Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

I t’s not at all unusual for aides employed by governors and presidents to make their way into lucrative businesses that are, once the aides have left public service, profitably engaged with entities connected in one way or another with their former bosses. Communication directors for presidents or governors occasionally are hired by news networks that report on government operations, or governmental aides join lucrative firms that advise businesses or politicians how best to interface with government bigwigs. The walls that separate politics and corporate entities that do business either with a state or national regulatory octopus are semi-permeable.

It’s not often reporters feel compelled to lift the veil and show the general public how politicians massage the message. This was done recently in a Hartford Courant Capitol Watch piece, and the resulting story, written by dogged investigative reporter Jon Lender, presumably with his tongue tucked far back in his cheek, is hilarious: “Pull back the curtain as top aides in the Malloy administration shape the messages that get fed to the taxpaying public, and you see how much calculation, editing and rewriting happens before a statement is finally issued — and how high up the ladder they go for approval.

Real Town Hall meetings can be a bit unruly, a test both for citizens and their representatives -- but not if they are pre-edit by Governor Dannel Malloy’s Malloyalists. The format in a Middletown Town Hall meeting obliged residents to fill out a sign-up sheet stating their names and the topic of their questions, according to a report in the Middletown Press :“The governor’s staff selected questions based on subject matter, according to Andrew Doba, a spokesman for the governor.” Five minutes into the meeting, one woman, perhaps more used to uncensored Town Hall meetings than either the governor or his media director, protested, “This is supposed to be a town hall meeting, sir.” Residents, she said, “should be able to voice their opinions.”

After it had been pointed out that his drawings were hypercritical and highly unflattering representations of his subjects, a famous caricaturist responded, “What’s the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?” Roy Occhiogrosso, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Senior Advisor and a fierce Malloyalist, should have internalized the quote so that he would be able to flourish it   when asked by reporters why the governor thought it necessary to recruit dozens of state officials as propaganda agents.