It wasn’t exactly the campy skullduggery of Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. In the final frame, nobody went Kaboom! But another chapter was written Wednesday in a quietly epic lobbying battle. Call it Speaker vs. Speaker. Richard J. Balducci and James A. Amann are Democrats who served in the Connecticut General Assembly, reaching the top […]
Mark Pazniokas
Mark is the Capitol Bureau Chief and a co-founder of CT Mirror. He is a frequent contributor to WNPR, a former state politics writer for The Hartford Courant and Journal Inquirer, and contributor for The New York Times.
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Immigration unites, then divides House
The push and pull of immigration politics played out over a marathon House session that began Wednesday with bipartisan consensus on one bill and ended Thursday in partisan rancor on another. In a vote likely to reverberate in the 2014 races for governor and General Assembly, the House voted 74-55 after sunrise Thursday for a […]
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With an eye to ’14 campaign, Democrats back minimum wage increase
After one last tweak sought by the governor, the Senate voted 21-15 Thursday night to raise Connecticut’s $8.25 minimum wage by 45 cents on Jan. 1, 2014, the start of an election year when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will be campaigning for a second term. The bill also would impose a 30-cent raise in 2015, […]
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Donovan asserts innocence as corruption case goes to jury
New Haven – Former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan asserted his innocence Tuesday outside U.S. District Court as jurors began deliberating whether a top campaign aide was guilty of conspiracy in the corruption case that derailed his 2012 congressional campaign. Donovan, a Meriden Democrat, arrived minutes after the government and defense made closing arguments in […]
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Jury convicts Donovan campaign aide in bribery case
New Haven — A federal jury took less than three hours Tuesday to convict Robert Braddock Jr., a top campaign aide to former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, on charges related to a conspiracy to bribe Donovan with illegal campaign contributions. The jury of nine men and three women convicted Braddock, 34, on all three […]
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Defense rests without offering evidence in political corruption case
New Haven — The defense rested Monday without offering testimony in the conspiracy trial of Robert Braddock Jr., the campaign aide whose arrest a year ago opened a scandal that mortally wounded the congressional candidacy of Christopher G. Donovan. The jury in U.S. District Court will get the case Tuesday after closing arguments in a […]
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Scott Walker offers CT GOP a conservative prescription
Stamford – Raucous union demonstrators outside a Connecticut Republicans’ fundraiser Monday showed that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin remains a lightning rod for curtailing the collective-bargaining rights of public employees. But does Walker’s battles with labor in the Midwest make him a role model for GOP candidates considering a challenge next year to this state’s […]
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Testimony: Donovan’s biggest money men had stake in legislation
New Haven – The two biggest fundraisers for then-House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan’s 2012 congressional campaign were Harry Raymond Soucy and Mark Masselli, men with significant financial interests before the General Assembly, a campaign official testified Friday. Soucy, according to previous witnesses, was responsible for delivering checks totaling $27,500 from donors trying to ensure that […]
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Feds secretly videotaped House leaders Donovan and Cafero
New Haven – In a secretly videotaped encounter in 2012, then-House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, seemed to cheerfully take credit for killing a tobacco tax bill, then recoiled from the idea seconds later. “I took care of ya, didn’t I?” a smiling Donovan told Harry Raymond Soucy, a union friend acting on behalf of […]
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A fixer’s tale of attempted bribes
New Haven – His name was Harry Raymond Soucy, a brash and egotistical union leader and correction officer who portrayed himself in the backroom of a Waterbury smoke shop as a political fixer able to get things done at the Connecticut State Capitol. His solution: Bribes disguised as contributions to the top Democrat and Republican […]
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State paid for Malloy’s trip to New Orleans for UConn championship
The state paid $1,193.07 for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to make a last-minute, overnight trip to New Orleans last month to see the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team win its eighth national championship. Four nights later, Malloy, a hockey fan, paid his own way for an overnight trip to Pittsburgh to see the Yale […]
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A reputation on trial, not the politician
New Haven – He is not charged. He wasn’t in court. But former House Speaker Christopher Donovan was a major presence Monday as testimony opened in the political corruption case that derailed his 2012 congressional campaign. A publicist greeted reporters with a statement from Donovan. His lawyer sat in the second row, monitoring testimony. Donovan’s […]
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Julia Tashjian dies; won on O’Neill ticket
Julia H. Tashjian of Windsor, a Democratic insider who was Connecticut’s secretary of the state for two terms in the 1980s, twice winning on tickets led by Gov. William A. O’Neill, died Thursday. She was 74. The Democratic State Convention that propelled her to statewide office in 1982 was the last of its kind, run […]
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Sea-level bill focuses on effect, not cause
Irene and Sandy were unwelcome visitors to coastal Connecticut, but their legacy is a strong consensus by the Connecticut General Assembly on the threat to public infrastructure posed by rising sea levels. The House voted 129 to 2 to give final passage Thursday to legislation requiring state officials to consider the necessity of mitigating sea-level […]
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House votes to regulate tattoo parlors
No one had stories of botched tattoos. No tales of a constituent who picked up hepatitis from a dirty needle. But then again, no legislator could quite explain how Connecticut never got around to regulating tattoos. “I was actually shocked,” said Rep. Al Adinolfi, R-Cheshire. It’s an oversight the House of Representatives moved to correct […]
