Rob Kane has defeated Ken Curran in the special election in the 32nd district.  We are still getting final numbers, but it appears as though 60% of the vote has gone for Rob Kane, perhaps 65%.  We are standing by for further details.

God save the Republic!

 It’s Election Day in Connecticut.

Voters in the 32nd Senatorial District (Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Middlebury, Oxford, Woodbury, Roxbury, Seymour, Southbury, Thomaston, Watertown) head to the polls today to choose between Watertown Town Councilor Rob Kane and Kenny Curran, the Democrat Town Committee Chairman in Bethlehem and the former employee of corrupt Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez.  The Waterbury Rep-Am has the story.  Capitol Watch weighs in, too.

The first Senate race run with public dollars, Headless Horseman commented, gotten nasty of late, as Curran criticized Rob Kane for missing Town Council meetings.  Damning, yes?  Well, it turns out that Mr. Kane did miss the meetings, but not for nothing - his mother died.  Not Mr. Curran’s finest hour.  HH has also done an excellent comparison of the two candidates, which is instructive.

Tune in later this evening as we get the results from the 32nd Senate District.

Word came late yesterday that the Democratic candidate in the special election for the 32nd Senate District, Kenny Curran, has qualified for Citizens Election Program funding.  Coming more than two weeks after his Republican opponent Rob Kane qualified, Curran’s campaign may be crunched by the tight calendar.  The special election is set for January 15.

The new Citizens’ Election Program is a public financing system implemented by the legislature and signed by Governor Rell in 2005.  During the course of a general election, candidates for State Senate will be required to meet two thresholds to qualify for public financing - 300 donors from towns touched by the Senate District and $15,000 raised in increments of between $5 - $100.  Upon qualifying, the CEP grant for State Senate is $85,000.  In the case of the special election, Kane and Curran each needed to raise $11,250 and have 225 in-district contributors, to receive the grant of $63,750.  Any money not used at the end of the campaign will go back into the Citizens Election Program to be doled out to future campaigns.

Both candidates have posted websites, found at www.robkaneforsenate.com and www.kenforsenate.com.  Voters in the 32nd District can learn more about the two candidates at these sites.  You can also read about Rob Kane at his campaign blog, http://www.robkaneforsenate.blogspot.com.

The special election in the 32nd Senate District is starting to heat up this week as Republican Rob Kane of Watertown and Democrat Ken Curran of Bethlehem start assembling their campaigns.  As we’ve already reported, Mr. Kane’s campaign qualified for the Citizens Election Program yesterday, and will receive a grant of $63,750 from Connecticut’s taxpayers.  At the same time, both candidates have started to make their mark on the web - Mr. Kane has a new campaign blog up this week, which promises to feature the latest news and information straight from the Kane campaign.  And, interestingly, Mr. Ken Curran’s campaign website went live today - www.kenforsenate.com. 

The above graphic is from the website www.kenforsenate.com, accessed at 10:30pm on Thursday, December 20.  Its content is pretty standard fare, featuring plenty of pontificating about ethics issues, though no mention of Mr. Curran’s former employer, corrupt Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, sadly.  Regardless, the race for the 32nd Senate District should be exciting over the next couple of weeks, and we look forward to continuing our coverage of the race.

Republican candidate Rob Kane, of Watertown, has been certified as a qualifying candidate by the State Elections Enforcement Commission.  Nominated by the 32nd District Republican Convention on December 4th, Mr. Kane was required to raise $11,250 and receive contributions from 225 in-district donors in order to qualify for the Citizens Election Program (CEP) public financing grant.  He will receive a grant of $63,750 from CEP in the coming days.

On Monday, December 17, Mr. Kane filed his report with SEEC, detailing a total dollars raised figure of $14,200 - well over the $11,250 threshold.  In fact, Rob’s campaign raised $11,495 from within the district.  Perhaps most heartening, of the 393 total contributors to Mr. Kane’s effort, 362 lived within the ten towns that make up the 32nd District - Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Middlebury, Oxford, Roxbury, Seymour, Southbury, Thomaston, Watertown, and Woodbury.

 The Citizens Election Program requires that candidates for office reach two thresholds in order to qualify for CEP public financing grants.  A candidate must raise a minimum amount of money - in a regular election, $15,000 for State Senate and $5,000 for the State House.  Additionally, of these contributions, a minimum number of the contributors must live within the towns touched by the district - 300 donors for the Senate and 150 for the House.  The maximum allowable contribution is $100 and the minimum is $5.  Lobbyists and state contractors with contracts valued at more than $5000 are not permitted to contribute.  Upon qualifying, Senate candidates will receive a contribution of $85,000 and House candidates receive $25,000 - bringing the maximum amount of money to be spent on Senate campaigns to be $100,000 and $30,000 for the House of Representatives.  Republican State Representative Jason Perillo of Shelton was the first candidate in Connecticut state history to qualify for and receive public grant money, when he ran in the special election to fill Rep. Dick Belden’s seat on October 9th, 2007.

The problem in politics is that you make as many enemies as you do friends.  Such is the sad case of Mr. Ken Curran, of Bethlehem, who was nominated by Democrats in the 32nd Senatorial District to run for the seat vacated by Sen. Lou DeLuca. 

Mr. Curran has been active in Democratic political circles for several years now, so when he decided to take a shot at the 32nd Senatorial District he had a lot of chits to call in as he faced fellow Democrat John T. McCarthy, a man whose resume included a tour as the U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, amongst a host of qualifications.  Between long-owed favors and the quality of a decent man, local Democrats chose to repay their debts and nominate Ken Curran.

The Waterbury Republican-American pointed out a particular irony this morning in their paper, commenting thus:

“Sen. DeLuca’s successor will be picked in a special election Jan. 15. The Democrats standard-bearer will not be John McCarthy of Woodbury, a former undersecretary of State whose ambassadorial postings included Lebanon and Tunisia. Rather, it will be Kenneth Curran of Bethlehem, a party hack who managed Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez’ 2007 re-election campaign, which diverted city funds to pay for campaign literature. Mayor Perez now is the subject of a grand jury investigation into municipal corruption.”

For what it is worth, we at CTGOP filed the complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission on this issue of the diverted city funds for campaign purposes, which we’ve previously examined in our post, “Whitewash in Hartford“.  Mayor Perez’s office sent the “Hartford Educator” newspaper to every home in Hartford with his face plastered all over it, which was a violation of election law.  We filed the complaint in May 2007.  After having spent an estimated $20,000 of city taxpayer dollars for the mailpiece, the State Elections Enforcement Commission fined Mayor Perez a whopping $839.00 one week after his re-election victory in November.  Mr. Curran was the Mayor’s adamant defender in this case.  Interestingly, we learned today that Mayor Perez may be squabbling over the details of the paltry fine - apparently an $839 investment for $20,000 worth of return is still too high a price for “Fast” Eddie Perez.

The Rep-Am finishes with this story from 2001:

“But Mr. Curran’s claim to fame is his harassment of a Bethlehem Democrat in 2001. The victim, Dan Parlato, only wanted Mr. Curran to apologize for calling him at home in the middle of the night to berate him: “I hope you’re happy we lost the election. It’s your fault. I want to meet with you. We’ll settle this face-to-face. I’ll take care of you.” Mr. Parlato told police that was his fourth disturbing call from Mr. Curran during that election cycle.

Police charged Mr. Curran with second-degree harassment. He served 20 hours of community service to make the charge go away, but has never admitted wrongdoing, dismissing his actions as merely poor judgment. Poor judgment and hypocrisy describe the Democrats for nominating a harasser to run for a seat vacated by a man whom they deemed a stain on the Senate for committing a similar offense. At least Sen. DeLuca had the decency to admit his mistake and take his punishment like a man.” -Waterbury Republican-American, “Harassment Hypocrisy”

Mr. Curran does not have the experience appropriate for the job of State Senator, nor apparently, does he have the proper temperament.  All things considered, we’d rather he be blogging, too.

The headaches for corrupt Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez aren’t over yet, as a Grand Jury will hear testimony this week about his alleged illegal activities.  The heart of the matter:

“It is unclear precisely what the grand jury will review, but state investigators have been looking into Perez’s activities at least since February, when reports published in The Courant indicated that the mayor’s office had instructed the city to give a lucrative, no-bid deal to a political supporter to operate a city-owned parking lot downtown. The investigation touched Perez directly over the summer, when he admitted in August that criminal investigators executed a search warrant on his home because he had hired a city contractor to do $20,000 worth of work to renovate Perez’s bathroom and kitchen.”

WTNH spent the morning running a video loop of a rather sinister looking Mayor Perez walking next to none other than Ken Curran, the newly-minted candidate for the 32nd Senate District seat.  And, from the looks of things, some folks aren’t wild about the idea of Mr. Curran’s candidacy anyway.

The Everyday Republican has already covered the “Whitewash in Hartford” that Mayor Perez got away with in November.  Hopefully this time, Mr. Perez won’t be so lucky.