Minor party candidates stood on the State Capitol steps today before a small crowd to launch their campaigns and to ask they be invited this election cycle to debates with major party candidates. “We are very much shut out of the debates and discussion,” said Tim McKee, the spokesman for the Green Party, adding that […]

SHELTON – A motorcycle loudly idled at a stop light Tuesday as Linda McMahon, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, stood by her waiting SUV and answered questions from two reporters about a dead wrestler. McMahon, a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, was trying to steer the impromptu press conference away from the recent death […]

While the planned New Haven-to-Springfield commuter rail line cleared a big fiscal hurdle Tuesday with $260 million in new state funding, it became the focal point of a new debate about state borrowing likely to be carried over into next year’s legislative session. Though Gov. M. Jodi Rell supports the commuter rail line, one of […]

Hartford Hospital opened an expanded emergency department this month, with new rooms and triage areas meant to keep up with an increase in patient visits. Across town, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center is preparing to double its emergency department space as part of a new 10-story tower set to open next spring. UConn’s John […]

The state Bond Commission approved Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s request for $260 million to help fund the planned New Haven-to-Springfield commuter rail line today. But the approval only came after two of the governor’s fellow Republicans opposed it to protest a Rell-approved plan to borrow $580 million in 2009 from future capital projects to help […]

Democrat Dan Malloy visited the Connecticut AFL-CIO on Monday to seal the deal on the labor federation’s endorsement today of his candidacy for governor. Republican Tom Foley came with no expectations. After sitting out the Democratic primary for governor, the AFL-CIO is preparing to turn out its members on behalf of Malloy and the entire […]

Richard Blumenthal distanced himself Monday from the Obama administration and the state’s Democratic congressional delegation with a forceful denunciation of Washington in a speech to the Connecticut AFL-CIO in Hartford. The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate was cheered as he arrived, but his anti-Washington theme drew little applause from a labor audience that had warmly […]

Top state lawmakers are optimistic that even if new federal stimulus rules punch a $156 million hole into the new state budget, rebounding tax revenues will cover most of the gap. House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, and Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, also said they don’t believe Gov. M. Jodi […]

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd denied today that he is opposed to the nomination of Elizabeth Warren as the first consumer-protection watchdog overseeing the banking industry. “I’m not lobbying against her at all,” Dodd told reporters in Hartford. “All I said is I want a confirmable nominee, and right now, that’s trouble. Elizabeth would be a […]

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley reached out today to the Connecticut AFL-CIO with a speech emphasizing a shared interest in ending the state’s two decades of job losses. “I understand the valuable role unions play in our economy,” Foley told the labor federation’s biennial political convention, which is certain to endorse Democrat Dan Malloy for […]

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy is up by 15 percentage points against his Republican opponent Tom Foley in a poll released Monday by Rasmussen Reports. The poll, the first since Foley and Malloy won their respective party nominations in the Aug. 10 primary, shows Malloy leading Foley by 48 percent to 33 percent. Six percent […]

Dan Malloy asked the Connecticut AFL-CIO today for an endorsement that would consolidate his labor support after winning the Democratic primary for governor. “We need to come together. And the coming together starts in this hall on this day, and thank you for having me to address you,” Malloy told delegates at labor’s biennial political […]

Howard Dean, the former Democratic national chairman, blamed Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman today for the failure of the U.S. Senate to open Medicare to younger Americans as part of the health-care reform act passed by Congress. “Remember who sold you out on health care,” Dean told the Connecticut AFL-CIO at its biennial political convention in […]

Congress was days away from passing health reform this spring when the line began forming in Middletown. Hundreds of people waited hours, some overnight, for a chance at a free visit with a dentist. And by the time it was done, the Connecticut Mission of Mercy free dental clinic attracted more than 2,000 people over […]