ABG22 Posts

Not that long ago, it looked as if former ambassador and Bush/Cheney BFF Tom Foley was going to make ethics reform a central feature of his "sequel" campaign for governor of Connecticut. He introduced (failed) legislation, released an onslaught of ads saying as much, and presented his case to the media. Of course, that was before all the allegations of his unethical campaigning started to pour out.

The latest NYT/CBS poll of the Connecticut governor's race is devastating to incumbent Dan Malloy — in particular its assessment of the Democrat's standing among independent voters. In a look at gubernatorial races across the country, in which he affirmed the conventional wisdom that Republicans are likely to do well this fall, Nate Silver recently opined that Tom Foley has a 58 percent chance of winning versus Dan Malloy's 42 percent in a head-to-head rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial contest. But it's not all bad news for Malloy.

Toni Harp's almost-certain victory next week in the New Haven mayoral race will make history: she will become the first female mayor in the history of the Elm City, and one of only a handful of black female mayors in the country. That should be cause for celebration by everyone. Still, progressives in one of the most progressive cities in one of the most progressive states in America cannot help but be dispirited that, as Harp's electoral "mandate" will be almost completely devoid of progressive priorities.

This year's municipal elections have displayed a disturbing level of incompetence and internal dissension among Democrats that should be troubling to Dan Malloy and his political team going into next year's gubernatorial election.
In New Haven, the Democratic Town Committee - "under new management" since the pro-City Hall machine was deposed in 2011 and 2012 -- missed a key filing deadline that nullified all the party's candidate endorsements, forcing even endorsed candidates to petition onto the primary ballot. For a few days, local party leaders -- who had mistakenly mailed the paperwork

Last week Governor Malloy released a 184-page "Comprehensive Energy Strategy Plan" for the state, which you can read here (http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/energy/cep/deep_draft_connecticut_compre...). The plan's emphasis on public-private partnerships and use of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" clearly bears the imprint of Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Dan Esty, who has designated these as priorities of his agency and discussed them in his academic work prior to joining the Malloy administration in 2011. What is in this plan and why should...

The Connecticut GOP has to really savor its small victories, because that's pretty much all they have to celebrate anymore. At Mitt Romney is languishing in the polls and Linda McMahon has started to fall behind again in her race against Chris Murphy, CT GOPers are gleeful about a State Supreme Court decision overturning the ballot order determined by Secretary of the State Merrill and giving the GOP top ballot position in November's election. To briefly recap (this is Jordan Fenster's explanation in the New Haven Register): state law says "the party whose candidate for governor polled the hig...

Connecticut Republicans are downright giddy about a new Quinnipiac poll showing Obama leading Romney by only 7 in Connecticut (and Linda McMahon leading Chris Murphy by 3). This follows on the heels of Karl Rove moving the Nutmeg State from "Safe Obama" into the "Lean Obama" category last week on his electoral map for Fox News, leading Family Institute of Connecticut Chairman Peter Wolfgang to tweet: "Dare we hope?" Meanwhile Connecticut GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola has been pitching Connecticut as a swing state to party leaders and the media, and is talking about trying to bring Romney to the state for a campaign stop.

Of course Democrats should be wary of getting complacent about Connecticut, where unaffiliated is the largest and fastest growing bloc of voters. But keep in mind that a Rasmussen poll in May 2008 showed Obama leading McCain by 3 points in the state, eliciting paroxysms of delight from Connecticut GOPers similar to what we see in today's news. (The accompanying write-up for the 2008 Rasmussen poll, which also surveyed approval ratings for Governor Jodi Rell, laughably noted that "Rell has been mentioned by some as a potential Vice-Presidential running mate for John McCain.") Obama ended up winning Connecticut by 22 points. Democrats can only hope that Romney would squander his time and resources by coming here.

In 2010, Republicans became giddy when polls showed GOP congressional candidates leading in the 4th and 5th CDs, and John Larson only leading by single digits in the 1st. National Review wrote that "the dam has burst" in blue-state Connecticut. Jim Himes and Chris Murphy ended up being re-elected easily, John Larson won by more than 20 points, and Democrats swept all the state constitutional offices.

What is most amusing and perhaps pathetic about the CT GOP's optimism about Connecticut as a swing state is that they apparently believe that Romney will benefit from Linda McMahon's coattails, another sign of the flabbergasting discrepancy between how McMahon is viewed by Republicans versus how she is viewed in the reality-based community. As Labriola told the Associated Press: "The notion of putting Connecticut in play is supported by the great opportunity the Linda McMahon campaign is presenting." In reality, while McMahon may help energize conservatives, and she may be able to fund an otherwise nonexistent GOP turnout operation, overall she is likely to be a drag on other Republicans on the ticket, as she was in 2010.

Linda McMahon represents the advanced phase of degeneration into which the once-great Connecticut Republican party of William Buckingham, Colonel Ullmann, Stewart McKinney, and Doc Gunther has fallen. McMahon's Trump-like charisma and talent at mouthing platitudes about "job creators" and being an "outsider" may bring short-term gains but in the long term threatens to seduce the Connecticut GOP into further extremism, anti-intellectualism and irrelevance. The fact that she defeated Chris Shays by 45 points in the recent GOP senate primary indicates that Connecticut Republicans either don't understand or don't care about the long-term prospects of the GOP becoming competitive again in New England, and are willing conspirators in the slow-motion self-destruction of the Connecticut GOP.  But in the eyes of the delusional Connecticut GOP, McMahon has not only succeeded in drawing even with Chris Murphy in the senate race with her lavish spending but also she has opened the door for Mitt Romney. That leaders of the increasingly extreme and delusional Connecticut Republican Party want Romney to expend precious resources campaigning in the Nutmeg State shows that they have been so bamboozled by their self-administered Linda McMahon koolaid that they are willing to damage the national GOP ticket as well.

With Elizabeth Esty and Andrew Roraback emerging from their respective primaries, the congressional race in the 5th CD has now been rated "pure toss-up" by Stu Rothenberg, dean of congressional handicappers. How can Esty recover from a bruising primary, defeat Roraback and keep Connecticut's congressional delegation blue? If I were Esty's campaign manager Jeb Fain, this is the strategy memo I would be giving her the day after the election:

1) Talk about reviving the manufacturing sector.  This may be more rhetoric than reality (Waterbury is never going to be the Brass City again), but advocating for Connecticut's precision manufacturing industry and "Buy American" laws helped Chris Murphy appeal to independents and win a couple difficult races, including the race against Sam Caligiuri (like Roraback, a state senator from the 5th district) in the Democrat-unfriendly 2010 electoral climate. It also frames Esty as a champion for the urban areas of the 5th, in contrast to Roraback who is a rural legislator and doesn't understand urban problems.

2) Own her vote on the death penalty. Esty risked losing her seat by voting for repeal in 2010, a fact which the NY Times cited in their primary endorsement of the Cheshire Democrat. Meanwhile, after previously supporting death penalty abolition Roraback flip-flopped and voted against repeal in 2012 as a way of pandering to conservative GOP primary voters. Esty can exploit the contrast here, rather than running away from the issue. Polls show that voters in the 5th support capital punishment, but they are likely to give a politician with conviction the benefit of the doubt over a flip-flopping panderer.

3) Key to securing labor support for GOTV operations will be making amends with Chris Donovan. The Connecticut Working Families Party has no mechanism to remove Donovan from the general election ballot unless Donovan voluntarily decides to withdraw his name. Esty would be the only Democrat running for congress in Connecticut without WF cross-endorsement, and Donovan would surely draw precious votes from Esty even without actively campaigning. While it may be asking too much to get Donovan to withdraw his name AND use his influence with Working Families to give her the endorsement, she needs him off the ballot. In the next few days she needs to sit down with Donovan (whose somewhat mystifying refusal to endorse her in his concession speech was hopefully just gaining leverage to ensure that she commits to not running too far to the right), promise not to betray progressive principles if elected to congress, and ask for his blessing and support in November.

4) Nationalize the race and tie Roraback to the unpopular GOP congress. The national GOP brand is becoming increasingly toxic in Connecticut. Regardless of what voters think of "moderate" Andy Roraback, do they really want to give John Boehner the Speaker's gavel again?

5) Bring in the big guns. Get Obama (or Bill Clinton, her husband's former boss when he was at EPA) to come to Waterbury or New Britain to help drive turnout. Worked for Jim Himes in 2010!

If Esty follows these prescriptions, she should be able to win big in the cities, hold her own in the suburbs, keep Roraback's margins down in the rural areas of the 5th CD and pull out a victory in November.

In politics, institutional structure often matters more than individual performance, which is why charter reform matters. Just ask Bridgeport, now in the process of reviewing its charter to determine whether to abolish its elected school board (which is what 94% of jurisdictions in the country have, including all but one in Connecticut) and concentrate power over the city's failing schools in the hands of the mayor (as New Haven does). Hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars are being spent by both sides to promote their charter revision agenda, with the business community and charter school operators lined up behind mayoral control (Jonathan Pelto has done a good job chronicling this web of special interests), and unions lined up on the other side.

Would mayoral control be good for Bridgeport's kids? Answering that question hinges on measurements of educational achievement which are themselves suspect. Scholars like Johns Hopkins's Deborah Land who have crunched the data on the relationship of school board composition and student performance have generally concluded that there is "not yet convincing evidence that appointment of school board members produces...greater academic achievement."  In the absence of clear empirical evidence, whether or not you favor mayoral control becomes an abstract question of values: whether you prefer the concentrated accountability of mayoral control or the greater community responsiveness of an elected board.

But there is another equally important question: is the transparency and fairness of municipal charter reform, which is governed by Connecticut state law, equal to its importance? Is it enough that the recommendations of the Bridgeport Charter Revision Commission will be subject to public referendum, or does a fair and transparent charter reform process require something more?

According to Connecticut state law, municipalities must consider charter revision at least once every ten years. The law outlines the requirements of the charter revision process: "the appointing authority shall by resolution appoint a commission consisting of not fewer than five nor more than fifteen electors, not more than one-third of whom may hold any other public office in the municipality and not more than a bare majority of whom shall be members of any one political party, which commission shall proceed forthwith to draft a charter, or amendments to the existing charter, or amendments to the home rule ordinance, as the case may be... The commission shall hold at least two public hearings on the proposed charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments; one prior to the beginning of any substantive work on such charter, charter amendments or home rule ordinance amendments, and one after the draft report to the appointing authority has been completed, but not submitted, after which hearings the commission may amend such report. The commission may hold such other public hearings as it deems necessary." Within 15 months of starting its work the commission must submit charter revision amendment(s) for an up-or-down vote by public referendum.

Seems clear enough, but the law is significant for what it leaves out.

In March three former members of the Bridgeport Board of Education (before it was dissolved) asked some pointed questions in an open letter to the CT Post about whether Bridgeport's charter revision commission is a stacked deck. The chairman of the Bridgeport Charter Revision Commission is the wife of Mayor Finch's attorney, John Bohannon. Another member of the commission, Ruben Felipe, is the mayor's deputy chief of staff. It's not just Bridgeport where this is a problem. In New Haven in 2010, the mayor's slate of nominees to the charter review commission was scuttled by a few aldermen who believed the appointees would not act independently of city hall's influence. Faced with the prospect of a commission without friendly members, charter revision dropped off the mayor's agenda. All this raises the question: should the statutes governing charter revision permit commissions to be stacked with city employees and contractors?

Another problem is that there are no clear rules governing whether disparate charter revision recommendations -- for example, changing the composition of the school board, and establishing a residency requirement for the director of elderly services -- go on the ballot as a single charter reform proposal or whether each provision appears separately. Some recommendations may be considerably more important or more popular than others, but they are often lumped together as one proposition with the intentional or unintentional effect of confusing voters. This generated controversy in 2002 in New Haven, when a controversial proposal to lengthen the mayoral term to four years was "buried" in a package of relatively popular provisions. The omnibus package was narrowly voted down. The language "Shall the proposed changes to the city charter be approved?" does not suffice. Each charter revision provision should be enumerated so that voters know precisely what they are voting on.

Finally, state law only requires that the charter revision commissions hold two public hearings, and only one on their final recommendations -- is this sufficient to ensure robust public participation in determining a major change in public policy or in the structure of government?

Whether or not you think mayoral control is a good idea (personally I favor a hybrid board consisting of both appointed and elected members),

the rules governing charter revision need to be clarified and improved so that voters in Bridgeport, and every other jurisdiction in the state, can have full confidence their voices will be heard in momentous decisions about the structure of local government.

The Democratic Party's platform development process is just now kicking into high gear with the appointment of veteran political operative Andy Grossman as National Platform Director and, perhaps surprisingly given his recent controversial remarks criticizing the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's Bain record, Newark Mayor Cory Booker as one of the Platform Committee co-chairs.

Some commentators have suggested that the Connecticut GOP has an outside chance to win control of the State Senate in this November's election, a possibility that I analyzed (and concluded was highly unlikely) recently at MLN. What I failed to mention is that if the GOP accomplishes this herculean feat, it will almost surely be because of prison-based gerrymandering, whereby prisoners are counted in the districts where they are incarcerated instead of the districts where they resided prior to (and typically following) incarceration. This practice artificially inflates prison districts where people in prison are not permitted to vote. Prison-based gerrymandering is likely to provide an electoral boost to vulnerable GOP senators John Kissel (who narrowly retained his seat in 2010, and faces a strong challenge in 2012), who has the Suffield (MacDougall-Walker) and Enfield prisons in his district, and freshman Len Suzio, who won a 2011 special election (necessitated when Democrat Tom Gaffey left office after pleading guilty to misdemeanor larceny charges) in a Democratic-leaning district that contains the Cheshire prison. In 2010 Kissel defeated challenger Karen Jarmoc (who is running again this year) by fewer than 1000 votes, a margin that is about one-third of the prison population contained in the district.

This issue has been back in the news recently because during the same week as the Obamacare ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the aptly named Maryland "No Representation Without Population Act." Signed into law in 2010 by Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley, this reform legislation counts incarcerated individuals in their home districts, rather than the districts where they are in prison, for the purposes of redistricting. As Connecticut and most other states continue to do, Maryland used to ignore legal residency - which doesn't change when an individual is imprisoned - for its incarcerated population. With the new law being upheld, Maryland will now count individuals in prison at their last known residence for Congressional, state and local redistricting.

As Leah Sakala of the Prison Policy Initiative points out, Connecticut has "been on a long march towards fairer redistricting for the last half century. Fifty years ago, districts were apportioned in a way that gave the residents of some towns hundreds of times the influence of residents in the urban centers. Connecticut rightly fixed that injustice, and ending prison-based gerrymandering is the next logical step."

But getting rid of prison-based gerrymandering is not just about restoring the principle of one-person, one-vote. It will also help pave the way towards more sensible criminal justice policy. Connecticut's prison population has been declining in recent years -- down 15% from its all-time high and at the lowest level since 1998. This is partly due to declining rates of violent crime, but also due to enlightened criminal justice reforms, including last year's decriminalization of marijuana. But there is much more work to be done in this area, and prison-based gerrymandering makes sensible criminal justice policy more difficult to achieve by giving rural legislators with prisons in their districts incentive to obstruct meaningful reforms to drug policy and minimum sentencing guidelines that might have the effect of reducing prison populations.

As the Hartford Courant editorialized on July 2, the Supreme Court's decision in Fletcher v. Lamone "should be an impetus" for Connecticut to follow Maryland's example and abolish prison-based gerrymandering when the legislature re-convenes in 2013.

Mark Pazniokas of the Connecticut Mirror said this morning on WNPR's "Where We Live" that Democrats in Hartford were at least mildly concerned about losing control of the upper chamber of the General Assembly in the November election. Is it really possible that the Republicans could take over the Connecticut State Senate?

The balance of power in the 36-member chamber is currently 22 Democrats and 14 Republicans -- the GOP would need to win more than four seats currently held by Democrats, without losing any GOP-held seats (An 18-18 tie in the State Senate would be broken by Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman.) The Republicans' hopes are buoyed by the retirement of two longtime Democratic legislators in eastern Connecticut, Edith Prague and Eileen Daily, leaving open seats that are more fertile territory for GOP pick-ups.

In Prague's district, GOP rising star Chris Coutu, currently a House legislator from Norwich, and Tom Reynolds, a Democrat currently serving as a House legislator from Ledyard, are the most likely candidates to be on the November ballot. Coutu dropped out of the congressional primary in the second congressional district to focus on the state senate race. This race could be close.

In District 33, two Democrats are vying for the opportunity to succeed the retiring Eileen Daily. The Republican candidate is Art Linares, a businessman and former aide to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. A bruising Democratic primary, and the possible siphoning of votes from the Democrat by Green Party candidate Melissa Schlag in the general, could put this seat into play for the GOP.

Outside of the two open seats, what are the best GOP pick-up opportunities?

In District 22, Democratic incumbent Anthony Musto is facing GOP challenger Chadwick Ciocci, a 5-term town councilman in Trumbull, which represents about 1/3 of the total population of the district. Musto barely won re-election in the GOP-favorable election of 2010, but his district was shored up in the most recent redistricting and he should be able to survive.

In District 27 (Stamford and Darien), Democrat Carlo Leone won a special election in 2011 after Andrew MacDonald joined the Malloy administration. Leone is now facing Barry Michelson, a real estate developer with no political experience. Leone won the low-turnout special election in February 2011 by a comfortable margin and conventional wisdom suggests he would improve on his 2011 performance in a higher-turnout presidential election environment.

In District 12 (Branford and Guilford), Ed Meyer will be facing GOPer Cindy Cartier, who lost a House race to Democrat Pat Widlitz in the GOP-favorable 2010 election. Meyer has positioned himself well as a fiscally conservative, socially progressive legislator to win re-election in this moderate district.

The problem for the GOP is that they will be playing defense in some districts, too. They will have to hold onto the open seat being vacated by Andrew Roraback, who is running for congress in the fifth congressional district. The GOP will also have to defend seats held by Len Suzio, who is facing Meriden councilman Dante Bartolomeo, and Len Fasano, who is facing a strong challenge from former North Haven state rep Steve Fontana. Freshman Jason Welch should be vulnerable if only because of his endorsement of homophobic moron Rick Perry for President - he faces union official Dave Roche in November. Senator Mike McLachlan of Danbury will have to answer for introducing a "birther" bill in the 2011 legislative session as he faces former state rep Jason Bartlett.

Ultimately it is possible that the Democrats will lose ground in the Senate, but it's equally possible they will gain seats. According to the Secretary of the State, there are 41% fewer uncontested races for the state legislature compared to 2010 (only two incumbent senators, Kevin Kelly of Stratford and John McKinney of Fairfield, don't have challengers), which means that in a "wave election" scenario we could see a dramatically different state senate in 2013.

Pazniokas is certainly right about one thing: if the Democrats hemorrhage their majority, it will enhance the bargaining power of more conservative votes in the caucus like Bob Duff and Joan Hartley, which could have significant consequences for the trajectory of next year's budget.

It is disappointing that the legislature and governor have still not worked out a fix for the campaign finance disclosure bill (HB 5556) vetoed by the governor last week. On June 25 Mark Pazniokas reported that Malloy is in talks with General Assembly leadership about fixing the bill and calling back legislators to pass it in special session, but with legislators already beginning to focus on their fall re-election campaigns this seems increasingly unlikely.

There were plenty of legitimate complaints about the bill -- but David Earley's article in the CT Mirror (http://ctmirror.org/node/16673) explains why the governor's invocation of the famous Supreme Court decision known as NAACP v. Alabama in defense of his veto is not one of them. Miles Rapoport, former Connecticut Secretary of the State and now president of the think tank Demos, said: "The governor's veto statement argues that HB 5556 is unconstitutional under the First Amendment, but this argument is simply incorrect. The Supreme Court has made clear on numerous occasions, including in Citizens United itself, that disclosure laws are on firm constitutional footing."

The point here is not to assign blame, but to make clear that it would be a travesty if 2012 came and went with our state government creating a new law for the year-round possession of reindeer while doing nothing to address the transcendent issue of our time, the threat of "dark money" flooding into our political system.

The legislature cannot wash its hands of responsibility and hide behind the governor's veto. The flawed, poorly written bill can easily be fixed in a way that allows organizations like the ACLU and the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association to withdraw their opposition -- if the legislature has the will to do so.

Public opinion is already way ahead of state government on this issue: since the legislative session ended, Hartford, New Haven, Middletown, New London, and West Haven have all passed city council resolutions opposing the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, and to do so anonymously through phony "social welfare" organizations. These cities have joined hundreds of others across the country, including the nation's two largest cities, in an unprecedented grassroots movement that is defying the conventional wisdom that average citizens don't care about campaign finance reform and other "process" issues.

Are the legislature and the governor listening?

Netroots Nation, the premier annual gathering of progressive bloggers and activists, is now underway just over the border in Providence, Rhode Island. Even though it's close by, not everyone will be able to get there in person (or pay the hefty registration fee). Here's some info from the website (http://www.netrootsnation.org/nn12/streaming/) on how to follow all the Netroots Nation proceedings from home.
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STREAMING
We're streaming all of our keynote sessions and several of our panel rooms live each day during the convention. Our streaming is generously sponsored by AFSCME this year. You'll find these streams on the websites of many of our media partners including Daily Kos. You can also watch on livestream.com and ustream.com-or get the embed codes and host the streams on your own blog.

Our video coverage is made possible by our friends at Five Steps Forward and Free Speech TV, which will also show coverage and behind-the-scenes interviews on DIRECTV channel 348, DISH Network channel 9415, on over 175 US cable access affiliates.

After the convention, you'll be able to watch archived versions of all the panels and keynote sessions we streamed on Livestream's archive.

The following outlets and blogs will also be carrying our stream on their websites: Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Politico, The Nation, The American Prospect, AlterNet, Ms. Magazine, AmericaBlog, Jack & Jill Politics, Crooks and Liars, Raw Story, Eschaton, Digby's Hullabaloo, Occupy America and RIFuture.com.

SIRIUS XM RADIO
Netroots Nation will take over SiriusXM Left (channel 127) starting Saturday, June 9, at 1 p.m. ET.

SiriusXM kicks off coverage from Netroots Nation 2012 with live broadcasts of The Michelangelo Signorile Show on SiriusXM OutQ (channel 108) at 2 p.m. ET and Make It Plain with Mark Thompson on SiriusXM Left (channel 127) at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 7. SiriusXM's 24 hour Netroots Nation Radio "takeover" debuts immediately following a special Netroots Nation edition of Media Matters Radio on SiriusXM Left (channel 127) at 10 a.m. ET on Saturday, June 9.

TWITTER
Each year Netroots Nation has a strong presence on Twitter. Many sessions take live feedback from the Twitter stream; speakers often post presentations and video there; and you can generally stay up to date on all the action by following @netroots_nation and checking hashtag #NN12.