Political Capitol

Rumors are circulating that former U.S. Congressman Christopher Shays, a Republican who for years represented Connecticut and more specifically Fairfield County in Washington D.C., may run for Governor.

This piece at Politico.com fanned the speculative flames and Shays during a phone interview tonight said he has not ruled it out.

“The one thing I don’t like is when I hear politicians say ‘everybody’s asking me to run.’ So let’s get this straight. I don’t have ‘everybody’ asking me to run. I have some friends close to me politically who are very smart in terms of understanding politics and what’s going on. They say that nobody is catching on. That this is a huge opportunity for me to consider running for Governor,” Shays said. “I’m not getting a lot of calls from all around the state. (These are) calls from people I think are politically astute who tell me no one is catching on.”

But Shays said: “The answer may be it’s just not practical … It’s more likely in a few weeks I”ll have thought it through and said ‘you know what? I’m not sure this makes sense’.”

And later in the conversation, after I’d asked if he was interested in a re-match with Democrat Jim Himes of Greenwich, who defeated him in 2008, Shays said: “I haven’t totally ruled that out, either, but I think it’s unlikely I would run for Governor. I think it’s unlikely I would run for Congress.”

Following his defeat Shays and his wife sold their house in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport and their condo in Washington D.C. and purchased a place on the water in Maryland. He currently serves on the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

“It’s frankly our dream home,” Shays said. “An absolute haven.”

Shays said the family may buy or rent a small place in Connecticut but no one should read any political aspirations into that.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I miss my constituents,” Shays said. “It’s possible I will buy property in Connecticut or rent in Connecticut and have a place. That’s very likely.”

But I also wonder if Shays has the stomach for another campaign considering his former campaign manager, Michael Sohn of Fairfield, was arrested in December for allegedly embezzling campaign funds from 2005 to 2008. Politico.com has an account of the toll the investigation was taking on the former Congressman in April, 2009.

State Republicans running for various offices think Connecticut voters are hungry for another Scott Brown – the obscure political outsider from Massachusetts who won the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Congressional seat last week and freaked Democrats out.

Rob Simmons, who is running to succeed retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, thinks he’s the next Scott Brown.

Another Republican vying for Dodd’s seat – Peter Schiff – is being compared to Scott Brown.

Lt. Governor Michael Fedele of Stamford, who is hoping to take over for his retiring boss, M. Jodi Rell, compared himself to Scott Brown during an event this past weekend.

And state Republicans are reportedly trying to convince Brown’s brother, a Wolcott businessman, to enter politics.

This all seems like a waste of time for the Connecticut GOP and Party Chairman Chris Healy.

Pick up any phone book or visit any on-line directory and they’ll find plenty of actual Scott Browns living in Connecticut. If the Republicans were smart, they’d try to recruit one of them instead of passing candidates not named Scott Brown off as Scott Brown.

Take Scott Brown of Stamford. After calling him out of the blue tonight I found out he is the branch manager of NorthEast Electrical Distributors, President of the Springdale Little League and – most importantly – a registered Republican.

Boom. Right off the bat I reached a businessman, family man and party loyalist.

When I identified myself and asked whether he’d be interested in running for something, Brown, who sounded very nice over the phone and was patient enough to take my admittedly absurd call, laughed.

“It’s funny. My company is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts. My boss called me up the next morning (after Massachusetts Scott Brown’s victory) and said ‘congratulations’. The big boss – the president – called me two days later. Then I’m talking to somebody in Texas about an order and she was like ‘congratulations’,” Brown said.

Stamford Scott Brown has no skeletons in his closet, unlike Massachusetts Scott Brown, who posed nude in the 1980s for “Cosmopolitan Magazine.”

“I kept my clothes on,” Stamford Scott Brown said.

But what makes him in my opinion perfect candidate material is the fact that Stamford Scott Brown has no interest in running for elected office.

“I wouldn’t plan on doing it,” he said.

PERFECT!!! Talk about the ultimate outsider who can head to Washington D.C. and really shake things up.

And this was just the first Scott Brown I contacted, Healy. There’s political gold to be mined out there.

Jury selection began this week in the trial of a pair of parolees charged with the brutal home invasion/triple homicide in Cheshire in summer, 2007.

I’ve been reporting on the efforts to get one of the most important of the resulting criminal justice reforms enacted in January, 2008 off of the ground – creation of a database allowing Connecticut’s 11 criminal justice agencies to exchange electronic information and jettison their paper files.

The Criminal Justice Information System or CJIS was mandated after it was discovered a sentencing transcript in which a judge described one of the Cheshire defendants as a “calculated, cold-blooded predator” never reached the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

There has been concern CJIS, which will cost tens-of-millions-of-dollars in construction and operating costs, is less of a priority because of the budget crisis.

But another issue is brewing as well – a conflict between Sean Thakkar, hired in 2008 to oversee CJIS, and the state Department of Information Technology.

Thakkar has been using around a dozen of DOIT’s 231-person staff to support his work. But during a meeting Thursday of the CJIS board of agency heads, lawmakers and information-technology professionals, Thakkar said he needs the personnel to answer to him or $1.3 million from the DOIT budget to hire staff. He asked the board, which has little authority, to support his request so it would be seriously considered by the real decision-makers – the General Assembly and Governor.

“Reporting to two masters in my opinion and experience so far hasn’t worked,” Thakkar said. “Fifteen months of experience tells me it hasn’t worked.”

DOIT Commissioner Diane Wallace, a member of the CJIS board, bristled at the proposal. She said her “already over-extended” staff serves a variety of agencies and needs to be flexible enough to focus on different projects.

“I feel silly having to sit here and defend my agency and my people,” Wallace told the board. “This is totally unexpected. I don’t know where it’s coming from … I don’t think it’s appropriate for this group to micro-manage my staff.”

State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, a CJIS board member, said during the meeting that one way or another the state needs to get Thakkar the resources he needs.

“The intent of the (CJIS legislation) was not to simply promote efficencies. It was to save lives,” Tong said. “We’re here today to make sure (Thakkar) can get that job done. I want to make sure this board has resources and personnel it needs.”

The board, co-chaired by Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of Stamford, who is also running for Governor, took no action Thursday on Thakkar’s suggestion.

Some readers might think this is all boring, inside-baseball. But the fact is CJIS was a highlight – perhaps THE highlight – of the criminal justice reform package and Thakkar is clearly frustrated.

One legislator familiar with CJIS speculated that if the state does not resolve these issues Thakkar might walk.

And then all of those politicians who talked in 2007 and 2008 about the importance of public safety will have to explain how they allowed the CJIS initiative to fall apart behind-the-scenes even as the Cheshire trials refresh the public’s memory of how the system failed.

During a statement issued Wednesday on the Republican victory in the Massachusett’s Senate race, Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele criticized the federal stimulus – despite the fact his boss, Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, has done nothing but praised the benefits to Connecticut.

It’s a contradictory message GOP candidates (Fedele is running to replace the retiring Rell) are struggling with because a cash-strapped Connecticut has been able to pay for a variety of projects/initiatives with the federal cash, even if Republicans don’t think it was good national policy.

In a previous blog post I posed some questions of Fedele – What is his view of the stimulus’ impact on Connecticut? Would he have preferred the package had not been passed by Congress and the President? Should Governor Rell have turned down the cash as the Governor of Texas has done? Would Governor Fedele have told the federal government “thanks but no thanks”?

Here’s his response, e-mailed to me earlier today. As you’ll see, it’s tough to boil down into a sound bite:

“The federal stimulus program has created jobs in Connecticut and certainly if the federal government had taken no action our situation may well have been worse — but due to the extraordinary paperwork and bureaucratic mazes imposed by the federal government the process was inefficient. Accordingly the states did not get the most bang for the bucks spent, despite the fact that our state government very much had its act together.”

“The federal government is borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar spent — which is a formula for long-term fiscal disaster. And unfortunately, Connecticut only gets a small part of what DC spends, so we are not in a position to turn money away. And while the stimulus program has provided beneficial effects, it certainly has not ignited the economy and that’s why folks were frustrated in Massachusetts and I believe many Connecticut voters share those sentiments. People are still out of work and many have not experienced any ‘recovery’ in their household budgets. Voters spoke clearly in Massachusetts that they do not want a trillion dollar health care plan while our economy is still in the doldrums and they don’t want politics as usual in Washington and they reacted to what was being foisted on them.”

Around 4:20 this afternoon former Congressman Rob Simmons issued a lengthy statement hailing the election of Massachusetts’ Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate seat occupied for decades by late liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

All day political pundits have been arguing that race could have implications for traditionally blue Connecticut, where long-time Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is retiring after 30 years.

So it was not unexpected that Simmons, who is looking to make a comeback and succeed Dodd, compared himself to Brown.

“Scott Brown shares my belief that public office is a public trust, and he’s opened the door for Republican victories in the Northeast. I intend to blast it wide open this November with another historic victory against an entrenched establishment,” Simmons said.

Half an our later Linda McMahon, another potential GOP contender for Dodd’s seat who is campaigning as the “outsider” in the race shot back with an e-mail the title of which says it all: “You’re No Scott Brown.”

“The reality is that Scott Brown campaigned against the same fiscal irresponsiblity that defined Congressman Rob Simmons’ liberal legislative career,” McMahon said.

A few minutes later Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the front runner for Dodd’s seat, issued his own statement comparing himself to Scott Brown – the 1980s, “Cosmopolitan Magazine”-era Scott Brown.

(Okay, I made that last one up. Although now that I think about it, I recall Blumenthal showing almost as much skin when he made a “polar plunge” into Long Island Sound in 2007 to protest the Broadwater gas platform, but I digress…)

Let’s all just agree on an immediate moratorium on arguments about who is “Scott Brown-ier” in 2010, okay?

Lt. Governor Michael Fedele of Stamford, who is seeking the GOP nomination to run for Governor in November, issued a statement today on his party’s winning Tuesday’s special race for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

In it Fedele took aim at the “out of control spending” of Washington Democrats.

“Despite the billions of dollars of taxpayers’ dollars poured onto our smoldering economy, economic recovery has not been ignited,” Fedele said.

Of course Fedele’s press release made no mention of the fact that his boss – Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who tapped Fedele as her running mate in 2006, making his current campaign possible – has for months been touting the benefits of the stimulus dollars for Connecticut in press release after press release.

Some of those releases might even have been drafted and/or reviewed by Chris Cooper, Rell’s former spokesman-turned-Fedele’s campaign spokesman.

This is hardly the first time state Republicans have criticized the stimulus even as Connecticut lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, have eagerly accepted the money during the budget crisis.

UPDATE:

I e-mailed the following questions for Fedele to Cooper about the stimulus. I’m awaiting a response.

1. What is his view of the impact of the stimulus on Connecticut and would the state be better off it it had not been enacted?
2. Would he have preferred Governor Rell not accept stimulus money? Would he, if he were Governor, have refused to accept it? It’s not unheard of. Texas Governor Rick Perry has done it.

The legislature’s Judiciary Committee today held a public hearing on the roll out of the criminal justice reforms enacted in January, 2008 following the home invasion/triple homicide in Cheshire.

Judge Barbara M. Quinn, the chief court administrator, used the opportunity to again stress how difficult it has been for the Judicial Branch to absorb budget cuts imposed by lawmakers.

“Despite (the) long and unprecedented history of cooperation, recent actions by the Legislative and Executive Branches have placed the Judicial Branch in an increasingly untenable position and are jeopardizing much of what we have accomplished through our partnership,” Quinn said. “While neither the Legislature nor the Executive Branch are pleased with the choices we have to make to reconcile this conflict, to date no relief has been provided to the Branch that would resolve this dilemma.”

You can find the transcript of her testimony and accompanying power point presentation, including threatened cuts, here under “latest news.”

During the hearing some legislators asked Quinn whether the cuts were impeding the independence of the Judicial Branch, a co-equal branch of state government. They raised the spectre of a potential lawsuit initiated by the branch against lawmakers.

I didn’t catch all of Quinn’s response and called her for clarification since … well … how does the prospect of the Connecticut Judicial Branch suing politicians during a budget crisis NOT sound like one hell of a story?!?!? C’mon. Branch on branch court warfare?!?!? Maybe not great for the state, but I’m so there.

But Quinn told me “we’re not thinking about it.”

“There comes a time if the cuts are so severe it would prevent us from carrying out our Constitutional obligations of adjucating cases. We’re not there yet and have not had any discussions about what to do if we got there,” Quinn said. “There have been some lawsuits filed in the federal courts and also from the state Judiciary to force legislators and executive branches to appropriate more money. We have never discussed that. They, generally speaking, show a real breakdown between cooperation that’s needed between the branches and my sense of them is they’re counter-productive.”

Quinn said she instead hopes her tough-talking testimony – which she said was approved by Chief Justice Chase Rogers of New Canaan – will convince the General Assembly and Governor to reconsider cuts.

“We have been reaching out to them for some time. We get some indication there may be something forthcoming,” Quinn said.

She added the Judicial Branch, while recognizing the severity of Connecticut’s budget crisis and the responsiblity of the Governor’s budget office to hold the line on spending, does have issues with the process.

“How it’s evolved in the state of Connecticut kind of treats us as though we’re another executive branch agency and it doesn’t work very well,” Quinn said.

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When I opened my e-mail today to find a message that Nancy Wyman will seek the Democratic nomination for state Comptroller, I intially thought: “Great. Another politician who sees the changes in the state’s 2010 political landscape as a chance to play musical chairs.”

Then I remembered Wyman IS the Comptroller.

So here’s to you, Nancy, along with Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield and House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk.

While everyone and their dog is scrambling to take advantage of recent retirements/openings in the races for U.S. Senate, Governor and Attorney General to further their political careers, you three have announced you simply want voters to keep you in your current jobs.

Here’s to politicians staying right … where … they … are.