Fazio campaign accused of improper funding
SEEC opens investigation
The 2020 state Senate campaign of Republican Ryan Fazio is now under scrutiny from the State Elections Enforcement Commission after a complaint was filed alleging that the state Republican Party improperly expended money in his race.
This is the second investigation the SEEC has opened this month into the campaign finances of a local Republican race.
Fazio last year unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Democratic state Sen. Alex Kasser, in the 36th District, which covers all of Greenwich as well as portions of Stamford and New Canaan. On Monday, he said there was “obviously nothing notable” about the complaint.
“Everyone around local politics knows that Democrats have recently decided to weaponize campaign finance complaints in order to smear their opposition,” Fazio said. “Any partisan actor can submit them, in hopes of winning one day of negative news headlines and making things momentarily unpleasant for their subjects, even though nothing will come of it.”
The Greenwich resident called the complaint “both factually and legally inaccurate.”
The complaint was filed by Robert Brady, a member of the Democratic Town Committee, against Fazio; Joseph Romano, who served as the Fazio campaign’s treasurer; former state Republican Party Chair JR Romano; and Warner Pyne III, the state party treasurer. It alleges that the campaign violated the rules governing the state Citizens’ Election Program, which provides state funding to candidates who wish to take it, as the Fazio campaign did.
“It is reasonable to expect adversaries to use all of the tools at their disposal,” Brady wrote in his complaint. “It is not reasonable to first avail oneself of substantial state resources in the form of a CEP Grant and then systematically violate the essential elements foundational to the structure upon which the entire Citizens’ Election Program is based — limited participation by interested bystanders.
“The Connecticut Republican Party, itself, clearly had a ‘dog in this fight.’ It chose to place not only its ‘thumb on the scale’ but its entire butt,” he said. “SEEC should be interested and invested in the preservation of the Citizens’ Election Program and consider the actions of the Connecticut Republican Party and Fazio for Connecticut in terms of the goals of the program.”
Brady alleges that the state Republican Party gave $64,764.42 to the Fazio campaign for direct mail, phone banking and other advertising. But because Fazio was receiving public financing, Brady alleges that the state Republican Party could give a maximum contribution of only $11,900 under state law.
At its March 17 meeting, the SEEC voted that the complaint was “necessary to investigate” and is now an open matter.
JR Romano, who resigned as party chair in January, declined to comment Tuesday. In the complaint, Brady claimed that Romano “failed to properly supervise the activities of the (Connecticut Republican Party)” by allowing the expense to the Fazio campaign to go through.
Joseph Romano, who is not related to JR Romano, said through Fazio that he had no comment.
Pyne on Tuesday said they were reviewing the complaint and said he had “no comment at this time.”
Brady also charges that the state party ran a series of Facebook ads criticizing Kasser and created a webpage called “The RealAlexKasser.com,” which he says were done in violation of state law forbidding those kinds of payments.
“Although the ads all contain the attribution, ‘Paid for by the Connecticut Republican Party. Approved by Ryan Fazio’, they are not organization expenditures because they lack both the image and voice of Ryan Fazio in the body and conclusion of the video,” Brady alleged. “Thus, they must be in-kind contributions by the (Connecticut Republican Party) to (the Fazio For Connecticut campaign committee), violating the making of and acceptance by in-kind contributions by the (Connecticut Republican Party) and a CEP-participating committee.”
Brady indicated on Monday that he, like other supporters of Kasser, considered those ads to be unfair, calling them “pretty nasty stuff.”
On Tuesday, Kasser said she trusted the “SEEC to enforce the state’s campaign finance rules.”
This is the second SEEC investigation that has recently been launched into a 2020 Republican state legislature campaign in Greenwich. Earlier this month the SEEC agreed to investigate allegations made against the 2020 campaigns of state Rep. Harry Arora, R-151.
The complaint, filed by Greenwich resident Lucy von Brachel, a member of the DTC, alleges that Arora, who successfully won a special election in January 2020 and then was reelected to a full two-year term in November 2020, and his campaign violated state regulations for financing of campaigns for candidates using the CEP.
von Brachel alleged the campaign did not report a reimbursement to Arora’s family member for services they provided, failed to report expenditures relating to use of the candidate’s business office as a campaign office and improperly coordinating expenses with the state Republican Party.
That investigation is ongoing. Arora has denied the allegations and said the expenses were all legitimate payments and that the complaint was filed “by a political adversary.”
Republican Town Committee Chair Dan Quigley blasted the complaints into the Fazio and Arora campaigns.
“It is sad that local Democrats are resorting to smearing Republican office holders and candidates five months after elections with accusations that are totally lacking legal or factual merit,” Quigley said. “I’m sure if we combed through the campaigns of Ms. Kasser, (state Rep. Stephen) Meskers and other local Democrats, we would unearth technical or clerical issues that could be spun into headlines regardless of merit.
“However, instead of wasting our time with those pursuits, we are focusing on the issues that matter to our community, primarily Democrat proposals to strop zoning rights and raise taxes on our community,” he said.
Greenwich Democratic Town Committee Chair Joseph Angland said on Monday that the party had no statement but said he personally felt that, “The public filing raises substantial concerns, and I am heartened that the SEEC will now dig into the facts and determine if laws were violated.”