Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, Democrats who have not been shy about faulting their predecessor Republican administration for leaving them a whopping deficit, nonetheless will help mark the unveiling of a portrait Wednesday of former Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
Look for Malloy to be nice. He is engaged in the early days of a difficult campaign — mainly by trying to be gubernatorial — and Rell left office in January 2011 as Connecticut’s most popular governor since the invention of polling.
Malloy should not have trouble finding something nice to say: Rell succeeded John G. Rowland, who was forced to resign by an impeachment inquiry and later did time on a federal corruption conviction.
The state — certainly its political world — was grateful when Rell’s move into the corner office and ended a corruption scandal that paralyzed the Capitol. She also played a leading role in campaign finance reforms, which banned state contractor donations and created public financing.