News

Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan is proposing an increase in the minimum age for students to enter kindergarten–a move that could delay the start of public school for almost 10,000 students a year. McQuillan told members of the State Board of Education Wednesday the proposal will narrow the age range for students in kindergarten, which now […]

WASHINGTON–For Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation, the election celebrations are over, and a stark new reality is beginning to set in. Yes, the state’s five Democratic U.S. House members all dodged the Republican wave that swept the rest of the country. But now they have to adjust to a dramatically reconfigured political landscape, one in which […]

An updated tally of votes from New Haven on Thursday virtually assured that Democrat Dan Malloy will be declared the state’s next governor, but delays in obtaining official returns from Bridgeport will keep the secretary of the state from pronouncing a victor until Friday. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said at 6 p.m. that […]

State Rep. J. Brendan Sharkey of Hamden beat Rep. Andrew Fleischmann of West Hartford for House majority leader in voting by the Democratic caucus Thursday night. Sharkey will take over in January when the current majority leader, Denise Merrill of Mansfield, becomes the next secretary of the state. “Team building is going to be the key, Sharkey […]

Tom Foley remained noncommittal Thursday about a potential legal challenge to the gubernatorial election as vote-counting continued in Bridgeport, but his campaign took steps late in the day to cast doubts about the election process in Connecticut’s largest city. The GOP nominee issued a statement raising a series of questions about ballots that reportedly hadn’t […]

Could under-reporting of the Latino vote have skewed political polls this year? That’s a real possibility, Nate Silverconcludes at FiveThirtyEight.com. Results from 15 statewide races in states with the largest proportion of Hispanics in the population showed that Democrats–who tend to be more heavily-favored by Latino voters–did better than projected in 10 of them. In Connecticut, Hispanics comprise […]

Even as they gave Republicans control of the U.S. House, nearly 60 percent of American voters said they expect the new majority will let them down, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll. That includes 37 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents, whose anger at Democrats is credited with putting the GOP in […]

Is there a lesson about women candidates in Linda McMahon’s loss?  If there is, it’s that “odd-duck female candidates make women voters as nervous as wacky men do,” says Emily Bazelon in Slate. Bazelon notes that women voters were overwhelmingly against McMahon in pre-election polls, surmising that McMahon’s WWE background is the cause. And despite some high-profile–not […]

Republicans remain in the minority at the General Assembly, but they picked up 14 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, the biggest shift to one party since Connecticut abolished the party-lever in 1986. Pending recounts in one Senate and three House races, Democrats will have advantages of 100-51 in the House and […]

Richard Blumenthal just smiled at the question. Yes, he had just overcome, politically speaking, a near-death experience. Yes, he had surmounted questions about his integrity, veracity, toughness and political acumen. But Blumenthal was in victory Wednesday as he had been during the lowest moments of his campaign for U.S. Senate: composed and measured, cordial and […]

After staying on the sidelines of Connecticut’s hotly-contested U.S. Senate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman offered his opinion on the results Wednesday morning. In a press release, Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-Independent who is up for re-election in 2012 himself, congratulated Blumenthal and welcomed him to the congressional delegation. “I look forward to working closely with Dick and the […]

Within hours of being declared the likely winner of Connecticut’s gubernatorial election by the state’s chief elections official, Democrat Dan Malloy tapped a key figure from Gov. William A. O’Neill’s administration and an expert in housing finance, Timothy F. Bannon of Manchester, to be his chief of staff and help lead his transition effort. Not […]

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz denied bearing any responsibility Wednesday for the failure of Bridgeport officials to order sufficient ballots for Tuesday’s election. “I lay it squarely on the registrars of voters,” said Bysiewicz, who oversaw the junking of Connecticut’s lever voting machines in 2006 for a system of paper ballots and optical scanners. […]

A postscript to Tuesday’s election of George Jepsen as attorney general: A judge Wednesday dismissed his opponent’s 11th-hour lawsuit claiming he did not have the experience required by law to hold the job. Superior Court Judge Julia Aurigemma said that Martha Dean, Jepsen’s Republican opponent, had no legal basis to seek Jepsen’s removal from the […]

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz announced at noon that Democrat Dan Malloy was the unofficial winner of the gubernatorial race, but the Associated Press countered Wednesday night that its latest count had Republican Tom Foley in the lead. Bysiewicz based her pronouncement on returns from Bridgeport and New Haven that gave the former Stamford mayor […]