Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

 Ned Lamont, the Greenwich telecom millionaire who used his brief experience on the local board of finance and board of selectman – and his cash – to win the 2006 US Senate primary, then went on vacation to Vermont as Joe Lieberman sealed his independent re-election run, is ahead in the race for governor, but half of Connecticut voters are undecided, according to today’s Quinnipiac University poll released today.

 Lamont’s at 27 percent, followed by Dan Malloy, the former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, with 11 percent.  About 44 percent are undecided, though. Among Republicans, with 59-percent undecided, 17 percent favor Tom Foley, the former Irish ambassador and big-bucks fundraiser for  the Bush administration. Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele has 8 percent.

Here are the projected general-election breakdowns:

• Lamont beats Foley 38 – 36 percent;
• Lamont beats Fedele 41 – 32 percent;
• Malloy defeats Foley 37 – 33 percent;
• Malloy defeats Fedele 37 – 31 percent.

 ”The big winner in the primaries for Governor is ‘Undecided,’” said Doug Schwartz, the Q Poll director. “With most of the candidates largely unknown, voters aren’t expressing a preference in the gubernatorial primaries yet.”

In the Cromwell candidates’ forum today Dan Malloy, the former Stamford mayor making another run at the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, scolded Republican Tom Foley (no elected experience) and Ned Lamont (terms as Greenwich selectman and finance board; failed 2006 U.S. Senate run) for planning on using their personal wealth to seize an advantage over any candidates using the state’s $40-million public-financing pool.

The Blogster just transcribed the tape, complete with Malloy’s incomplete second sentence: “Do we have to buy elections in this state? I don’t think so and ultimately I believe that people will reject it and hold people who would take their own personal wealth and buy as much TV and as much newspapers and as many pieces of paper as possible. Eventually the people of Connecticut are going to say ‘enough’ to people who want to buy the governor’s office, the senate’s office or any other office. Meritocracy is not a bad concept.”

During today’s gubernatorial-candidates forum, Republican rainmaker/multi-millionaire  Tom Foley, whose first run at public office is governor of Connecticut, indicated he’s a little out of touch with Greenwich wealth, forgetting Lowell P. Weicker, the former town resident, U.S. Senator and independent governor, was one of his income-bracket homies.

“I don’t think it’s correct to say that you have to be a millionaire to run for office. Gov. Rell is not a millionaire that I know of, John Rowland wasn’t a millionaire, Lowell Weicker, as far as I know, wasn’t a millionaire,” said Foley, who was immediately interupted by the moderator, Pat Sheehan, a former local TV anchor. “Lowell was,” Sheehan injected.

Foley: “He wasn’t known as a millionaire or as a wealthy person or someone who could fund his own campaign.” Maybe not in Foley’s neighborhood in Greenwich, but the Blogster recalls that Weicker, who’ll go down in history for being the Republican U.S. Senator who hounded Ricjard Nixon out of office, had big pharmaceutical wealth in his background.

Today’s award for poor taste, or TMI, goes to Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, D-Meriden, who this morning told the Council of Small Towns gathering at the Cromwell Plaza the story of the little boy pulled out from under a collapsed building in Haiti and used it as a metaphor. “And they freed the little boy out of this rubble… He just reached to the sky smiling, so grateful at what happened. It was a little miracle lookiing at this and the fact that he had been trapped for all this time…It brought tears to your eyes just to see that. I think we need that to think about what’s going on with that country and how everybody’s trying to pull people out and save people…We feel that certainly in state government. We’re trying to get the job done. We certainly don’t have the problems they have in Haiti, but we have pressures. We have pressures. We have the worst economic downturn that I’ve ever seen, that my parents talked about, but I never saw. We have responded on the state level. We have  responded on the local level…What I think we need to do is figure out..ah..that the people around that little boy, how we work together. How we figure out that partnership to pull ourselves out of this economic downturn….”

Veteran New Haven Rep. Cameron Staples, co-chairman of the powerful-but-recently depressing Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee of the General Assembly, will join Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and George Jepsen of Ridgefield, the former Senate majority leader, in the race for the Democratic nomination for attorney general.

Staples, with 18 years in the House, will scale back his legal practice at Neubert, Pepe and Montieth in New Haven, where he’s a partner, to work toward the May party nominating convention and possibly beyond.

Speaking to three reporters this afternoon in the Cromwell Crowne Plaza hotel, the 51-year-old Staples said that focusing on law and health care for the last 20 years has given him an advantage in the kind of civil practice that the attorney general leads. He said he looks forward to rooting out potential abuses in the eventual health-care-reform products that will emerge from Congress and the state Legislature. ”This is the job you aspire to,” Staples said, noting that he considered running for the last couple weeks after Sen. Chris Dodd’s withdrawal from re-election consideration made Attorney General Dick Blumenthal the presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate.

Meanwhile, Jepsen today continued to stoke the embers of the conflagration around the requirements for AG and a general question over whether Bysiewicz has enough time as a practicing attorney to be AG. “As a lawyer, she should know that a court of law is the proper venue to resolve the issue of her professional qualifications to run for attorney general,” Jepsen said in a statement this morning, following Bysieiwcz’s request last week that Blumenthal consider whether she meets the statutory requiremwents.

” An opinion from Attorney General Blumenthal is simply not binding and will not resolve the issue for her,” Jepsen said. “She needs to work through the proper channels of the court system.”
 

, aewoer

The legislation that was passed in the wake of the triple homicide in Cheshire that shocked the state in July 2007, with enhanced criminal penalties including a mandatory 10 years in prison, has so far resulted in 287 defendants, said Judge Patrick Clifford, chief administrative judge for the state Judicial Branch. Clifford just told the legislative Judiciary Committee that the law, passed in January of 2008 that went into effect in March, includes 142 pending cases and 12 defendants convicted of the crime of home invasion.

 Will Gregory, the 24-year-old newcomer from New Canaan who is among the five hopefuls running for the GOP nomination to run against U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, says he spent time in Haiti back in high school. He is partnering with AmeriCares and Hip Hop Republicans to start a relief project, CT4Haiti, “which will raise funds and awareness in Connecticut to aid the earthquake-ravaged nation.” CT4Haiti will be hosting its first fundraising event on Saturday, January16^th from 7-10 pm at Tiernan’s in Stamford, CT.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jodi Rell on Saturday announced she has offered the state’s mobile hospital for Haitian relief. Her office said that on Friday, the governor sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offering the 100-bed unit, which can be transported in 25-bed sections. She also offered the state’s rapid-response Disaster Medical Assistance Team.