The Unbought Republican Nominating Convention

The hullaballoo that arose the last time Linda McMahon ran for the U.S. Senate against the sainted and irreproachable Attorney GeneralRichard Blumenthal was that the lady was attempting to buy the election.

She did spend $50 million, mostly on campaign literature and salaries for overpriced advisors, and the wife of then Republican campaign chairman Chris Healy was on her staff. Moreover, the lady had minimal political experience, and yet here she was attempting to leap into the U.S. Congressional pool where she would be swimming with such congressional sharks as former U.S. Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd, who following his retirement flew off to Hollywood, there to become Tinseltown’s chief lobbyist, after having assured everyone that he would never – no, never – become a lobbyist.

Mr. Dodd himself leapt into the U.S. Congress without much political experience under his belt. He served as a volunteer in the Peace Corp, Dominican Republic chapter, from 1966 to 1968, joined the Army Reserve, serving until 1975, thus avoiding active duty service in Viet Nam, and was swept into Congress as a part of the "Watergate Class of '74." Mr. Dodd’s political lineage as the son of former U.S Senator Tom Dodd gave him an edge over his competitors that even the $50 million squandered by Mrs. McMahon could not buy.

As everyone knows, Mrs. McMahon, having secured the nomination of the Republican convention, lost her last campaign for the Senate to Mr. Blumenthal. Though Mrs. McMahon had a money advantage over Mr. Blumenthal, also millionaire from Greenwich, Mr. Blumenthal clearly had a media advantage over Mrs. McMahon. So frequent were Mr. Blumenthal’s press availabilities during his 20 year run as Attorney General that they gave rise to the often heard remark: there is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut than that between a TV camera and Mr. Blumenthal. In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Blumenthal has lost a great deal of his state notoriety sheen.

It is not at all surprising that Connecticut’s media, working cheek by jowl for decades with a left of center Democratic majority, has taken on a blue tincture. Not so much unfair as unwilling to operate out of the usual incumbent box, the media presents a problem for most minority candidates who fall to the right of, say, former U.S. Senator Chis Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, or U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who reconfigured as an Independent after having served social liberals in the senate for more than 20 years. Mr. Lieberman was dumped by the Democratic Party in a primary, purportedly for conspiring with the enemy. He endorsed U.S. Senator John McCain for president and, though vowing to decouple himself from the current struggle for his seat, has professed warm feeling for former U.S. Representative Chis Shays, a congressional colleague of long standing.

This time around, Mrs. McMahon will face a tough primary opponent in Mr. Shays. The McMahon-Shays tousle has a déjà vu all over again scent to it. Mrs. McMahon’s last Republican Party primary opponent was former U.S. Representative Rob Simmons, whose campaign blinked on and off because Mr. Simmons, thought by some a tougher opponent of Mr. Blumenthal, was conserving his campaign cash. Despite the Democratic Party howl raised against Republicans as being the party of the rich, Republican state parties that have lost to Democrats the bulk of their moderate front line troops are the poor cousins of politics. During the last election, U.S. Rep John Larson, who holds the safest seat this side of Beijing, China, outspend his Republican Party opponent by a ratio of $7,871to $1.

Should Mrs. McMahon survive Mr. Shays in a primary, she will likely face the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate, current U.S. Representative Chris Murphy who, whatever his political merits, is no Dick Blumenthal. So teflon-proof was Mr. Blumenthal that he was able to survive a stolen valor charge that he had several times falsely claimed active service in Vietnam. Frequent media availabilities over a twenty year period in Connecticut politics do have their advantages.

The redoubtable Susan Bysiewicz will be a tough primary opponent for Mr. Murphy, driving him leftward in a state seemingly beginning to show a bit of buyer’s remorse over the hard-charging, sweet talking President Barack Obama.

At the conclusion of the Republican Party nominating convention, Mrs. McMahon received 61 percent of the delegate vote; Mr. Shays, who distained to ask delegates to vote for him and vowed prior to the convention to engage in a primary, received a more slender 32 percent. Mrs. McMahon’s advantage in delegate votes was the result of superior hustle. At the opening of the convention, Mrs. McMahon produced a list of supporters that included 95 Republican Town Chairs, 33 Republican Town Vice Chairs, 20 Republican Town Secretaries and 13 Republican Town Treasures, more than 250 “grass roots leaders,” she said in a press release. The lady put some miles on her boots to earn such support.

These figures, however, will not be sufficient to convince hard boiled opponents that Mrs. McMahon did not BUY the convention. Watch for it.

How We Got Here And Why We Aren’t Going Anywhere Fast

Governor Malloy’s “shared sacrifice” was never evenly – some might say “fairly” -- distributed. Progressive Democrats, in fact, do not believe in shared sacrifice. Their credo includes, on the tax side, a progressive income tax in which the “rich,” defined as anyone making more than $200,000 per year, pay the lion’s share of governmental “investments.” SEBAC negotiator Dan Livingston is typical of the genus.

In a progressive regime, the majority of people “invest” relatively little in their government and prudently vote for Democrats, who collect little from them in tax payments (AKA “investments”) while showering them with benefits. Whatever name one chooses to put to this lopsided getting and spending process, it is not “shared sacrifice.”

Nationally, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population earns 19 percent of all income and pays 37 percent of the federal income tax, a figure that excludes payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. The top ten percent pay 68 percent of the tab. The bottom 50 percent, those below the median income level, earn 13 percent of the income and pay 3 percent of the tax.

Combining payroll and income taxes, a Brooking Institution study offers the following breakdown: The richest 1 percent pays 27.5 percent of the combined burden, the top 20 percent pay 72 percent, and the bottom 20 percent pay just 0.4 percent. The bottom quintile is low because an earned income tax credit reimburses some or all of their 15 percent payroll tax. In Connecticut, low income groups pay little or no taxes and will be eligible shortly for a newly instituted income tax credit.

The opposite of a progressive tax, a flat tax, which does provide equity in tax collections, would more fairly share the sacrifice; nearly everyone would pay the same tax rate, all exemptions would be eliminated, the simplification of the tax code would facilitate payments, and a majority of the citizenry would be invested, both as tax providers and consumers, in their government.

Mr. Malloy began his journey as governor promising transparency in government, an end to budget trickery, and shared sacrifice. On the route to government as usual, he bumped into a General Assembly dominated by caucus leaders who for years had been politically wedded to union causes, a group of union negotiators who failed miserably in selling Mr. Malloy’s Plan A to rank and file union members, and a gang of crying mayors who winked at the glowing tax faggots so long as they were assured they would not be burned at the stake. Mr. Malloy also entered into an amusing spitting contest with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is turning out to be much the better demagogue.

The Opaque Budget process

Transparency in government was the first casualty of what Democrats in the General Assembly call the “budget process.” Minority Republicans in the General Assembly were from the first cut out of the process, which should not have surprised Republican leaders in the legislature, and the budget was fashioned, per usual, behind closed doors.

There were reasons why the legislative closed shop should not have surprised Republican leaders in the General Assembly. Over a period of twenty years and more, Republicans had lost their primacy of place on the budget chessboard. Republican presence in the legislature is light. The Republican Party in Connecticut lost the last of its budget bargaining chips upon Mr. Malloy’s election to office, more than 20 years after the last Democratic governor, Bill O’Neill, had abandoned ship, leaving in his wake a deficit of about $1 billion, a modest deficit by today’s standards.

Mr. O’Neill was supplanted by maverick Independent Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax. Mr. Weicker was followed in office by Republican governor John Rowland, who spent a year in jail for having failed to provide “honest services” to the citizens of Connecticut. Mr. Rowland was succeeded by his politically bland Lieutenant Governor, Jodi Rell, a lady more sinned against than sinning regularly lampooned by both the Democratic opposition, the state’s left of center media and recently self described “turd in the Republican Party punchbowl” Mr. Weicker as an inoffensively pleasant do-nothing placeholder. Both Mr. Rowland and Mrs. Rell were moderate Republicans.

After Mrs. Rell came the Democratic deluge. While weary taxpayers gave the boot during the mid-term elections to Democratic big spenders in federal, state and gubernatorial office across the fruited plains, progressive Democrats in Connecticut hung in there. Republican gains in Connecticut’s General Assembly were modest. Before leaving his position as Republican Party Chairman, Chris Healy noted that Republicans had gained 15 seats in the House and 2 seats in the Senate. Republicans also held 100 of the top positions in the 169 towns in Connecticut but lost the governorship and all constitutional offices.

Upon Mr. Malloy ascension as governor, the state, so it was said, had lost its “firewalls,” Republican governors who presumably stood in the way of the Democratic General Assembly spending machine crying “Stop!” In fact, with the righteous wind of an income tax at their backs, spending in the General Assembly quickly accelerated, tripling within the tenure of three post-income tax governors. By the time Governor Dannel Malloy arrived at the fire, Connecticut was engulfed in spending flames. The state had accumulated a biennial budget deficit of more than $4 billion. Something had to be done.

Mr. Malloy’s solution to Connecticut’s debt problem did not differ markedly from that of Mr. Weicker or the two Republican governors who followed him. Mr. Rowland’s campaign pledge to repeal the income tax did not survive his first week in office. While governors in Connecticut’s neighboring states of New York and New Jersey held the line on taxes, Mr. Malloy, following a campaign in which he was hoisted into office by a slender margin of 6,500 votes and during which he seemed to spurn the imposition of more taxes as a first response to Connecticut’s red ink immediately increased a host of taxes by $2.6 billion and pledged to wrest about $2 billion in savings from state unionized workers.

There Will Be Time, For Visions And Revisions That Time Will Soon Erase

Very nearly all the decision makers in Connecticut – union leaders in SEBAC, the coalition of unions charged with contact negotiations, Mr. Malloy and his negotiating team, many liberal lawmakers in the General Assembly and Malloy administration well-wishers in Connecticut’s left of center media – were agreed that Plan A was favorable to unions.

Plan A assured $2.6 billion in tax increases, imposed a wage freeze on state workers for two years, after which the unionized workers were guaranteed wage increases of 3 percent for the following three years, and launched a medical benefit plan that cut costs and, so it seemed to some – one of the chief sticking points among union workers who gave a thumbs down to Plan A – reshaped benefits so that the new medical benefits package could in the future accommodate Connecticut’s Sustinet Plan, a state version of President Barack Obama’s universal health care plan.

Should Plan A be rejected in a final union vote, Mr. Malloy had at the ready an alternative Plan B that, said the same cheering section vigorously promoting Plan A, would be devastating to state workers. On the question of further tax increases, should state workers be so foolish as to vote down Plan A, Mr. Malloy had already crossed a Rubicon: He had pledged to all and sundry that he would not make up cost savings lost through a rejection of Plan A by further tax increases. Savings lost through a perverse refusal to adopt Plan A would be recovered through draconian layoffs and agency reorganizations.

As a lure to union members who might foolishly vote down Plan A, Mr. Malloy sweetened the pot by reducing the “shared sacrifice” of union workers by $400 million. Mr. Malloy’s number crunchers found an extra $400 million in budget receipts and used it to offset union contributions to the so called “shared sacrifice” the governor had demanded of both taxpayers and state workers. An artificial surplus of about $1 billion had been tucked into the budget, a portion of which Mr. Malloy used to finance an ambitious upgrade of the newly unionized UConn Health Center. Democrats did not propose to share their new found funds equally between tax payers and union members by splitting with taxpayers the $400 million Mulligan the Malloy administration had given outright to union members, possibly hoping the additional funds would induce members to vote in favor of Plan A.

The Democratic dominated General Assembly, Republicans dissenting, pre-approved the budget before the Malloy administration had secured union concessions because, some speculated, individual legislators did not wish to leave their fingerprints on a budget deal gone sour.

Were he alive and singing in these unhappy days, Robert Burns, author of the lines

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley, (Often go astray)
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

might have felt vindicated as a philosopher and poet; for, sure enough, the incomprehensible happened, and state union members rejected Plan A, after which Mr. Malloy rolled out the guillotine.

Plan B, everyone agreed, was a horror. It enforced real cuts in spending but likely was never intended as more than a pistol held to the head of rank and file union members to induce them to vote for the much milder Plan A, which included two years of wage freezes followed by 3 years of 3 percent wage increases, a two year increase in the retirement age and a doubling of the pension penalty should workers decide to retire early. Plan A also included an insurance feature mandating doctor visits and screenings, in exchange for which the state offered a pledge not to lay off current workers, all mild adjustments by most people’s reckoning.

When a minority of union workers rejected Plan A, Mr. Malloy was more or less forced by the weight of his rhetoric to pull the trigger on the pistol.

Plan B, a veritable spook on a stick, was unveiled; the usual culprits remonstrated with benighted union workers. Senator Edith Prague, a longtime union enabler in the General Assembly, said she thought those who had rejected so mild a plan were mad. Papers that in the past stood idly by as the state budget doubled and then tripled, insisting that Connecticut had a revenue rather than a spending problem, began to shriek like so many righteous Robespierres for the heads of union members. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Chris Donovan, put a temporary hold on his run for the U.S. Senate in the 5th District and returned panting to the legislature, where he encouraged union leaders to prevail upon the rank and file to make whatever adjustment might be necessary to adopt the discarded Plan A. Mr. Malloy said he was hopeful something could be done. Flagging spirits began to revive. Slowly, Plan A rose from the ashes.

When the Kabuki curtain opened towards the end of July, painted smiles were on every face. Union leaders, with a wink in the direction of rank and file members they were supposed to be representing, changed the by-laws governing contract negotiations – “drastically,” according to Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant.

Under the old by-laws, “14 of the 15 unions – representing 80 percent of the membership – needed to approve any changes to ratify changes in health care and pension benefits.” That is why Plan A, although approved by 57 percent of those voting, was rejected under union by-laws. Under the new and revised by-laws, imposed upon the membership unilaterally by the very negotiators who had failed to induce a sufficient number of workers to vote in favor of Plan A, “only 8 of the 15 unions – representing 50 percent of the membership [would be] needed to approve any changes,” according to Mr. Keating.

And as if this staged re-vote on Plan A were not surety enough that Plan A finally would be accepted, some news reports indicated union leaders were prepared to allow only those votes of union members who had voted against Plan A to be tallied under the revised by-laws, these to be added to the 57 percent of members who had under the old dispensation voted for Plan A. Those who had voted down Plan A would be given a chance to change their votes to affirmative. Those who voted affirmatively under the now abandoned by-laws would not be given the opportunity to change their “yes” votes.

Having been stung once, union negotiators and Malloy officials were determined to leave nothing to chance. Plan A MUST pass.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Malloy hit pay dirt when SEBAC leaders announced that a deal had been struck on July 23. The plan soon to be submitted to the union membership differed from Plan A only in incidental matters. An impenetrable secrecy shrouded talks between union leaders and the agents of the Malloy administration.

Following the announcement, the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition “posted a notice announcing it was taking strict control over its Facebook page, an indication the unions already were trying to take control of messaging once a new tentative agreement is announced,” according to a report in CTMirror.

Outside the closed shop discussions in the course of which SEBAC leaders assisted Malloy administration officials in pushing through the union rank and file a re-do vote that was almost certain to pass frustrations swirled.

The frustrations were understandable said Matt O’Connor, one of the SEBAC negotiators in a Wall Street Journal report. "There may be issues individual unions want to raise with their leaders, but all of the actions by leaders of coalition are all in accordance with our bylaws."

Those would be the by-laws that Mr. O'Connor’s associates at SEBAC unilaterally changed in order to produce an approving vote by the rank and file, who were now prevented by the censors at SEBAC from participating in facebook messaging.

Mr. O’Connor adamantly insisted, according to an Associated Press report in the Times Union, rather in the manner of a Lady Macbeth protesting too much, that neither Mr. Malloy nor his agents played any role in a by-law change without which a re-do vote on Plan A would not have been possible:

"'We didn't give the governor anything,’ O'Connor said. ‘This was a decision made by union leaders based on reviewing the entire ratification process, hearing from the 45,000 members of our unions, applying lessons learned from this experience and following some very basic principles of union democracy. It certainly wasn't about the governor.’"

Of course, the secrecy surrounding the discussions would make it nearly impossible for anyone to verify Mr. O’Connors somewhat implausible version of events. We are to suppose that SEBAC negotiators who dramatically violated every rule of union democracy to achieve a result desired by Mr. Malloy, virtually all pro-union Democratic legislators in the General Assemby and Connecticut’s left of center media “didn’t give the governor anything.”

Following the by-law changes, rank and file discontent boiled over in the pages of the Wall Street Journal:

“Some union members said they're planning to vote against any new deal out of principle. Meanwhile, members of at least two bargaining units are urging their colleagues to disband.

"’AFSCME is a national union and has a lot of power, so it would be nice to stay with them, but if they're not listening to us, then we're going to have to find another union,’ said Jeri Herskowitz, who works in the judicial system.

“She said members of her local have started a process to jump ship and join the United Public Service Employees Union out of Ronkonkoma, N.Y.

"’In the past week, numerous workers in Connecticut have contacted us to leave their union and join ours. We're going to have to move very quickly to make this happen,’ said UPSEU President Kevin Boyle.

“Correction officer John Boyle spent part of the day Tuesday near the Donald T. Bergin Correctional Institution in Storrs offering union members information about joining the National Correctional Employees Unions, which was formed out of Massachusetts. Mr. Boyle, who plans to retire in August, said he is also spearheading a class-action suit against union leaders. He hasn't filed any court papers.

"’Union leaders sold us out, they got caught, and now they're going to have to face us in court,’ Mr. Boyle said.”

No Exit

Such is life in the tax-me, sue-me, flee me state. Mr. Malloy has imposed on his state the highest tax increase in its history, larger even than the tax increase previously imposed by Mr. Weicker in the state’s first post-income tax budget. In the absence of Plan B, which contained real spending cuts too Draconian for the refined tastes of big spending eastern seaboard Democratic politicians, spending will go up. State revenues will spike owing to the tax increases. But over the long term, in the absence of dramatic spending cuts, revenues will continue to shrink, because businesses from which the state draws its revenue will continue to flee the state when they cannot bribe it for tax dispensations, moving jobs and taxpayers to less high tax and regulatory environments elsewhere.

The exodus has already begun. Two days before the union-Malloy deal was announced with much fervor on the front pages of Connecticut’s newspapers, many of which find their own resources shrinking, a report surfaced in a business journal indicating that job additions in Connecticut were anemic: Connecticut has added only 1,800 jobs since the start of 2011, compared with a gain of 14,100 for the same period last year.

And last year was not a banner year.

Government Without Firewalls

Both Republican governors John Rowland and Jodi Rell used to refer to themselves as “firewalls,” usually after they had compromised with Democratic leaders in the General Assembly to pass budgets that present Governor Dannel Malloy has often characterized as bags of tricks and treats. Mr. Malloy has insisted that his budget, still being hammered out by his agents and representatives of unions, is, on the other hand, transparent and honest-- a good thing. No tricks or treats there. No smoke, no mirrors, the sort of budget one might expect from a governor wearing a white hat who is not the plaything of special interests.

The firewall disappeared altogether after Mr. Malloy became governor. The Rell-Rowland firewall was not fireproof. Had it been so, Connecticut’s bottom budget line could not have tripled within the space of three governors, and the state would not now rank first in the nation in per capita debt. It would not be losing jobs to New Jersey and New York and Massachusetts. And, of course, Mr. Malloy would not have been faced, coming into office, with a budget deficit larger than that accosting Maverick Governor Lowell Weicker in 1991, which deficit Mr. Weicker resolved by instituting his income tax.

During his campaign for governor, Mr. Weicker used a fiery metaphor to signal to voters that he would not institute an income tax should they elect him governor – because an income tax would be like pouring gas on a fire. And we all know what happens when gas is poured on a fire.

Poof! Allow Democrats in the General Assembly to run an income tax pipeline into the wallets of Connecticut’s long suffering taxpayers and, before you can cry fire in the crowded theatre, the roof of state government will be aflame with extravagant spending. Such was Mr. Weicker dire electioneering warning. And, as it turns out, he was right.

Then came the firewall governors who were not firewalls, the budget compromises between Republican governors and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly and, finally, Mr. Malloy, riding a white horse and calling for “shared sacrifice.”

In the age of YouTube, it has been possible for the Republican resistance in the General Assembly to post a string of embarrassing claims made by Mr. Malloy in the heat of a primary and general election campaign that rivals claims made by Mr. Weicker in that long ago campaign when budget deficits were about one third of what they are presently in the age of Connecticut’s new one party state.



Taxes in the Malloy budget have been raised $1.8 billion, so far. There were no negotiations between Mr. Malloy and taxpayers before Mr. Malloy demanded a “shared sacrifice” of them; though Mr. Malloy was kind enough to present to them his non-negotiable demands at no fewer than 17 Town Hall meetings. And now, Mr. Malloy, striving to tuck the budget to bed before the legislative clock runs out, but finding himself yet in negotiations with unions months after agents of Mr. Malloy first sat down at the table with union hard bargainers, has announced, on a holiday weekend, that $320 million of the nearly $1 billion surplus Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders had smuggled into their budget, ostensibly to refill the state’s depleted rainy day fund, will be shared with -- unions, reducing the “shared sacrifice” of those who were largely responsible for his re-election.

Naturally, Republicans in the General Assembly, who played no part in Mr. Malloy non-negotiable Plan A, protested somewhat heatedly. Republican House leader Larry Cafero stormed, "The Friday night dump. Is that what it's called? This is the dump of all dumps. Friday night, holiday weekend. ... He [Mr. Malloy] drops the $400 million backfill plan… He uses $320 million of the surplus to make up $400 million in cuts -- $320 million! Classic Malloy. He says one thing, he does the other. Says one thing, does the other.”

And Republicans can be expected to crank out more YouTube clips that might possibly be of use in future campaigns against Democratic legislators – because the Republican Party, which was not permitted to invest in Mr. Malloy’s budget, is not, partly owing to role of agitator and chief Democratic Party scold played by outgoing party chairman Chris Healy, the sleepy, go-along-to-get-along party of yesteryear forced to make do with Democratic budgets winked at by Republican governors.

By any measure of sound economic health Democrats may point to, Connecticut, attached to a breathing tube, is lying stretched out on a gurney in the ER. State Democrats seems to be following the template set by President Barack Obama, Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate President Harry Read at a time when Democrats enjoyed a veto proof majority in the congress: Never let a crisis go to waste without punishing your political enemies and rewarding your friends.

However, given the condition of the patient, state Democrats likely will have a heck of a time explaining to relatives of the stricken state why they are busying themselves passing budgets and laws that punish entrepreneurial capital, pander to unions, and pad with a surplus a state debt three times larger than the last $7.5 billion pre-income tax budget of former Democratic Governor William O’Neill.

While the state, now lacking any firewall, crumbles in flames, its inmates are forcing through the Democratic dominated legislature hastily written, defective bills abolishing the death penalty, facilitating transgenderism, larding with hidden taxes bills paid by energy consumers, arranging yet another muli-million dollar bail-out of the tax draining UConn Health Center, and collecting surplus money from hard pressed businesses and taxpayers to relieve unions of a good portion the “shared sacrifice” Mr. Malloy once sternly demanded of them, all of it making a queer sort of suicidal sense.

The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said that given the choice of immediate execution or of being slowly trampled to death by geese, he would prefer a quick finish. The people of Connecticut soon will be faced with the same choice.

Lieberman Leaves

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s post mortem began even before he officially announced his retirement.

Here in Connecticut, a politically battered Susan Bysiewicz rushed to announce in advance of U.S. Reps. Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney her availability for the seat hours after she had told bewildered reporters and commentators she would be spending the next few years ensconced in her new job with a prestigious law firm, drying out from a recent political dunking and acquiring active experience before the state’s bar. Mrs. Bysiewicz has been portrayed in the state’s media as an ambitious Lady Macbeth, but she probably is not much more ambitious than the usual political specimen.

Well… maybe a wee bit.

Connecticut can expect the same scramble for political crumbs that occurred when U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd announced his retirement. The frantic melee would be a little less over the edge if the state had term limits, a process that would allow a more dignified free for all. The present political rumble is for a senate position that, in the case of Mr. Dodd, is about half the reign of King George III. The senator who replaced Mr. Dodd, Dick Blumenthal, held his previous position of attorney general for 20 years. The average term in office of U.S. Senators has increased 300 percent since the first decade following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. As of October 2008 there were four U.S. Senators -- Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy, Daniel Inouye and Theodore Stevens – who had been in office over 40 years. The prospect of such a secure roost in office makes the rough and tumble scramble up the greasy political pole a matter of political life and death.

Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy congratulated Mr. Lieberman in a prepared statement on a “remarkable career of public service” and pointed out that the senator stuck to what he believed was right for his constituents and countrymen.” Acts of courage such as the senator’s steadfast support of “policies that have brought political freedom to Iraq and to Afghanistan when many Democrats sought to end that commitment prematurely,” Healy said, “almost cost Sen. Lieberman his political career in 2006 when radical liberals ousted him as the candidate of the Democrat Party, which once supported the foreign policies of both Republican and Democrat administrations.”

The “Nedheads,” of course, would not agree with this assessment, though many of the anti-war activists among them have been far less vocal in their opposition to the war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama’s “war of necessity,” than had been the case when Ned Lamont successfully challenged Mr. Lieberman in a primary, losing in the general election to Mr. Lieberman, who was able to draw support from Republicans and Independents.

Pretty nearly everyone seemed to agree that the prevailing circumstances that allowed Mr. Lieberman to snatch an earlier general election victory from the jaws of a primary defeat – a weak Republican candidate, a primary victor whose experience in office was shallow and a residual affection for Mr. Lieberman for having earlier defeated then Sen. Lowell Weicker, widely regarded as a Republican Party scourge -- would not be present in the general election two years after then Sen. Chris Dodd had left office.

By the time Mr. Lieberman made his announcement in Stamford at noon on Jan. 19, the news that he was retiring was old news. Nate Silver of the New York Times speculated that “The scariest possibility for Democrats would be if Ms. Rell decided to run for the seat.” Roll Call adjusted Connecticut’s race from “toss up” to “leans Democrat.” The New York Post advised that Connecticut Democrats should seek a centrist Democrat to run for Mr. Lieberman’s seat, which will be vacated in 2012. Salon noted that Mr. Lieberman was “Every Republican's favorite Democrat.” The American Prospect noted the New York Times noting that Bill Curry said of Mr. Lieberman, “It’s the first thing he’s done in 10 years to make Connecticut Democrats completely happy.” And Emily Bazelon, writing in Slate, cordially explained to readers of the on-line political magazine why she loathed Mr. Lieberman in a piece appropriately titled, “Good Riddance Joe Lieberman: Why I loathe my Connecticut senator.”

As Louis Prima sings in “Just A Gigolo” – “Life goes on without me.” Owing to a Prima release in the 1950’s, that song was inescapably linked with “I ain’t Got Nobody.”

History may show that Mr. Lieberman did have a few honorable people in his corner. Non-bilious historians may be kinder to Mr. Lieberman than the foaming at the mouth progressives who continue to loathe him, well after leading Democrats in Connecticut have agreed that civility in politics, going forward, should shape political discourse.

Blumenthal, Bysiewicz And The First Amendment

The person who has written most sensibly about Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and a recent Connecticut Supreme Court decision that did not allow Bysiewicz to run for attorney general in a Democratic primary, largely because Bysiewicz ran afoul of a statute requiring a candidate for the office to have completed a certain number of years in the active practice of law, is Chris Powell, the Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer.

Powell pointed out that the statute itself contravenes a constitutional provision that sets only an age requirement for the office. The constitutional provision cannot by definition be unconstitutional. Therefore, the contravening statute must be unconstitutional.

This political hand grenade was tossed to the Supreme Court by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and the court, Powell reasoned, had got it wrong.

By setting other requirements not demanded by the state constitutional, the court, practically speaking, may have invalidated the constitutional provision, which was intended to open a wide door of liberty to attorney general candidates. Bysiewicz remarked wryly after the court’s decision that, under the auspices of Connecticut’s Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan could not have been appointed to the highest court in the land. Kagan, who came out of academia, had no practical experience at the bar.

Left undebated as the Bysiewicz decision wended its way through the court was the question: Why is practical legal experience at the bar more important than administrative experience in the attorney general’s office?

It might have been interesting to ask Blumenthal after the court decision had come down whether he thought Connecticut’s Supreme Court had got this one right. But the moment passed, and the hand grenade blue up Bysiewicz’s restless ambition, for the moment.

Now, once again, Bysiewicz finds herself in the pickle jar – this time on a matter of First Amendment rights.

Linda McMahon, Blumenthal’s Republican opponent vying for U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s seat, is the former CEO of World Wide Wrestling (WWE). Under protest from Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy and others, a spokesman for Bysiewicz, Av Harris, has issued a press release on behalf of Bysiewicz denying that the secretary of state issued a formal ban on the wearing of WWE gear at polling places.

According to a Hartford Courant report, while Bysiewicz has not issued a “formal ban” on the gear, “the issue has been discussed informally with local registrars. Harris said it will be left to the discretion of local poll workers whether to ask voters to remove their wrestling gear when they are inside the polling place.”

Through informal discussions, the First Amendment grenade has been placed in the hands of poll workers, according to Bysiewicz’s spokesman:

"If the poll workers feel like the wearing of WWE paraphernalia is in any way interfering with the voting [process], they can ask the individual to cover it up or leave and come back with something else on. We're aware that this is may be an issue and were prepared to evaluate every case on an individual basis.”

At this point, one would like the attorney general – who has sent out to the media a number of press releases on First Amendment issues recently, two of which would restrain advertisers from running material on social service sites the attorney general considers repugnant – to man up and retrieve the grenade from the poor poll workers.

Do voters have a First Amendment right to wear wrestling gear to the polls?

Some First Amendment scholars, very possibly a U.S. Supreme Court justice who has no practical experience at the bar, may believe they might. Some in Connecticut’s media may believe they do. Cynics who may think the secretary of state is in this instance carrying water for the Democratic Party and in particular for Blumenthal, who stands to benefit from intimidated McMahon voters, would be instantly disabused of their corrosive cynicism should the ambitious, lean and hungry attorney general put a quick stop to the abuse of the First Amendment by issuing one of his frequent advisories instantly reproduced by all the First Amendment lovers in the media.

Someone surely will put the question to Blumenthal, hopefully before voters compelled to strip by poll watchers enter voting areas to exercise their franchise and their First Amendment rights in November.

Blumenthal’s Two Hats, Two Heads And Two Faces

Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy, clearly a partisan, has called upon Attorney General and Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Richard Blumenthal to surrender his position as attorney general, the sooner the better.

Healy makes the following points in a press release:

1) “It is clear that Dick Blumenthal wants the taxpayers to subsidize his campaign strategy, thereby hiding from reporters and voters with legitimate questions on his policy positions and record, while issuing press releases from his AG’s office to sue entities that suit politically. If you notice, many of these suits provide him with national and state media exposure.”

2) The attorney general’s office has become something of a shield, protecting the prospective U.S. Senator from exposure to media scrutiny: “A series of missteps, evasions of his record and bad publicity has caused Blumenthal to hunker down in his office, rarely appearing before microphones after nearly 20 years of being a ubiquitous media machine. Dick Blumenthal is now in a taxpayer financed secure location. If he wants to be the U.S. Senator for Connecticut, he should step out in the light and make his case, not pretend that his work is so important that the professional staff at his office couldn’t cover for him.”

3) The attorney general’s office has become highly politicized under the last two occupants of that office, first current U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman and, following him, prospective U.S. Senator Blumenthal. Therefore, Healy says, “It is fair to suggest that every time the Attorney General’s media machine kicks in from its perch, one should ask whether it’s for the betterment of Connecticut or Dick Blumenthal’s Senate campaign. Dick Blumenthal should leave no doubt about this conflict and either step down or respond to questions from voters – who pay his salary – and his opponents.”

The attorney general – or is it the prospective U.S. senator? -- recently came under fire from Connecticut’s Media on a few counts: He had lied several times concerning his service during the Vietnam war. That issue, driven by an out of state media, has been fairly ventilated. But the lashes Blumenthal had received by the national press had forced the attorney general – or is it the prospective U.S. senator? -- to take refuge from the slings and arrows hurled at him by absenting himself from media opportunities.

Once ubiquitous, writes award winning journalist Ken Dixon, Blumenthal has now disappeared into a hidey-hole: “Such is the new Dick Blumenthal. Formerly laughably ubiquitous and always available for a quote, he is now in the bunker officially. Having just called his attorney general office, where he supposedly works for the people paying his six-figure salary, the Blogster was told to await a news release. Beautiful. Such high stakes, such official reticence. Who’s the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate? Some write-in candidate named Jeff Russell. Maybe he’d like to comment on the US Supreme Court decision today on the Chicago hand gun ban. Of course, it was Blumenthal, not Russell, who successfully argued the ban in state court and in the state Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the ban nearly 15 years ago.”

Now, the obvious question to put to prospective U.S. Senator Blumenthal is whether he would, as a U.S. senator, support the Chicago gun ban. The problem is that the head that answers the question sits on the shoulders of Attorney General Blumenthal, and it may not be convenient for the attorney general to answer the question. To what extent will assertions made by prospective U.S. Senator Blumenthal screw up, so to speak, his status as attorney general?

When former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez was about to be brought into court on charges to which were attached a 50 year prison sentence, Attorney General Blumenthal was cordially invited to repudiate his old friend and political stalwart. He declined, grievously disappointing Courant columnist, blogger and Connecticut Public Broadcasting Newtwork talk show host Colin McEnroe, who wrote: “I think it's fair to ask Richard Blumenthal, who has announced his intention to use the fairly new pension and benefits law against Perez, why he saw fit to endorse Perez in 2007 when the basic facts of the renovations case against Perez were a matter of record? These facts haven't changed much at all from then until yesterday, when they were good enough to make six people return guilty verdicts. Why weren't they good enough to make Blumenthal withhold his endorsement?”

After Perez’s conviction, Blumenthal eagerly and quickly pointed out it was he who pressed upon the legislature the statute that now allows him to revoke Perez’s pension. Hours after the conviction, Attorney General Blumenthal was writing to Chief Stare’s Attorney Kevin Kane, “I intend, at the earliest possible time and in consultation with your office, to seek an order revoking his pension.”

The obvious question to put to prospective U.S. senator Blumenthal is this: As U.S. senator, would the present attorney general, who has vowed to give up his position after the general election in November, press his fellow senators in the U.S. congress to pass a similar federal law? The journalist who put that question to Attorney General Blumenthal is still awaiting an answer from prospective U.S. senator Blumenthal.

It has become very difficult to get honest answers from the elusive Blumenthal lately.

Is Blumenthal hiding from Connecticut’s media? You betcha. Are the two highly politicized positions he is juggling incompatible? You betcha.

Should Blumenthal resign his attorney general position while running for the U.S, senate?

Blumenthal And The Gentle Art Of Prosecution

"Here we are 90 days later, and Dick Blumenthal has issued 64 press releases but still no answer on Susan Bysiewicz's intelligence files. Three months is more than enough time to find out whether Bysiewicz illegally used state resources for political purposes. … He's got 200 lawyers over there, and he can't get to the bottom of this very serious allegation?"

So said Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy concerning Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s slow boil investigation of Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.

When it was revealed that Bysiewicz may have lacked the requisite experience to run for Blumenthal’s position as attorney general, the attorney general punted the problem to the Superior Court Judge Michael Sheldon, who promised – and delivered -- an expedited decision.

The question concerning possible misuse of a data base assembled by Bysiewicz’s office arose at the same time. The problematic data base containing 36,000 names, the existence of which became known in February, included persons who had contacted the secretary of state’s office on matters of business. Appended to the names were notes that, some believe, would undoubtedly prove useful to Bysiewicz in her campaigns. The notorious list, for instance, included 2,500 people who in the past had been selected as Democratic nominating convention delegates. Bysiewicz’s campaign committee in 2009 had obtained a copy of the database through a legal Freedom of Information Act request.

"She worked on his [Blumenthal’s] campaign,” Healy pointed out. “They're fellow Democrats, fellow constitutional officers and fellow statewide office-seekers. He hasn't said anything about the progress of that investigation. Has she been interviewed? Have any files been examined? What's the timeline for action?"

Indicating the case involves possible potential violations of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provisions as well as charges that Bysiewicz may have used her office to accommodate her campaign needs, an exasperated Healy said, “If it was a Republican secretary of the state, they'd be boiling a 50-gallon drum of oil right now."

Blumenthal promised a thorough, presumably non-expedited, investigation that very likely will run well beyond the upcoming Democratic nomination convention on May 12-22.

In the matter of timely investigations and prosecutions, Mr. Blumenthal is an artist of rare accomplishments. A recent Waterbury Republican American editorial noted that Blumenthal’s office had backlog of an astonishing 36,495 cases pending at the end of 2008-09, a 40 percent increase over 1995-96.

And, of course, one of the joys of the office is that the attorney general decides who he will investigate and when the subsequent prosecution will end.

Blumenthal is an old hand in selective prosecution.

In what Blumenthal described as a “virtually unprecedented” action, the attorney general and State Treasurer Denise Nappier sued investment firm Forstmann Little in Feb., 2002 for losing more than $125 million in state worker pension funds. What made the case unprecedented was that seven of Forstmann Little’s general partners – with one notable exception -- were separately named as individual defendants. The sloppy seven were thus put personally on the hook for any resulting liability for making lousy investments that tanked.

The missing exception, according to Joel Mowbray, writing in National Review at the time, was Erskine Bowles, “the multimillionaire former chief of staff for Bill Clinton and current Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by the retiring Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.)”

Blumenthal’s suit was well founded, since Connecticut had stipulated that it did not intend its investment to be involved in high risk ventures, but the exclusion of Bowles was highly irregular:

“Connecticut alleges a bait-and-switch: that it signed on for the old, stodgy strategy, but that it got the new, risky plan without its knowledge or permission. Connecticut's suit primarily charges that Forstmann Little and its partners violated the investment contract and significantly misrepresented the worth and type of investments made in XO and McLeod… Given his [Bowles'] status as a general partner during most of the relevant time covered by the Connecticut lawsuit — he arrived in January 1999, and departed in October 2001 — Bowles' exclusion from the list of named defendants is curious, to say the least. He joined Forstmann Little eight months before the McLeod investment, and was a partner for almost the entire XO disaster, exiting only one month before Connecticut's stake in XO was completely wiped out…”

“State treasurer Denise Nappier has said that Bowles was on the original list of defendants, but his name was dropped by the outside counsel working with her office because of a lack of direct involvement in wrongdoing. But Bowles clearly had more involvement in McLeod than the five partners who are named defendants, but did not sit on the telecom's board of directors. And named defendants Klinsky and Holmes were not even partners when the investments were made, yet Bowles was.

“His luck, of course, is pure politics. Neither Klinsky nor Holmes had the good sense to run for statewide office as Democrats this year. They have both been dragged into the lawsuit, despite having far less involvement in the ill-fated investments than Bowles. Who needs Lady Luck when you have fellow Democrats calling the shots?”

Unlike Caesars wife, the highly partisan Blumenthal is not, in matters of political opportunism, above suspicion.

Oddly, the selective prosecution in the Forstmann Little case was raised as a campaign issue in 2002 by then Republican Party candidate for attorney general Martha Dean, a Republican presently running for the same office but, as sometimes happens in campaigns, Blumenthal managed to survive the issue.

So did Erskine Bowles, appointed in 2010 to co-chair President Barack Obama's fiscal commission with Alan K. Simpson.

Democrats, especially in Connecticut, have a way of overcoming such calamities.

Doyle And The Assassins

Hartford Courant investigative reporter Jon Lender has noted that that Paul Doyle (D-Wethersfield) engaged in some “sticky” business in 2008 that has now come back to prick him:

“Here's how it all started: In late October 2008, The Courant published a relatively short story that said Doyle, a lawyer who is paid tens of thousands of dollars a year as an outside counsel to the state's trash agency, got the agency to delay paying him his full fee in 2007 so he could bypass a law designed to restrict state contractors from contributing to political campaigns.

“Doyle billed the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority for legal work in September 2007, and the agency issued him a check the following month for $4,016. But he returned the check Nov. 1 — and then, in January of 2008, the CRRA issued him a new check for the same amount.”

Doyle said he had engaged in the creative accounting because had his fees from CRRA exceeded $50,000, the law would have considered him a “state contractor,” and as such neither he nor his law partners could have made contributions to candidates they supported.

A clever legal pate can always find a route around an inconvenient and burdensome law or regulations.

Much ado was made about Doyle’s artful dodge by his Republican campaign opponent Ralph Capanera and Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy, recently styled by Doyle as his opponent’s “political assassin.”

Doyle won the election, but alas not every matter may be settled at the ballot box. Healy requested in February that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal investigate Doyle for tax evasion.

“Doyle did this,” Healy wrote to Blumenthal, “to postpone reportable income for 2007 and to avoid meeting the definition of 'state contractor' which would implicate and jeopardize his elected position as state senator." Healy regarded the acceptance by CCRC of Doyle’s creative accounting a "special treatment from a state agency" that gets fees from municipalities' tax revenues, and he reminded Blumenthal of his pledge to “vigorously pursue” tax evaders to the very gates of Hell.

A month went by and Healy received a missive from Blumenthal advising that he had passed the buck to the Department of Revenue Services "for its review and action as appropriate." The attorney general also noted that since Healy was alleging “possible criminal law violations, you should be aware that the DRS Division of Collections and Enforcement has … the power to make arrests where warranted, and to refer cases to appropriate criminal authorities for prosecution when necessary."

Piqued at Healy’s persistence, Doyle alleged political assassination; Lender admonished Doyle about “sticky” situations; and the raucous crowd that bays from the rooftops whenever a Republican wanders into “sticky” situations quickly fell into its usual stupor.

Simmons/McMahon trade charges, plus mea culpa

It's been a long time coming, but I owe an apology to the Rob Simmons campaign, and I might as well do it the same day I have a post about the GOP Senate race.

First, in my last post at CTLocalPolitics, I noted the aggression of the McMahon campaign, and asserted she was trying not merely to win but to drive Simmons out of the race. I also posited his campaign might make such a move, writing “... I wouldn't be surprised if there is not some change of course for the Simmons campaign soon.”

I was taken to task by the Simmons people, and in response, as evidence, I noted he was falling in the polls. They replied that he was still leading. Sure enough, they were correct. In the two most recent Q polls, Simmons maintains a double-digit lead (though I'm sure it is closer now). She is closer in others, but their claims on this were correct, and I was wrong. So Mea Culpa.

Now on to the news.

Yesterday's Conn Post ran an article claiming some CT GOPers are miffed that Party Chair Chris Healy's wife, Suzan Bibisi, works for the McMahon camp, claiming this is a conflict of interest for Healy, and his ability to be neutral is “compromised.” (See the article here: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/141569549 ) Healy calls the claim “ridiculous,” and denies it. Bibisi does have a history of campaign work to bolster her qualifications, as well, and I sincerely doubt there is any kind of quid pro quo here.

However, appearances matter, and this has bad optics. Recall, one of Chris Dodd's peccadiloes was getting a cheap loan. He countered that his WIFE got the loan, to which all sentient beings thought, “Well, they pay the bills together, don't they?” Similarly, Healy clearly benefits if his wife is employed, and if she is employed by someone who can gain from his influence, then he may be in a compromising position. Just being logical.

Do I think Healy is up to something? No. He used to work for Simmons, and likes him a lot.
Still, this is one relationship the McMahon people may have to rethink. It both underlines her ability to spend unlimited amounts, and it may make any deal at Convention suspicious.

Furthermore, it gives the Simmons campaign a cudgel, something they have lacked. Their claims about her voting record and her inability to speak Chinese have been a yawn, if not downright silly. But this story might have legs.

We'll see who gets back to me with a rant after this story.