Remember yesterday when I blogged about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont’s daring to bring up a past state probe of alleged contract-steering by former Stamford Mayor/current Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dannel Malloy?
If not, read this blog post first, then come back.
Lamont and Malloy are 12 days away from their party’s primary on August 10.
Today the Lamont campaign gave our newspapers a binder’s worth of opposition research it claims proves Malloy, who was cleared by the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney of any wrongdoing back in 2005, never got the hint that he should at the very least have made an effort to avoid perceived conflicts when accepting campaign donations while mayor. Lamont also took the story to The Hartford Courant.
This wasn’t something the Lamont campaign assembled overnight. Clearly they’ve been sitting on it deciding whether to go “there.”
Here’s my report, which just hit the web tonight and will be in tomorrow’s newspapers.
And I’ll leave you with some choice quotes from campaign staffers that didn’t make my story, just to give you a sense of how bitter this primary battle has gotten:
“It’s a pattern of behavior of a very cavalier attitude toward the law and misusing the power of the office,” Joe Abbey, Lamont’s campaign manager, said.
Roy Occhiogrosso, a Malloy senior advisor, accused Lamont of employing the same tactics that self-funded Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon has been using against Democratic nominee Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. McMahon’s campaign took credit for feeding the New York Times a controversial story about how Blumenthal has described his military record to voters.
“Ned’s peddling info the way Linda McMahon runs around peddling info,” Occhiogrosso said. “For someone who claimed ‘I’m not a politician, I haven’t spent my life in politics’ he sure learned fast.”
One of the victims of the demise of the local paper in America has been town-level investigative journalism. Under its former owners, THE ADVOCATE probably wouldn’t have allowed a real investigative piece on Malloy to see daylight anyway.
The man was the mayor of a major Corrupticut city for fourteen years, and this is all that the Lamont campaign can come up with? Give me a break.
Lamont seems to be running scared. The 180 on debating just makes him look weak, a mere slave to fashion now. And shopping around a damaging story is one thing, but when it’s just rehashed rubbish you look pathetic. If I was a political hack I would have been absolutely embarrassed to shop this non-story around to papers.