Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

 The Blogster attended Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele’s gubernatorial announcement in Cromwell this morning. It was in the same room where in mid-December, 2003, Patty Rowland, wife of John “Why Should I Resign If I’ve Done Nothing Wrong?” Rowland read a poem to the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce essentially challenging reporters on her hubbie’s ethical problems. By the end of June, 2004, Rowland had resigned as governor under the weight of an impreachment inquiry and a federal corruption investigation that sent him to prison for 10 months. The quote that day from Rowland to his wife as she started to read her poem: “Go ahead honey, what more can they do to us?”

Anyway, Fedele recalled the function room in a different way to about 100 statewide manufacturers at a CBIA forum.

“This was the first ballroom that I gave a major speech in 2007 when I became lieutentant governort and it was such an incredible hot speech that the fire alarm went off,” Fedele said. “I remember being dragged off by the State Police and I’m saying ‘wait a minute I have to finish my speech’ and they said ‘no, the fire arlarm is going off.’ So I promise you…well maybe the fire alarm should go off today. That would be very appropriate.”

 Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele, who grew up on the West Side of Stamford and now lives in North Stamford, will be back back to the old neighborhood this afternoon during a 4 p.m. rally for  the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010.

 Fedele, the 54-year-old son of Italian immigrants, will be in the Yerwood Center on Stamford’s Fairfield Avenue, where he received his elementary education when it was called Stevens School. “That’s my neighborhood, the neighborhood I grew up in and actually my headquarters for my business is located in that neighborhood,” Fedele told reporters in the Cromwell Crowne Plaza hotel announcing his gubernatorial candidacy to about 100 business executives.

            Gov. Jodi Rell just announced that the Department of Correction wants to close the minimum-security Webster Correctional Institution in Cheshire that has 575 inmates. She claims it could save $3.4 million a year “while maintaining the safety and security of the public, the staff and inmates.”

 She said the state can afford to do it because the inmate population has decreased over the last two years, as the budget problems have increased.       “We face an extraordinarily difficult budget situation – a challenge unlike any we have known in modern memory,” Rell said in a statement. “While other states – including states facing even more severe budget problems than our own – are being forced to build new prisons, we can make the most of our successes by building on these achievements.”

It’s semi-official. Lt.  Gov. Mike Fedele tomorrow “will formally announce his plans for the 2010 gubernatorial election,” which the Blogster and everyone else in the Capitol believes will be the move to replace his boss, Jodi Rell, who’s not running for re-election. The first event will be at 11 a.m. in the Cromwell Crowne Plaza, 100 Berlin Road, Cromwell, followed by a 4:00 pm ”kick-off rally” and announcement reprise back home in Stamford at the Yerwood Center Gymnasium, 90 Fairfield Avenue.

   If there’s a more-secure Congressional member than US Rep. John Larson, D-1, it has to be US Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3. But that isn’t stopping Jerry Labriola, Jr., a Naugatuck attorney, who has announced intentions to look for the GOP nomination to campaign against DeLauro, who’s held the seat for 20 years.“We must end the government takeover of America and give the people of Connecticut a new voice,” Labriola said in a release.  “Our nation is heading in the wrong direction and we must restore the private sector of our economy to create jobs and opportunity for all.”

Labriola – the son of failed 1994 Republican Senate candidate Dr. Jerry Labriola, the physician/mystery writer - is a 1979 graduate of Gettysburg College and earned his law degree from the Catholic University of America.  He has served as town attorney for Naugatuck and coaches soccer for the Ansonia High School girls soccer team. Since the Blogster likes soccer coaches in general, it’s interesting to note that Labriola took over the AHS team in 2007 after an 0-16 season, built a new program and this year the squad made the state tournament for the first time with a 6-8-2 record