The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The endangered art of public financing
I miss the former Republican governor every day. I recall fondly his ethereal, tormented presence in the Capitol, circa 2004, when he drifted through the halls like Mrs. Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey into Night.”
You can’t say Connecticut Republicans aren’t consistent in their attacks on the voluntary public-funding program for political candidates, including governor and the General Assembly.
“We have better uses for that $30 million than giving it to political races,” the loudest of them say in legislative debates and the campaign trail. “It’s the taxpayer’s money.”
Whoa Nelly, get off that high horse and smell the vestigial corruption, the cronyism, the federal grand juries. It’s abandoned property, mostly bank accounts of dead taxpayers with no relatives, that fuels the Citizens’ Election Program. The dead are finally and irrevocably spared the relief and responsibilities of being taxpayers, and listening to politicians.
Coincidentally, if not hilariously, no one has benefited from the CEP more than state Republicans, who have gone from a downtrodden, veto-vulnerable minority, to near parity in the House at 80-71, and that pesky flat-footed 18-18 tie in the Senate.
In 2006, the year after the reforms, Democrats had a 99-52 majority in the House and a 24-12 edge in the Senate.
Democrats have gone from virtually controlling the flow of lobbyist contributions to a near-endangered species, while Republicans, with an even playing field, have made big gains.
Sure, there is currently a national whiplash that’s cracking because of the swampy Trumpsters, but Democrats can in no way think the GOP ascent has been beaten back in Connecticut.
Why, even John “Why Should I Resign If I’ve Done Nothing Wrong?” Rowland is back on the cusp of freedom from his latest postgraduate federal institutionalization.
I miss the former Republican governor every day. I recall fondly his ethereal, tormented presence in the Capitol, circa 2004, when he drifted through the halls like Mrs. Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey into Night.”
Instead of remarking on his “once pretty hands,” Rowland, whose pay-toplay lifestyle was several months away from leading to guilty pleas in federal court and his first prison stint, recited a mantra of “a fair and transparent process” as he crept inexorably toward impeachment He resigned in the summer of 2004 after his hand-picked chief justice, William Sullivan of Waterbury, presided over a court hearing that led to an order that he testify before the House Committee of Inquiry.
In 2005, Rowland’s successor, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, dragged Republicans kicking and screaming to approve the election reforms that led to the CEP, which provides up to $6.5 million for gubernatorial candidates who can raise $250,000 in small qualifying contributions. All of a sudden, lobbyists who for decades had to continually cough up campaign cash, didn’t felt like they were being held up every two or four years.
Dannel P. Malloy was the first gubernatorial candidate to benefit from the CEP. By the time of his 2014 re-election, his campaign had learned to game it by supplementing a late-campaign million bucks from a Democratic State Central Committee account that was supposed to be for its federal candidates.
Rowland is in a halfway house and due for release May 27, in time for the gala Memorial Day weekend.
As a reporter who benefited greatly from Rowland’s corruption, I welcome him back for a third try.
And this might all be easier if the more-starboard factions of legislative Republicans somehow end public financing.
Then there are spoilsports such as Mike Brandi, executive director and chief counsel for the State Elections Enforcement Commission, which busted Malloy’s bunch for a $325,000 settlement on the outside financing.
In testimony on an annual GOP bill that would end public financing, Brandi reminded members of the Government Administration & Elections Committee of the bad-old days.
“We know what came before the CEP,” he said. “The alternative to clean elections financing is the old way of doing business, with ever-increasing contributions limits — stripping power from electors and returning it to wealthy contributors who can buy access.”
I was watching that great court trial in New York City that went on for weeks, having snared Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s former capo, Joe Percoco, who was recently found guilty of three bribery-related felonies in the first of two massive corruption trials. It involved about $300,000 from Peter “Braith” Kelly of Canterbury, who allegedly provided Percoco’s wife with a “low-show” job funded by the same company that has the new natural-gas power plant in Oxford. The jury was deadlocked on Kelly, who has not returned a call for comment.
So if state lawmakers want to kill the national model of public financing under the guise of saving taxpayers money, I’m in support. It’s about jobs ... for journalists.