Donovan Concedes, Calls For Campaign Finance Reform
by Christine Stuart and Hugh McQuaid | Aug 14, 2012 10:27pm
(10) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Congress, Election 2012
An ongoing campaign financial scandal and millions in Super PAC money proved too much for House Speaker Chris Donovan to overcome Tuesday in a three-way primary for the Democratic nomination in the 5th U.S. Congressional District.
Donovan, who called and conceded the race to former state Rep. Elizabeth Esty, used his concession speech to call for campaign finance reform at the federal level.
“This race brought Citizens United to our doorsteps,” Donovan said. “And mailboxes and TV sets and now Connecticut knows we need campaign finance reform at the federal level just like the law I passed at the state level.”
Donovan maintained that he focused his race on the working families in the 5th District, but he was dogged by the federal investigation that brought charges against his former finance director and former campaign manager, who allegedly hid the source of $27,500 in campaign donations. The two staffers have pleaded not guilty.
Donovan has not been charged with any wrongdoing by federal authorities and has maintained he had no knowledge of the alleged scheme to kill a bill that would have imposed fees on some tobacco shop owners.
While voters like Ruth Meiselman believed Donovan, it was unclear what would happen in November.
“Donovan—there’s too much going on. Too much uneasiness,” she said earlier in the day at Farmington High School.
Lori Pelletier, secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO, said the unions did everything they could to get their voters to the polls for Donovan.
“We made thousands of phone calls, dropped thousands of pieces of literature, and visited hundreds of work sites,” Pelletier said. “We did what we were supposed to do.”
Donovan said he called Esty to concede the race before greeting his supporters at the Curtis Cultural Center in Meriden.
“We have a new Democratic nominee and we gotta keep fighting for the issues we all care about,” Donovan said as he pushed his way through the media to a teary crowd of union supporters.
Donovan is still an endorsed candidate on the Working Families Party line and could be a candidate in November.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party, who was at the gathering Tuesday said her coalition still has to meet to discuss which candidate they will support in November.
Currently, Donovan is the only one who can remove his name from that ballot line.
Following her victory speech, Esty told reporters there’s no way to tell how much of an impact the federal investigation had on the results of the primary race.
“I think we’ll never know. There are so many factors that go into voters’ decisions. And as somebody who knows the importance of timing with my own race in 2010, timing matters a lot in politics and we never really will know,” she said.
Esty wouldn’t speculate on whether Democrats would have lost the seat if Donovan had received the nomination. She said the topic of her conversations with both Donovan and Dan Roberti after they conceded was the need to focus on unifying as a party.
“We’re all committed to moving forward with a unified Democratic party to defend this seat in November,” she said.
During her victory speech, Esty told supporters to expect a tough battle between now and November. She noted that the 5th district is a politically competitive district that Republicans have a shot at winning.
“We are going to have to work incredibly hard to defend this seat. Everybody here knows it—this is a purple seat and it looks like it’s going to be Andrew Roraback. We have our work cut out for us,” she said.
In Waterbury at the Esty victory party, excitement grew throughout the night.
As the results trickled in, Esty supporters huddled around an iPad in the center of the ballroom refreshing precinct results. Periodically the campaign’s finance director, Brian Weeks, would step to a microphone and announced the results of towns as they came in. Each time a town reported for Esty the crowd cheered.
Esty’s husband, Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Dan Esty made his rounds around the room throughout the night but declined to speak with reporters about his wife’s campaign.
“I’m not commenting tonight. This is Elizabeth’s night,” he said.
Dan Esty was somewhat drawn into the race by Roberti, who ran TV spots criticizing Elizabeth Esty for accepting contributions from donors her husband regulates as DEEP commissioner.
But before the night was out news spread that Roberti had conceded the race and endorsed Esty. The announcement got a huge cheer out of the growing crowd.
When she arrived in Waterbury, Esty said she started the day a 4:30 a.m. and hit a total of 19 different polling places before heading to the Coco Key Hotel where her victory party was locat.
Turnout seemed light at the polls Esty hit but she said she wasn’t surprised since it was summertime.
“But I’m used to municipal elections which are also kind of light so, again, the key is getting your own voters there and winning the majority of them and then you win. So we’ll see what happens,” Esty said as she arrived in Waterbury.
Around 9 p.m. an excited crowd applauded when a campaign staffer announced the Hartford Courant was reporting that with 46 percent of precincts reporting, Esty led the field at 46 percent of the vote.
Roberti, who curtailed his campaign to be with his mother who died on Saturday, said “I will do everything I can to elect Elizabeth Esty to the U.S. Congress.”
Around 10:30 p.m. Roberti made a stop at the Esty victory party to congratulate his former opponent. Roberti, who spent more than $900,000 of his own money on the race, pointed out it was important not to lose the seat in the 5th to the Republicans.
Tags: donovan, Esty, Roberti, 5th district, primary night 2012
(10) Comments
posted by: Todd Peterson | August 14, 2012 11:03pm
Democrats were wise not to vote for such a damaged - and likely corrupt - candidate. Complaining about campaign finance in his concession is weak, small and completely predictable. When the union money rolls in and his famously abrasive fundraising calls bring in the money, then all is well with the world. Good riddance!
posted by: gompers | August 15, 2012 2:26am
Donovan has been a selfless public servant for decades. He has consistently lived up to Lincoln Steffen’s quote of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” It is a shame that he has been turned into a caricture because of the horrendous judgement of a trusted staff person. Our state is worse off for his loss. The poor, the disabled, the unemployed and a struggling middle class have lost their best friend in a position of power. I have never met a more truly Christian politician than Chris Donovan.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | August 15, 2012 8:03am
Two-Term Limit. Maximum 8 years served in 20 years. Eliminate the primaries and put all the candidate on the November Ballot in Alpahabetical Order without party designation.
Mandate a debate structure and XXX dollars for advertising from public funds. Don’t attempt to regulate non-profit, for-profit and foreign funds either direct to candidate or soft funds to hired bloggers and other propoganda specialists.
We’ll get by just fine.
posted by: oliviahuxtable | August 15, 2012 9:55am
Chris, I remember June 2011 when you were pushing the SEBAC agreement and telling state employees that although you weren’t going to bring the Senate changes on collective bargaining up for debate in the House, “That doesn’t mean we won’t bring it up if the deal doesn’t go through”. So that’s what a “labor-friendly” politician does to labor, huh? Well, that is the reason I happily voted against you yesterday and am thrilled you lost. That you now refuse to throw your support behind the winner reveals your character. Oh well, what comes around, goes around, eh?
posted by: AndersonScooper | August 15, 2012 11:10am
My guess is that Democrats have already lost this seat to Roraback and the GOP.
It’s going to be hard for the Democratic base to get fired up over the CBIA Dem and her “No Labels” husband, and I just don’t see Esty with the skills to mend the rift. (Not when her former campaign manager is on twitter antagonizing anti-Lieberman Democrats.)
posted by: ALD | August 15, 2012 5:03pm
“So that’s what a “labor-friendly” politician does to labor, huh? Well, that is the reason I happily voted against you yesterday and am thrilled you lost.”
I see this a bit differently.
A “labor friendly” politician works with some degree of balance with labor, business, and the state to help create an environment that will allow business to prosper, create decent jobs, and employ labor to fill those jobs.
Given Donovan’s focus on business bashing, and the resulting countless businesses and jobs that fled the state because of it, I can’t see how anyone could call him labor friendly. Assuming of course that one understands that without jobs there is no real labor. Just unemployed people.
A “union friendly” politician primarily works to serve the unions he is joined at the hip to. Without question Donovan has a long standing record of doing just that. However even Donovan may have once in a while had to think beyond just those four walls.
A “labor friendly”, “union friendly”, or even a “business friendly” politician becomes a poor representative when he or she fails to understand or even try to comprehend the damage they are doing by limiting so much of their ideology to only one side of the equation. Like it or not most positive solutions are found when a reasonable balance is reached.
Our phoney budgets that Malloy reminds us put this state into the mess it’s in today, are perfect examples of what happens when reasonable balance is not reached. As Speaker of the House for many of those budgets, Donovan’s finger prints are all over them, just as much as our clueless former governor who signed some into law, or didn’t sign them, into law.
I too am very happy the Democrats who voted yesterday in the 5th district seem to have found Donovan’s track record somewhat lacking for the whole job. Perhaps also beyond just the obvious problems in the Donovan campaign, some voters did look more closely at Donovan’s 20 or so year record, and voted for more balance from their next Representative?
Given either of the two choices they now have, it seems at least they should get that.
posted by: Vote Yes!!!!! | August 15, 2012 5:33pm
I am hearing that the unions actually told their members to vote against Donovan? “He was damaged goods”...
Wow, after all he did for the union leaders to help them screw their members.
Union leaders now go after the politicians. I thougt Donavan was an untouchable friend of the Union??? This is really scary. It sounds like a “B” script to a God Father sequal…... You Broke My Heart Fredo…...
posted by: perturbed | August 15, 2012 9:40pm
Congrats Christine! You got the money shot!
It looks like you actually managed to document the presence of Donovan’s “backroom buddy” among a group of clapping supporters: the one and only Daniel Livingston, Esq., Chair of the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Health Advancement and Research Trust (CHART), the parent organization of Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, Inc. Isn’t that Livingston to the far left in the blue shirt?
Donovan and Livingston must have spent countless hours together working towards their common goal for so many years: House Advances Healthcare Legislation, Including Pooling & SustiNet.
Notice Juan Figueroa, president of the Universal Health Care Foundation, is quoted in the article praising Donovan’s bill. Lucky for Juan he had a guy on the inside of the “airtight” Malloy/SEBAC negotiations willing to give up whatever it took in state employee benefits to get Malloy to look the other way and let Donovan’s bill pass.
That’s right, Livingston is not only Chair of the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Health Advancement and Research Trust (CHART), the parent organization of Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, Inc., he’s also the Chief Negotiator for SEBAC, the union coalition responsible for representing the best interests of all state employees.
Glad to see good buddies stick together through thick and thin!
(What do you want to bet Donovan’s next career move involves taking money from some health care related organization?)
Anyway, intentional or not, thank you Christine for memorializing Livingston’s support for Donovan.
—perturbed
posted by: perturbed | August 15, 2012 9:40pm
Oh, and how’s this for coincidence:
Not only was Livingston a tireless health care reform activist alongside Donovan—who also just so happened to be in a position of authority to give Malloy what he wanted in state employee concessions (without witnesses to the negotiations!)—but
Donovan’s wheeling and dealing for his pooling bill was concluded and the bill passed in the House
on the very same day that
(Now if I could just get out of my lousy union…)
—perturbed