candidates, only Democrat Dan Malloy was born in Connecticut.

(Smart Politics says 45 Connecticut natives have become its governor, based on a National Governors Association roster that omits Connecticut-born Jonathan Trumbull and Matthew Griswold; including them, it's 47.)

 

A stealth slam by Simmons? Rob Simmons says he's suspended his bid for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, but endorsed candidate Linda Simmons has seen skullduggery in the ring before. "It's hard to imagine why he's left his name on the ballot," the former wrestling executive said in an interview with The Hotline. "I think he's hoping that I will fail, and that there are some -- that there would be some opportunity for him to reenergize his campaign and get back in."

 

Undersea explorer Robert Ballard says the Gulf oil spill shouldn't halt the search for more deep-water deposits, WNPR's Harriet Jones reports. "It could be like a Three Mile Island that turned us away from nuclear power - we lost a generation. Are we going to turn our backs on deep sea oil exploration, which I think would be a mistake." But he said the spill should also prompt more vigorous efforts to find alternative energy sources. "It shows the need for a Manhattan Project in getting off of fossil fuels."