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In April well-to-do, self-funded Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Greenwich told a bunch of Tea Partiers she will forgo the standard, $174,000 salary if elected to Congress.

McMahon plans on spending as much as $50 million of her family’s professional wrestling wealth (they own Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment) on the race.

A reader who saw the report in our newspapers yesterday about the personal financial disclosures of both McMahon and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, also a loaded Greenwich resident, wondered if the latter has made a similar pledge.

So I asked the Blumenthal campaign and spokesman Maura Downes sent me the following e-mail: “Dick will take his salary if elected to the Senate.”

I also questioned whether Blumenthal will leave office after two terms, as McMahon has also promised during a televised GOP debate in March. Downes’ answer? “On term limits, he wants the people of Connecticut to decide, as they always have, how long their Senators should serve.”

For those of you who care about these things and are keeping track, McMahon, along with Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont, have all promised to work without pay. Foley and Lamont also call Greenwich home.

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A day after former Republican-turned-independent Governor Lowell Weicker delivered a blistering assessment of Connecticut’s current lawmakers, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont said if elected he would bring Weicker’s tough approach to the job.

“I respect Lowell Weicker  because he doesn’t duck tough choices,” Lamont, a Greenwich businessman/millionaire said of the one-term, bear-of-a-man Governor who pushed through the state’s income tax during the budget crisis of the early 1990s.

Weicker, who lost his U.S. Senate seat in 1988 to Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Stamford, supported Lamont’s upstart campaign against his former opponent in 2006 and is backing Lamont’s bid to replace retiring Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Weicker during a rare public appearance yesterday told the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities that Rell is “disinterested” and that the next Governor will likely only enjoy one four year term.

Rell’s replacement faces an estimated $3 billion-plus budget deficit.

“What I loved is the man went in, looked at a tough situation, tried to get the best ideas he could from people across the spectrum, didn’t play the blame game, and said ‘here’s my best solution’,” Lamont said.

Lamont said while the income tax continues to be a source of debate, “he came forward with an honest budget and said ‘hold me accountable. The buck stops here. I think the state will be better off for it’ … We need some of that spirit in the next four years.”

But Lamont noted “he and I have different personalities and styles of dealing with somebody.”

Lamont was asked about the prospect of tax increases back in February when he formally announced his candidacy. During his speech he said the state is suffering a revenue problem that won’t be solved with more taxes.

Later he told reporters “I don’t think … we’ve earned the right, at this point, to raise people’s taxes. You got to convince the taxpayers we’ve done everything we can on the spending side.”

It’s not as if Weicker’s backing Lamont means he’s in the tank for Democrats. While he had been a supporter of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s, Weicker yesterday said the Democratic nominee to replace the retiring Dodd – Attorney General Richard Blumenthal – has made the state unfriendly to business. That line of attack is being used by Republicans hoping to end Blumenthals’ long political career and capture Dodd’s seat after three decades. The Republican U.S. Senate nominee is Linda McMahon. Weicker sits on the board of McMahon’s family-business, Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment.

UPDATE: A few minutes ago Tom Marsh, the Independent candidate for Governor, issued a statement that Lamont is no Weicker:

Chester, Connecticut — June 18, 2010 — As the Independent Party candidate for Governor I hold former Governor Weicker in high regard. In his campaign, he chose to separate himself from the party rhetoric to promote a message that was difficult yet necessary. Mr. Weicker made some hard-hitting points in his address to Connecticut’s Mayors and First Selectmen at CCM’s annual conference on Thursday. His actions, however, don’t seem to sync up with his words.

Weicker is right on target when criticizing Governor Rell’s disinterested approach to leadership and governance. From her refusal to sign a budget last year to her refusal to advocate for our state at the national level and work to secure federal funds, disinterested can only be characterized as a charitable description.

His message of cost reduction is also on target. Mr. Lamont, whom Weicker has endorsed, however, has not shown the fortitude to take on the cost-reduction efforts Mr. Weicker espouses. A review of Mr. Lamont’s State Budget plan reveals the political soft shoe his campaign is built on. Reviews and studies are the buzz words of those who understand the political difficulties of specifics. Mr. Lamont’s plan is rife with such vague references. It appears that Mr. Weickers’ endorsement of Mr. Lamont may be based more on rhetoric and old friendships than conviction, which is just more politics as usual.

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I’m working on a story about the candidates for U.S. Senate and Governor and the media. Who is accessible to the press? Who isn’t and why? Who is willing to give reporters their schedules so we can show up unannounced at a public event or outside a private venue and ask them some questions? Who is willing to actually get on the phone with a reporter for a story rather than putting their spokesman on the line?

I sent an e-mail about this topic to John Mertens, the Independent Senate candidate. Mertens called me back personally to complain he has the exact opposite problem – he can’t get media attention.

“I have 30 detailed position statements on my website. (Democratic and Republican) candidates put out a press release saying a vague, general position on some issue and it’s instantly in the newspaper,” Mertens said. “It’s very frustrating to me … I’m on the ballot. I’ve been campaigning since August of last year.”

And then there are the stories or blog entries that have been written about Democrat Lee Whitnum, a former extremely long-shot candidate for U.S. Senate from Greenwich who showed up at the wrong location for her party’s convention last month.

Mertens cannot believe that even she has gotten more coverage, such as when Whitnum in late March called for Attorney General/Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Dick Blumenthal to resign. Some media outlets actually picked up the story, including yours truly.

Mertens has found ways around his lack of coverage dilemma like producing his own television program.

But he said he still needs the attention of traditional print media.

“I don’t have $50 million to spend,” Mertens said, referring to Republican U.S. Senate nominee Linda McMahon’s pledge to use her personal fortune to foot the bill for her first time bid for public office. “But it’s more than that. I love print media. You can go into much more detail and in depth on an issue in print media than you can in a 30 second commercial or on a Facebook ad. I read newspapers every day. Always have.”

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The Democratic-majority General Assembly is expected to meet in special session June 21 to yet again extend increases in the conveyance tax applied to real estate transactions.

But it is uncertain whether legislators will simultaneously eliminate a new conveyance tax which, since January 1, has been levied on foreclosures.

A few years ago state lawmakers increased the real estate conveyance tax to help funnel additional revenue to cash-strapped cities and towns. The hike was supposed to have sunset, but it keeps getting extended in the face of pressure from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

When the 2010 legislative session ended at midnight May 5, the House of Representatives had again extended the increases, scheduled to expire at the end of this month, for another year. But the Senate failed to take up the measure. Democrats at the time told an enraged CCM it was an oversight and they would make it right during a special session.

And CCM has been keeping the pressure on.

The foreclosure tax was quietly slipped into the two-year state budget the General Assembly passed last September. But the move, estimated to generate $8.5 million this fiscal year and $16.2 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1, proved controversial.

Critics like state Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, who as Banks Committee co-chairman has been spearheading foreclosure mitigation programs, complained the tax was never given a public hearing.

And while proponents argued the foreclosure tax would be paid by the banks, Duff and others feared it would instead be borne by financially hurting property owners. The state Judicial Branch confirmed that to be the case and judicial officials also had a tough time figuring out how to calculate the tax.

By April there appeared to be a growing consensus that the conveyance tax on foreclosures had been a bad, hastily done policy decision.

“It is tantamount to kicking delinquent homeowners when they’re down,” said Sen. Andrew Roraback, R-Goshen, one of the very few lawmakers who actually raised questions about the tax during the budget debate.

Even Sen. Eileen Daily, D-Westbrook, who, as co-chairman of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, helped craft the state budget, acknowledged extending the conveyance tax to foreclosures “never worked … To just exempt them is what makes the most sense.”

However, when I asked Derek Slap, spokesman for the Senate Democrats, about the issue today, he told me there is a concern about losing that estimated $16.2 million during the ongoing budget crisis.

“The issue of changing the scope of the conveyance tax has been raised but clearly there is a lot to consider,” Slap told me.

I put in a call to the state Department of Revenue services to find out if in fact the foreclosure tax has been meeting the original revenue expectations. But a DRS spokesman told me they did not have that data available.

Nicholle Dagata, president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors, said that organization agreed to suspend its traditional opposition to an extension of the conveyance tax increase as long as the policy was changed to again exempt foreclosures.

“We feel the state is striking against the most vulnerable,” she said. “We just think it’s absurd. They’re already in a dire situation.”

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s campaign today confirmed in recent weeks it has hired columnist D. Dowd Muska, formerly of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a Hartford-based taxpayer watchdog group.

McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said Muska, who referred questions to the McMahon campaign, fills a hybrid position that will include communications and political work. They’re still working on a title.

Admittedly this is all a bit insiderish. But what’s noteworthy about Muska’s hiring is that some of his columns have been highly critical of McMahon’s opponent for the Republican nomination,  former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons.

Check out these entries from January 21 and April 1 on Muska’s blog.

And then of course there was this December 10, 2009 column entitled “The Case for Linda McMahon” and subtitled “I know you’re willing to spend $50 million of your wealth on your Senate bid and I’m available…”

I kid about that subtitle. But Muska’s a young, sharp guy and his hiring is another example of the well-funded McMahon machine’s willingness to scoop up whomever it takes to send her to Washington.

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Last week I wondered when voters might see Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon run an ad against Democratic opponent Attorney General Richard Blumenthal featuring a recent and pretty expensive failure on the part of his office.

That would be the case of Gina Malapanis, who in January was awarded $18 million by a jury after counter-suing the state for violating her rights and ruining her computer business with false claims dating back to 2003.

Today Blumenthal’s office announced that Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens, who presided over the original trial, slashed that $18 million award to $1.83 million, calling it a “shocking injustice … influenced by partiality or mistake.”

“We will continue fighting to overturn this verdict and cut the award to nothing,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

I understand he will spend the weekend figuring out a way to pay back the elections gods for this break after negative stories this week about his Vietnam service and a critical audit of his office.

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Does Richard Hine, the Assistant Attorney General who has been claiming Blumenthal lied to him 19 years ago claiming he served IN Vietnam rather than stateside in the Marine Corps Reserves, have an ax to grind against the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate?

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The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has snagged former Governor Lowell P. Weicker to discuss the state’s fiscal crisis during this election year at the organization’s annual meeting June 17 in Cromwell.

Weicker, a Republican-turned-independent whose political career also included turns as Greenwich First Selectman, state Representative, U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator, was elected Governor in 1990.

At the time of his inauguration Connecticut was facing a $1 billion budget hole, and Weicker filled it in part with the controversial income tax, reversing his earlier opposition to such a policy.

Connecticut’s next head-of-state faces an estimated $3 billion deficit.

Some critics of retiring Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s handling of the ongoing budget crisis have argued state government needs Weicker’s brand of tough, unapologetic leadership. Weicker did not seek a second term.

In recent months Weicker has popped up in stories about the 2010 U.S. Senate race because he is on the Board of Directors of World Wrestling Entertainment, the Stamford company owned by Republican Senate nominee and Greenwich resident Linda McMahon’s family.

Here are some archived stories we published back in the early 1990s to bring back those Weicker/income tax memories.

Weicker3.28.91-1

Weicker8.23.91-1-1