There was plenty of ambient auditory ambiguity and body language for political translators to ponder last night at the big Democratic fund-raiser. How about the difference in applause levels between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the would-be successor to US Sen. Chris Dodd and Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, his would-be replacement? When Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo of Trumbull introduced Bysiewicz, who is battling for a state judge to proclaim she has sufficient “active” legal experience to be AG, you could hear wait staff at the Connecticut Convention Center pour water into glasses among the 120 tables. When Blumenthal was introduced, it sounded like an overtime basket in a UConn men’s basketball game (the women, of course, win by too many points for OT).
The Blogster’s favorite moment, however, occurred at the start of cocktail hour. George Jepsen of Ridgefield, the former state Senate majority leader and state party chairman who is now a candidate for the party’s nomination for attorney general, was positioned at the bottom of the escalator up to the event, shaking hands and schmoozing with everyone and anyone. He reminded the Blogster of a trout under a waterfall, getting a crack at everything. About 30 feet away, Bysiewicz was meeting and greeting people here and there, posing for photos with others. She and her handlers would occasionally look over at the escalator in apparent hopes for an opening to get upstairs without saying howdy to Jepsen or, heaven forbid, presenting an opportunity for a photog to snap them together. She’d inch forward, then a minute or two later, she’d fall back to chat with someone else as Jepsen still stood in the way. Finally, after Jepsen turned his back to the threshold of the escalator to speak with a couple, Bysiewicz chose her moment and swanned on to the escalator behind Duby McDowell, the purveyor of The Laurel, that statewide media Web site. Bysiewicz and Jepsen – political arch rivals at this point with Rep. Cam Staples, D-New Haven, also gunning for the AG nomination – got within four feet of each other, but avoided eye contact and an actual acknowledgement of each other’s existence in the political firmament that is Connecticut’s Democratic Party, at this moment. See you at the primary!