Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, former Veterans Affairs Commissioner Sean Connolly and a businessman, Guy L. Smith IV, kicked off gubernatorial campaigns within an hour of each other Tuesday, underscoring the unprecedented free-for-all to succeed Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. They are the 23rd, 24th and 25th candidates to declare.
2018 campaign
Posted inPolitics
Clare Kindall joins Mattei, Shaban as declared AG candidates
Clare Kindall, an assistant attorney general who once served on the town council and board of education in West Hartford, announced her candidacy for attorney general Monday, joining Chris Mattei as a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination to succeed Attorney General George Jepsen.
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Eight years out of prison, Ganim says he’s ready to be governor
Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim’s formal entrance into the race for governor Wednesday presents Democratic officials with two unsettling scenarios: Either they make peace with the prospect of their ticket being led by a convicted extortionist, or they try to dissuade the mayor of Connecticut’s largest city from running in a Democratic primary.
Posted inPolitics
A liberal grades his colleagues: ‘I’m not here to make friends’
Josh Elliott arrived at the State Capitol last January as a disrupter, the young liberal with the short spiky hair who had the temerity to challenge to House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey for the Democratic nomination. His goal for 2018 is to help other liberal outsiders do what he did in 2016: Challenge incumbent Democrats he sees as insufficiently progressive. “I’m not here to make friends,” he says.
Posted inPolitics
No, really, Joe Ganim is running for governor
A spokeswoman for Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim said Thursday he will formally announce his candidacy for governor next week, but that a “Ganim for Governor” account opened Wednesday on Twitter was unauthorized and appears to have been the work of “an enthusiastic supporter.”
Posted inPolitics
With Twitter account, Ganim is a candidate for governor
There are many ways to become a candidate for governor under state law. One of them is to do what Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim did Wednesday: Open a Twitter account under the name, “Joe Ganim for Governor.” (Update: the Twitter account went inactive Thursday, but Ganim’s texted reply to an effort to clarify his gubernatorial status was concise: “In.”)
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Oz Griebel to open indy run with a Sandy Hook running mate
Oz Griebel, who recently retired as leader of the MetroHartford Alliance and exited the Republican Party, will open an independent campaign for governor Wednesday by introducing his running mate, Monte Frank, a Sandy Hook gun-control activist, former Democrat and immediate past president of the Connecticut Bar Association.
Posted inPolitics
Women who marched in Washington hope to sit in Hartford
The Women’s March in Washington exhilarated Amanda Webster, a 28-year-old mother of two from Granby, a semi-rural community northwest of Hartford. But the high diminished on the long train ride home to Connecticut. She remembers thinking, “Where do we go next?” In her case, Webster hopes, it will be to the state House of Representatives.
Posted inPolitics, Transportation
GOP candidates light on ideas at transportation forum
SOUTHINGTON — Republican candidates for governor drove away from a transportation forum Friday without saying how they would stabilize Connecticut’s depleted transportation fund, disappointing an audience of union members and contractors whose livelihoods rely on the state’s ability to maintain and improve its aging infrastructure.
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Opening night for the GOP gubernatorial contender road show
Arrayed on stools like Dating Game contestants, seven Republican gubernatorial contenders broadly sketched out their interests Wednesday night, but mainly shared their turnoffs — unfunded pension and retiree health liabilities, wasteful spending, excessive regulation and career politicians. The forum was the first of five planned by the state GOP.
Posted inPolitics
Laffer prescribes tax cuts, and his friend Bob, to the CT GOP
Arthur Laffer, an amiable pitchman for supply-side economics in Washington under Ronald Reagan and now Donald Trump, expanded his portfolio Monday by taking on the twin causes of Connecticut’s anemic economy and the gubernatorial ambitions of a friend and political newbie, Bob Stefanowski.
Posted inPolitics
Chris Mattei enters AG race with a slap at Trump and big business
Chris Mattei formally entered the race for attorney general Monday with an appeal to the Democratic base by promising to be “unflinching” in taking on Wall Street banks, pharmaceutical companies, energy companies and others who unfairly disadvantage consumers.
Posted inPolitics
Progressives quiz Democratic contenders for governor
NEW HAVEN — Connecticut’s political left obtained commitments from four Democratic gubernatorial contenders on a range of progressive issues Saturday at a “People’s Symposium” that was as much a test of the audience’s appetite for hitting the streets to resist President Donald J. Trump as the politicians’ visions for succeeding Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Posted inPolitics
Political Notes: Lumaj ends exploratory, declares for governor
Peter Lumaj, an Albanian political refugee who has twice run unsuccessfully for statewide office in Connecticut, ended his year-long testing of the waters for a third campaign Wednesday and filed papers declaring him to be a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in 2018.
Posted inJustice, Politics
Federal judge upholds law barring Ganim from public financing
A federal judge delivered a significant blow Wednesday to the gubernatorial ambitions of Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim by upholding a state law that bars Ganim, as a felon convicted of public corruption, from obtaining public campaign financing. He did not rule out an appeal — or running without public funds.